There should be – probably there is – an anthropological study of Western philosophy as a highly rarefied form of dirt avoidance. Plato with his “pure and unadulterated” access to truth; Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas; Kant’s purity of reason. I’m thinking of a history of philosophy that reads Plato through the lens of Robert Parker’s Miasma , and modern philosophy through Purity and Danger .
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