Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why read old philosophy?

meteuphoric.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 99 posts

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#21

Post by jhbadger »

ahtu123 wrote: post #16
JasonFruit wrote: post #9

I'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 foun…

Philosophy is a cumulative field just like programming. If you're only involved with the most modern framework, there is a lot of magic happening underneath the surface. Most of the value to me seems to be in understanding an idea and then reading and understanding someone refute it later. That's basically my whole experience in reading philosophy "chronologically".

Is it though? Has philosophy actually made any advances in understanding the "great questions" of the meaning of life and what not? Perhaps the reason that people find reading Plato and Aristotle worthwhile is that people are still beating their heads against the same unanswerable questions.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#22

Post by scandox »

Numberwang wrote: post #20
yellowboxtenant wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?

I'm just saying, if you can't quantify it, anything goes.

Ultimately anything does indeed "go" intellectually speaking. You can draw an arbitrary line and say "it is fruitless to step over this boundary" but that is just a matter of shrinking the universe down to what you can manage. Which is fine. It does not invalidate the desire some people have to have internal intellectual experiences that do not have to be validated by you.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#23

Post by forapurpose »

Why read new philosophy? The old stuff has had the weak ideas weeded out and has a proven track record.

"The Yale Report of 1828" -- an influential document written by Jeremiah Day (who was at the time president of Yale), one of his trustees, and a committee of faculty -- distinguished between "the discipline" and "the furniture" of the mind. Mastering a specific body of knowledge -- acquiring "the furniture" -- is of little permanent value in a rapidly changing world. Students who aspire to be leaders in business. medicine, law, government, or academia need "the discipline" of mind -- the ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances, confront new facts, and find creative ways to solve problems.

- Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, in "Top of the Class: The Rise of Asia's Universities", Foreign Affairs, May/June 2010

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#24

Post by Matticus_Rex »

arca_vorago wrote: post #18

Because too many people these days are the "school is overrated, vocational schools are all we need" types who don't understand the basic value of going through the old philosophers... the title is case in point. To me it seems so obvious that there are numerous reasons that it just seems click-baity. You know what they teach at the elite schools (like Eton for example) that most others don't? The trivium and quadriv…

It's not a contradiction to love the old philosophers and also think that our society has a schooling problem that teaches too much, too badly, and often on the wrong topics.

Of the many people who have studied those philosophers over the years in schools, how many got anything out of it? I'd wager that a 1% guess would be a bit high. The time spent on that for the other 99% is pure waste. But how will we know which are the 1%? Well, we can't get a more blunt selection mechanism than teaching it to everyone, so any other selection mechanism is likely an improvement.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#26

Post by igravious »

I would place this sort of article and the "Why do we need to bother with philosophy at all?" articles within the same pool of thought.

That people keep dipping their toes into this murky pool demonstrates to me that one of the things philosophy has spectacularly failed to do is explain itself to itself. Even at this late stage in the game!

To address this article directly though: Katja uses the analogy of skateboarding. This is philosophy as craft, philosophy as art. Think of disciplines being divided into the "what" (subject matter) and the "how" (methods).

Philosophy cares about thinking correctly. Philosophy cares about what it means to acquire knowledge about something. Philosophy cares about the difference between quantifying and qualifying. Philosophy cares about fallacies.

This means that one learns about how concepts works–how to construct a concept, how to take apart a concept–how to trace its history–how to trace its connections and relations over time.

Why read old philosophy? (1) Because "how". In philosophy you read clear thinkers from any age in order to learn how to think clearly. (2) Because "what". In philosophy we trace concepts back as far as we can, ideally with an understanding of the culture and language in which they were expressed. Nietzsche and Derrida would have read Aristotle and Plato in the Ancient Greek, do we do that nowadays? How can we be sure we can trust the contemporary translations?

Philosophy cannot usefully be compared by way of analogy with any of the sub-disciplines of the sciences or humanities because the domain of philosophy and the methods of philosophy only overlap with those at strategic points.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#27

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #24
arca_vorago wrote: post #18

Because too many people these days are the "school is overrated, vocational schools are all we need" types who don't understand the basic value of going through the old philosophers... the title is case in point. To me it seems so obvious that there are numerous reasons that it just seems click-baity. You know what they teach at the elite schools (like Eton for example) that most others don't? The trivium and quadriv…

It's not a contradiction to love the old philosophers and also think that our society has a schooling problem that teaches too much, too badly, and often on the wrong topics. Of the many people who have studied those philosophers over the years in schools, how many got anything out of it? I'd wager that a 1% guess would be a bit high. The time spent on that for the other 99% is pure waste. But how will we know which…

Could you define "got anything out of it" for me? And what is a universal item that literally everyone will use in their life? We could probably stop general education after grade 3 if that was the goal of education.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#28

Post by SomewhatLikely »

byproxy wrote: post #8

I 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…

Interestingly the biggest difference I see are in the board itself (less flat, wider) and the addition of dedicated environments enabling new styles and tricks. That said I wouldn't be surprised if a skateboarder today could take one of those old boards and ride it very differently today.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#29

Post by weichi »

Most of the comments here are completely missing the point of the article.

The article is not about whether the ideas espoused by old philosophers are worth learning about, or about whether old philosophers are worth reading. The article asks the question of why philosophers prefer to read the original works of old philosophers, instead of reading descriptions of these ideas by authors who have demonstrated competence is explaining philosophical ideas. Which is the way that education is handled in most (all?) scientific fields.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#30

Post by DanAndersen »

arca_vorago wrote: post #18

Because too many people these days are the "school is overrated, vocational schools are all we need" types who don't understand the basic value of going through the old philosophers... the title is case in point. To me it seems so obvious that there are numerous reasons that it just seems click-baity. You know what they teach at the elite schools (like Eton for example) that most others don't? The trivium and quadriv…

As someone who has finished classes (and was firmly in the STEM camp while taking them), I do wish I had had something of the formal liberal arts that was taught historically. Does anyone have any recommendations for ways of self-teaching the trivium and quadrivium?

I've heard good things about "The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric" [0] but I haven't gone through it yet.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Trivium-Liberal-Logic-Grammar-Rhetori...

Post reply on HN