Dear Nicola, Freud is widely quoted as having said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." If he said it, I don't know whether he said it in Viennese or English, but the meaning is left to the knowledgable listener to divine. A person who had no prior experience of Freud would miss the point entirely. Thus, among us guys, "plinth" means the same thing as "base". The argument is whether those footers constitute a legitimate base or plinth. Those 19th and early 20th century philosophes of whom you are so fond should have been watching more television.
Someone in my early and mid-life used to remind me that Socrates was forced to drink Hemlock.