16 ms·

Why read old philosophy?

227 points by Hooke 10y ago

alexpetralia 10y ago
Really enjoyed reading this - Robert Pirsig had a similar criticism of philosophy in academia.
- ndr 10y ago
  There's also this one from pg: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
  - saycheese 10y ago
    >> "In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college. I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable was to shock people." Really miss PG being more active on his blog, HN, YC, etc. PG is active on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg
redsummer 10y ago
The old philosophers had much greater breadth because the whole vista was open to them. They were treading on soil for the first time. Newer philosophers are dry academics who are just filling in a few details. Who wants to read that?
- Cozumel 10y ago
  Too add most modern 'philosophers' publish for the sake of publishing, not because they actually have anything new or interesting to say. Philosophy is an unbroken conversation going back thousands of years, why would we want the cliffnotes summary written by 'academics' who most times demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of what they're writing about when we can go straight to the source and read the original.
petters 10y ago
Towards the end: > This doesn’t explain why philosophy is different to physics (and basically all of the other subjects). Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? And I don't feel convinced the author has an answer.
- gumby 10y ago
  She walks up to it but doesn't get there (yet -- it doesn't sound like she's read much philosophy yet). All other disciplines have split off / descended from philosophy (not just in the case of western/Greek philosophy) because "philosophy" essentially just means "science". I say "disciplines" because I mean the formal study of action; thus I include Engineering in this (the Greeks recognized a difference between tradecraft (techne) and theory of which modern engineering is the amalgam). She clearly hasn't yet been exposed to this (she writes, "The story I hear about philosophy—and I actually don’t know how much it is true—is that as bits of philosophy come to have any methodological tools other than ‘think about it’, they break off and become their own sciences."). This is precisely true, yet wrong! Think of it as abstraction: chemistry and physics broke off semi-independently; they are clearly highly related disciplines; yet trying to work with chemistry solely at the subatomic level would be a disaster. Likewise biology and ecology. I can very well believe that there are very interesting quantum sensing phenomena involved in how, say, a group of pitcher plants lure insects, phenomena which are very important to the integrity of the rainforest; yet trying to save it by working at that level would be futile. It's better to think of chemistry, physics, ecology, and religion as technologies (trades) and work with them. They practical use has shifted from the brain to the hand. These fields still have useful roots in philosophy and can make valuable use of "traditional" philosophical tools. For example it's clear that almost all (but not 100%!) of the arguments against worrying about anthropomorphic global climate change are made by people who have a very limited understanding of epistemology, which is probably the most important subject to understand for anyone in the practical sciences. Which brings her to the second part of her answer, which she also gives: "...suggest that in physics students are maybe missing out on learning the styles of thought that produce progress in physics.... might partially explain why Nobel prizewinner advisors beget Nobel prizewinner students." Well, umm, yes. If you study under someone who works on "X" you'll become skilled in "X". If your goal is the areas in which the Nobel committee award prizes, yes, this can help. But the problem is broader than that and applies to all disciplines. If you want to become a master craftsperson/artist like Noguchi, you should study under him (except he's dead) -- not to duplicate his work but to understand how he thought. This is no different in programming: we read others' code to learn how to think about programming. There are still many gems in the old literature, overlooked by cultural stigma. In fact the characterization of "old" is a misnomer. In my professional life I have frequently had recourse to Wittgenstein, Heidigger and Plato (sorry, I don't like Aristotle) and they are not only useful in shaping my direct work but when discussing it with coworkers -- essentially this understanding itself forms a techne.
kdazzle 10y ago
Interesting article, and I agree that a lot of the reason for reading old philosophy is so that you know how philosophers should think and argue. But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues that have been covered and are still being covered. Plus, old philosophy isn't necessarily irrelevant to contemporary ideas - Pre-socratics had theorized about atoms, for example. Or it's not like ethics, epistemology, or phenomenology will suddenly become irrelevant, though theories surrounding them might change a little bit and be refined and lose references to god.
- hashkb 10y ago
  Yes, a key reason to read it would be so you don't have to think of it yourself.
