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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I read Plato's Symposium as a teen. It's a classic, obviously, but its totally f-ing weird. I'm a woman and as a teen, I basically learned about misogyny through Greek philosophy. In the Republic, Plato spends a lot of time comparing and contrasting women and tools, eventually concluding that tools, at least, are useful. Then he recommends a sort of Nazi program of taking men and women and having them have sex, then the babies would be raised by the state, in order to eliminate unfairness. Symposium talks a lot about having sex with children.

To this day, I am kind of grossed out by Greek philosophy. Aristotle is the most tolerable. But it's basically written by pedophiles who hate women. I mean, there's no way around it. I don't think it should be banned but I've also noticed that very few people have actually read it, and if you did, you might be over here "wtf-ing" with me. [/quote]

I have read Symposium too. I am not a fan. But there is no scenario in a free country that it should not be taught in a philosophy class in college to kids who choose to take that class. College should be about reading a bunch of different ideas - even if you are a STEM major.  That there is this type of censorship over curriculum and syllabus should worry everyone, regardless of political ideology [/quote]
DP. Would you also agree that Mein Kampf, Irreversible Damage (by Abigail Shrier), and Jefferson Davis's manifesto on the inferiority of Black people should all be part of the curriculum?

As you are fully aware, every syllabus and curriculum represents choices of what to include and not include. Unless you're advocating a reading list literally millions of books long, you're very accepting of culling books from the syllabus. So, the idea that a book with sadistically criminal, antidemocratic, and hateful ideas has been "banned" and college kids have been impoverished because the limited space on a reading list was not devoted to it is just moronic. People like you are very able to comprehend this when books you don't like are excluded from the reading list, as Mein Kampf has been for generations without a peep from your type. Hiding behind exposure to "a bunch of different ideas" to advocate that a book glorifying pedophilia and the worst sort of misogyny means you are liar, a coward, and a clown, in addition to being a pedophile apologist and woman hater. Shame on you. [/quote]

Of course every class syllabus represents a choice. But it should never be the choice of the government.

And of course colleges should be free to teach Mein Kampf.  In fact, they often do.  Here is a syllabus from NYU.

https://cas.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/casCore/documents/summer2014/9554ErtmanSummer14.pdf#:~:text=masterpieces%20of%20music%20drama%20as%20proof%20of,on%20an%20almost%20daily%20basis%20over%20Germany.

Censorship helps nobody ever. 
[/quote]
The one class you could find where Mein Kampf is taught takes place in BERLIN, GERMANY--not America--and is specifically about the developments in German culture over the past 100 years, with Mein Kampf offered as an example of the negative and racist aspects of German culture. You really think this refutes what I wrote about Mein Kampf being excluded from reading lists HERE IN AMERICA? You are beyond stupid and arguing in extremely bad faith, as anyone who has been in America for more than 30 seconds knows.

This forum is frequented by thousands of people educated in America and you know good and well that virtually none of us were handed Mein Kampf in any class, much less taught it as an example of influential Western philosophy [i]even though that is what it is.[/i] I don't know any American who has read Mein Kampf cover to cover. Even asking if people have read it is enough to make everyone bring out the smelling salts and ostracize you. I have read it because I bought myself a copy. Having been forced to read works by white people like Churchill, who was responsible for the killing of millions of people of color, I wasn't impressed by the pretense that reading Mein Kampf would make me go blind just because Hitler killed Europeans. I had to take it down from my personal library, however, and put it in a drawer because dumb ass East Coast liberals like you kept freaking out when they saw it.

Now, look how many words I've had to waste arguing with you that you're no hero for foaming at the mouth at the exclusion of a book celebrating the sodomization of children and the cannibalization of women's body parts to produce children to sodomize. This should tell you that you, like your fellow useless white liberals, are a feckless fool with no moral compass. You have no business speaking up on any public issue when the only principle you're capable of adhering to is that anything Republicans do is bad. [/quote]

You are wrong. Mein Kampf is part of the reading for many US classes in college. I know my kid read excerpts for a western civ class three years ago. She (an American) did end up reading it cover to cover and said that at least we should all be able to agree that it is really bad writing. 
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