Why read old philosophy?
meteuphoric.com
Why read old philosophy?
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#2It is interesting to see how we got here. Seeing a long arc of...dismissed ideas, let's say, can give us perspective on the ideas we hold today that are more or less a historical accident and, hopefully, the conceptual room to change them if they don't work.
I haven't read the article, but does that about sum it up?
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#3> An old work of philosophy does not describe the thing you are meant to be learning about. It was created by the thing you are meant to be learning about, much like watching a video from skater-Aristotle’s GoPro. And the value proposition is that with this high resolution Aristotle’s-eye-view, you can infer the motions.
tldr; read old philosophy to learn how to reason, read new physics to learn the results of reasoning.
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#4It is interesting to see how we got here. Seeing a long arc of...dismissed ideas, let's say, can give us perspective on the ideas we hold today that are more or less a historical accident and, hopefully, the conceptual room to change them if they don't work. I haven't read the article, but does that about sum it up?
No, that is quite unlike both the problem the article poses and solution answer is proposes. I would explain them here, but I encourage people to read the article instead.
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#5Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348502 (2017)
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#6[deleted]
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#7> An old work of philosophy does not describe the thing you are meant to be learning about. It was created by the thing you are meant to be learning about, much like watching a video from skater-Aristotle’s GoPro. And the value proposition is that with this high resolution Aristotle’s-eye-view, you can infer the motions. tldr; read old philosophy to learn how to reason, read new physics to learn the results of reason…
So, in a metaphorical way, reading old philosophy isn't about reading a legacy code base. It's about reading the git history and project documentation.
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#8I liked the skateboarding analogy. I might be skewing it, but it hearkens towards evolution of an art-form, maybe..
60s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pXYTJgxY30
70s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKC-XBwQ_pA
80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA1a21RTFZI90s
90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDSlB7fy8I
00s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjSx2Xe9pZ8
And the idea of summarizing. In many of those videos you may be able to say "skater does a kickflip", but such summarizing is devoid of context.
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#9I'm not sure that I can agree with her even about reading physics. I've found that the earliest works on scientific topics, as well as in math and philosophy, explain things in a way that is comprehensible to someone with no prior knowledge of the subject. That's probably because nobody had prior knowledge when the work was written. I find I'm very often able to learn topics from the originators' writings that I found otherwise intractable. For me, at least, this is true in general.
On the other hand, I have a consistent bias toward the past, and this may be a rationalization after the fact.
Re: Why read old philosophy?
#10> And if philosophy is about having certain experiences, like poetry, but then it would seem to be a kind of entertainment rather than a project to gain knowledge, which is at least not what most philosophers would tell you.
I think all this trouble comes from the perverse desire to make Philosophy "valuable" in the way that sciences are perceived to be, rather than recognizing that it is indeed like poetry.
Not poetry "a kind of entertainment" - which is a gross reduction...but poetry as a means of direct experience and illumination.
Maybe philosophy cannot be "used" to model anything, predict anything or instrumentalize anything...but at the end of time when we have catalogued every atom, it's what we will have left with which to examine the remaining mysteries - which is ultimately a personal journey ... not some kind of utilitarian social achievement.