- gumby 10y ago
  > But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues that have been covered and are still being covered. Sorry to disagree, but that's a "just so" argument: you have to do this because everybody else does. She asks, "why does everybody else do this?" which is a good question. My thoughts on this are in another long comment on a different thread so I won't waste your time by pasting them again here.
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    Not at all: if other people reference old philosophy, you may need to understand old philosophy in order to understand them, regardless of whether or not they should be referencing old philosophy. Compare: if there is a guy speaking French to you in the US, you need to understand French to understand him, even if it would be a whole lot more effective for him to speak English.
    - gumby 10y ago
jfaucett 10y ago
As an undergrad there was a brief point where I got really into philosophy i.e. its core disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, because I had never encountered it before but after about a year and a half I got completely sick of all the confused vagueness and have never returned. The impracticality of the whole discipline is what frustrated me in the end, and is why all my free reading to this day is about maths, physics, engineering, computer science, etc. topics that are applicable in the real world and help me solve problems. I suppose that if you plop logic, game theory, and enough other formal science disciplines under the philosophy rubric you can make philosophy seem more reasonable but to me that's just mathematics and you're fooling yourself calling it philosophy. I know many will disagree, but IMO there is hardly a discipline more pointless than philosophy, its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are questionable at best i.e. armchair I think its so so its so.
- red75prime 10y ago
  I like Richard Feynman's position. He attended one philosophical seminar, complimented cleverness of arguments, then he hadn't attended philosophical seminars anymore.
- ritchiea 10y ago
  Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? Humans have wants and needs that exist outside of the type of problems that can be solved with CS & engineering. Present day science isn't even very useful in helping us understand human emotion. Your attitude reminds me of traditional economics, anything that doesn't fit neatly in the model we might as well pretend doesn't exist.
  - jfaucett 10y ago
    > Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? The point of philosophy is to discover answers to questions. Such as how does the mind work? Is there a mind? What is the right action in a given situation? How do we know we know something? etc. This is not even remotely related to the goals and reasons for art, literature, and film, which exist for aesthetic enjoyment. My point is that for answering most of the questions philosophy tries to answer the best method is the scientific method and its framework of approach.
kitbrennan 10y ago
I'm not convinced by the author's argument. The difference between philosophy and physics is that old philosophical arguments do not become less correct over time. In physics, later physicists build on the earlier body of knowledge and refine it, making it more correct. In philosophy, later philosophers may suggest a counterargument to the early philosopher, but as philosophy does not normally deal in absolutes it is impossible to say the later philosopher is now more correct and worth reading instead of the earlier philosopher. For example: a philosopher may argue that murder is morally wrong, and a later philosopher may argue that murder is morally right. Neither answer is factually wrong or right. We should therefore read the work of both philosophers to get the most value out of our studies and to form our own opinions. --- I'd also argue that it's not always worth reading the earlier philosopher's work if someone else can rewrite it in a better form. Personally I think Immanuel Kant's philosophy is interesting but poorly written, and you'd get more value out of reading a later text about his philosophy that his works himself. Other writers such as Plato have stood the test of time and are worth reading (assuming you have a good translation).
- mjburgess 10y ago
  There is an outstanding issue though: it really is the case that contemporary analysis of philosophical issues are far better than historical ones. Since the middle of the 20th C. every academic discipline, including philosophy, has devloped to the point where there are many new issues -- and of the old outstanding issues, these are presented much more clearly. There are a great number of mistakes in the history of philosophy which only became apparent after a systematic treatment. The reason I think, people read old philosophy is due to how academic contemporary research philosophy is. Research conducted on clearly identified and analysed problems exists in journals and in quite forboding books. Historical philosophy is part of a cultural discussion and is often presented in a simpler, smaller and more digestible way. As far as research goes, contemporary research philosophers in academic depts do not read the history of philosophy. Lay people do.
