Old Philosophers

Yesterday I was taking the train up north to spend a few days in Falun and give a talk at my old gymnasium about ”good, bad, and pseudoscience”. On the train I was sitting beside this probably very nice person who was solving some kind of word puzzle in a magasin. From the letters you got left you hade to form the name of an old philosopher. I know this because I was reading over her shoulder. The name had six letters (Swedish spelling, five letters in English) and I quickly checked if A, L, N, O, P, and T were still left and since they were I guessed that I had solved it although there were still other letters left as well.

I had solved it, but my neighbour didn't. I told her the name, which she didn't recognize. I realized that there are people in this world living perfectly happy lives, without knowing about Plato, Socrates, and probably Aristotle as well.
I realised that I take many things for granted. I apparently believe that people don't know about Plato's idealism or about his ideas about how a state should be governed but that they do so out of a choice. The idea that adults in a western country don't know or even recognize the name of Plato, that is just strange. Now I have to try to realise that it is probably I who is strange just because I have friends that have read Plato in the original greek. But I probably also have many friends who have not heared of Plato or at least don't remember that they ever heard of Plato. I never thought of that before.