  - paganel 10y ago
    > As far as research goes, contemporary research philosophers in academic depts do not read the history of philosophy. Lay people do. I'd say that is a very grave mistake, and I admit I'm a lay person. Just a week or so ago there was a philosopher that died and whose views on morals and life and death were shared on HN, and I have to say that they didn't seem more profound than what a high-school pupil would have written, I certainly learned more from skimming through the pre-Socratics than reading that philosopher's views on stuff. Maybe that is an issue with the US Analytical school of philosophy, which seems to me that it really tries to answer "serious" questions like what's the difference between right and wrong and other nonsense like that, like there is a "guaranteed" answer to these types of questions. It's a stupid positivist view on human understanding that I thought died in the early 1800s.
bsenftner 10y ago
I have an old, leather bound "History of Philosophy" text from Harvard Press - printed around 1913, I seem to remember. It's about 1200 onion-skin thin partially transparent pages. I have it sealed in an air tight bag in a strong box now, but back in the mid 80's (during my undergrad fascination with Existentialism) I read most of the book. My favorite is Ionian philosophy, the first humans to try to reasoning about their world, and they concluded that the Gods were both evil and insane, the world is their navel, and we are the lint inside. Literally.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Amy idea who the author is?
  - bsenftner 10y ago
    Looks like many authors, the binding says "Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy" and "Harvard Press". Inside it says published 1923; I got the date wrong above. It's very fragile now...
    - mcguire 10y ago
      With a date like that, it should be out of copyright. But I can't find it in any of the usual sources. I'll keep an eye out, though. Thanks!
RyJones 10y ago
I've really enjoyed the time I've spent listening to PEL[0]. If you start from the beginning and listen in order, they mostly try to build on previous episodes. [0] https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/ https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/ it's worth it to become a PEL citizen for access to the archives
IsaacL 10y ago
This is not a very good article. Like a lot of writers in the Lesswrong-rationalist sphere, the author is very smart and describes her thought process in great detail, but has too many erroneous premises and ends up with wrong conclusions. I understand her conclusion as "people study old philosophers, not to learn about their views, but to learn about their thinking techniques". In contrast, I would say that the primary reason for studying old philosophers first-hand is to properly understand philosophy. (I wouldn't start by studying the old philosophers - I would start by reading modern summaries, especially those that focus on the actual philosophical problems. Study the old philosophers only if you want a full understanding). You have to understand what philosophy is. It's studying the fundamental nature of reality and our thoughts about it. When you get down to fundamental issues, there are often a very small number of plausible answers, and much of philosophy is extrapolating the consequences of those answers. These issues are timeless and still relevant. The pervasive modern belief is that philosophy is mostly meaningless word-games that can be dismissed, and science should be the basis of everything. But collecting more observations of reality does not help answer these questions. Furthermore, without knowledge of the implications of certain answers, you easily wind up advocating positions that don't actually hold up. (E.g., many people think neuroscience has disproved the existence of consciousness, when all it has proved is that consciousness is closely related to the brain). Like Katja, I used to follow Lesswrong-style rationalism, but after studying different philosophies I concluded that Objectivism made the most sense. (Whatever you may have heard about Ayn Rand, I recommend evaluating her views for yourself). Leonard Peikoff gave an excellent and comprehensive course on the history of philosophy from an Objectivist POV: https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philosophy https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philoso...
- deleted 10y ago
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- miloshadzic 10y ago
  I'd recommend a classical treatment of presocratic philosophy. I'm watching the Heraclitus episode and he completely misrepresents him. The sparseness of fragments that remain make it very easy to read into them what you like, and that is exactly what happens here.
stevenmays 10y ago
The problem with modern philosophy is it rides the curtails of physics and other sciences. It basically exists to explain the phenomenon the physics cannot (think schrodinger's cat). Ancient philosophy was all intertwined with science because the philosophers were the scientists. Ancient philosophy still has its place in teaching readers how to think better and more rationally. And I think modern philosophy will increase in value as we build more intelligent machines.
hyperpape 10y ago
It's worth noting that philosophy grad school is not necessarily focused on history. I went to Pitt (philosophy, not History and Philosophy of Science), which is arguably a department dominated by Kantians and Aristotelians, and in general people who care a lot about the history of philosophy, and the requirement was still 3 historical courses (1 modern, 1 ancient, 1 of either) out of the 12 courses needed for comprehensive evaluation. Also, not all contemporary philosophers like history. There are plenty who think that the philosophy worth worrying about starts sometime around Quine, or maybe David Lewis. I think they're wrong, but they're out there.
biesnecker 10y ago
A professor of Marxist political philosophy at my university told our introductory course that the point of (political, at least) philosophy wasn't to learn the philosopher's ideas on how to fix his world but rather how his thought process could be used to analyze and fix ours. I don't remember much else from the course but that bit has stuck for all these years.
- wry_discontent 10y ago
  Sounds like he was quoting Marx himself > The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
  - biesnecker 10y ago
    Haha, could well have been. :-)
danielam 10y ago
There seem to be a couple of different questions and concerns in this post that have been confused (the first step: clarify the question). One seems to be the question of why we study old philosophers in the first place (1), another is the question why we study them in their original language (2). The most discernible answer the author proposes, to the first question at least, is that reading old philosophers is a way of learning about the methodologies employed by a philosopher. My brief response... (2) The original text is the original data. The first task is to understand what exactly it is that a philosopher said. Nailing that down can itself be the subject of debate. As multilingual people who've used more than one language in the course of intellectual work know, translation is often an approximation of the original text. Language is bound up with culture and what words denote, their connotations, their significance, etc, aren't always translatable in a straightforward fashion. By comprehending the language, we have a better grasp of the content the philosopher was trying to communicate to us. That doesn't mean good translations can't exist, but that, too, can be the subject of debate. From there, we have all manner of commentary which begins a tradition and can spin off into still other traditions. Science operates in essentially the same way. There is a scientific tradition with important figures that have initiated fruitful traditions themselves and who are likewise inheritors of still older traditions. Some traditions fade for a number of reasons. Understanding both the commentary and the original text can clarify things better than understanding just one of the two. Your understanding becomes more perfect. (1) The notion that philosophical theories at time T+1 are necessarily better than those at time T is an appeal to novelty, i.e., a fallacy. Theories fall out of favor not necessarily because whatever takes their place, so to speak, is more formidable. That kind of progress isn't a given nor is it that straightforward. For example, that Cartesianism and its fallout has dominated a good chunk of western thought for the last few centuries does not mean that the Aristotelianism it "replaced" was inferior. In response to the proposal that we read Aristotle to absorb his methodology, I'd like to answer in the context of what I wrote above. The methodologies he uses are communicated through the tradition and numerous commentaries have been written on the methodologies Aristotle employes (they vary depending on the subject matter he is attending to). However, it is a mistake to think that that is the only thing Aristotle offers. Aristotle's methodology, after all, is a means to the truth. Philosophy is a theoretical endeavor where "theoretical" means it is done to know things for their own sake.
charles-salvia 10y ago
I realize there's a (stereotypical) tendency for scientists and engineers to look down on philosophy - and I think this tendency colors this whole discussion to the extent that it almost borders on being a touchy subject. But a lot of the claims about the uselessness of philosophy in the modern world are probably based around the fact that, at least from the perspective of an Ancient Greek like Aristotle, there was no actual distinction between "science" and "philosophy". It was all just sophia (wisdom) to him. It was applying abstract inductive reasoning to arrive at universal truths. And this is patently obvious from simply reading Aristotle or the Pre-Socratics. These writers routinely make what modern readers would consider outright scientific claims. A lot of what Aristotle wrote is testable and falsifiable, and has indeed been falsified. But to Aristotle there wasn't any inherent epistemological difference between reasoning about physics and reasoning about justice. But today, we clearly separate these two spheres via empiricism - a method of thinking that wasn't really available to the Ancient Greeks, because it wouldn't be truly appreciated as part of a formal, scientific method, until the Medieval Arabs and later the European Renaissance thinkers really formalized it. So in that sense, it's understandable why some modern students might find reading Aristotle as silly as reading, say, a Medieval book about medicine or alchemy. I would argue, however, that Aristotle (and many of the ancient philosophers) are actually very valuable to read precisely because of their historical impact, and how their works shaped the course of human thought for millennia. Aristotle's particular ideas about physics might be hopelessly wrong, but his thought processes and writings influenced Europe and the Middle East throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It is therefore critically important to have a good understanding of Ancient Greek philosophy if you are to have any hope of understanding the history of Western thought in general.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Ancient Greek is stained by history - it was the only science taught in Universities for what? a thousand years. That's the catch - its revered beyond all reason due to history. Simultaneously its old-fashioned and outdated for the same reason. Hard to disentangle the two. I read the Philosophers in College. But I cannot imagine I would ever again pick up a book of Ancient Greek Philosophy. There's just nowhere to go from that stuff. Informative as history, and as an intro to the subject. But I been there; done that.
ThomPete 10y ago
There are so many reasons to read philosophy none of them have to do with philosophy as such. Just because you know a lot about philosophy does not make you a great philosopher. But what reading philosophy do IF you are able to combine it with other skills is to provide you with an ability to think about what you do in a differen perspective. The actual questions as interesting but not as such why you should read philosophy. You should read it because you want to have another perspective to think about what you do.
goodjam 10y ago
“This concern with aim or results, with differentiating and passing judgement on various thinkers is therefore an easier task than it might seem. For instead of getting involved in the real issue, this kind of activity is always away beyond it; instead of tarrying with it, and losing itself in it, “this kind of knowing is forever grasping at something new; it remains essentially preoccupied with itself instead of being preoccupied with the real issue and surrendering to it. To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgement and comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all.” Excerpt From: G. W. F. Hegel. “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Oxford University Press.
- ianai 10y ago
  My best philosophy reads were almost always when I felt connected to the writer. They mostly all talk straight to the reader, but that doesn't mean I'm always feeling on the same level as them. But when I do it's like A close friend is telling me a story and I can understand their mind's machinations. Hegels quote there is why I never spoke up in philosophy class. The other students would hear the tone of my voice or maybe the first 3 words out of my mouth and nothing else. They'd respond to fewer. It made me feel alienated. As for why people should read philosophers: to learn. You can learn about wild individuality through Thoreau and Ed Abbey. Ethics from Kant, Aristotle, and many others. Life, death, and the meaning of both from many. We all have lives to lead and philosophers can help in the day to day and the big struggles. Oh and the Socratic method is worth it, too.
  - goodjam 10y ago
    I feel somewhat similar.. on a side note Hegel's way of thinking is very "algorhythmical". For example the art of the metaobject protocol explores common lisp in a similar way as Hegel explores the absolute spirit. Hegel is a macrologist par excellance!
holri 10y ago
I read them because I find there timeless truths.
deleted 10y ago
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chrismealy 10y ago
I haven't read a ton of philosophy, but I'm almost always surprised by how different the original is from the interpretations. People are weird and surprising. Textbook explanations smooth out the rough edges. And they always take out the jokes.
innocentoldguy 10y ago
I like reading both old and new philosophy, because I feel philosophy tends to explore ideas with less bias and polarity. The point isn't to be "right" as much as it is to think and explore. For example, one philosopher can ask "Why shouldn't we eat babies," without other philosophers engaging in political demonstrations, leaflet campaigns, and anti-baby-eating benefit concerts. The goal isn't to leave the philosophy meeting and find a baby to eat, but rather to explore the topic intellectually.
laichzeit0 10y ago
During my first year as a student at University I stumbled upon the book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke in the philosophy section. It was the critical edition by Peter Nidditch, beautifully typeset and bound. I flipped through it and the style of English looked intriguing so I took the book out. I spent about a month reading through it and when I finally finished it I felt like it had profoundly changed my way of thinking and moved me deeply. It also made me never want to read another "summary" or anything but the original work of a philosopher ever again. It's very hard to explain or understand if you haven't experienced it yourself. I feel the same way after reading Schopenhauer, although I've never had the privilege of reading him in German. The translations by Saunders is so amazingly good in English and I've read that Schopenhauer's German is a real delight, so I can't even imagine how good it must be to read him in the original. But I imagine it would be something as beautiful and touching as Locke if you're a native English speaker.
- goodjam 10y ago
  German is very suitable for abstract thinking because you can form compound words with ease and put the function at the end of the sentence. These compound words are hard to translate (aufhebung - sublation is a famous example). Hegel wrote about this in his Logic. German is like a different programming paradigm compared to English.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    That is a very Whorfian view, but McWhorter, among others, would question whether it is at all plausible that these differences in what is little more than syntax can really make a profound difference in meaning. To put it another way, if these language features do make that much of a difference, then is there much more to these texts than a self-referential discussion of the meaning of the language used in these texts? Your programming-paradigm analogy is perhaps unintentionally apt, as underneath their particular representations, they are all Turing-equivalent.
    - VLM 10y ago
jackson1372 10y ago
I'm a philosophy Philosophy PhD student. There can be a number of different reasons to read the original text of some older work of philosophy. But two central reasons that seem to be ignored here are: 1. Philosophy is closer to logic/math than science. And the reason to learn 'what Aristotle said about X' is similar to the reason to learn 'what Pythagoras said about triangles'. The pythagorean theorem doesn't become outdated in the way that scientific knowledge becomes outdated. (The difference here is just between a priori and a posteriori domains of knowledge.) 2. Explaining philosophical reasoning is, itself, doing philosophy--it requires careful reasoning and argumentation. The central thing we do (in UC Berkeley Philosophy classes) is evaluate philosophical reasoning. And so you can't simply rely on some interpreter's take on the original text--you must grapple with it yourself. Sometimes interpreters do get things right, but sometime's they don't. And telling the difference requires doing some philosophy.
- mcguire 10y ago
  That's the best description I have heard.
- gus_massa 10y ago
  About 1: Only a small groups of researches of mathematical history reads what exactly Pythagoras said about triangles, in mainstream mathematics people just have a general idea of the results of Pythagoras or some rehash of his ideas and a few later/former mathematicians. Moreover, most theorems names are misattributed. The name of Pythagoras is more a nice historical anecdote about triangles and the equation x^2+y^2=z^2. Moreover, IIRC none of his books have survived. It's just a mix of folklore and indirect sources. A better example is the work of Euclid. He wrote some books and some copies survived and you can still read them. Anyway, most mathematician don't read them, they have only a general idea of what Euclid wrote. I'm not sure what parts of his books were original and what parts were only a recompilation of the common knowledge of his time. He had a very interesting idea. You can choose some sensible axioms and derive all the geometry from them. [Whatever sensible means.] This idea survived, but the axioms he choose were wrong. Some are confusing, there are some missing cases ... IIRC with the Euclid's axioms you don't get the "real plane" with all it's points of , you can use them in a smaller plane were x and y are algebraic numbers, like fractions and square roots, ... but the point (x=pi, y=e) doesn't exist. IIRC the modern versions of axiomatic geometry use about 20 axioms, and some are very technical. With most people like Gauss or Euler gets a few theorems named after them and a few anecdotes, but most mathematicians don't read the original material. In some cases, it's nice to see as a curiosity a copy of the original publication. IIRC there are some copies of the work of Newton, Leibnitz or Cauchy were you can see that the notation they used is very similar to the current notation. In other cases, the following mathematicians buried completely the original work and only the original name remains but most of the intermediate steps and notation are not made by the original author. IIRC all what you usually study about Galois theory is actually the version that was written later by Artin and Noether.
n72 10y ago
You know how, when your opinionated uncle reads a very high level description of some tech thing you know a lot about and then tells you how it will or won't work, you kind of sigh and don't even bother to try to explain just how much he doesn't know about the subject? Engineers who've taken a few philosophy undergrad courses should keep that in mind when drawing broad conclusions about philosophy. I'm not saying you shouldn't opine, but I'd suggest doing so with the appropriate amount of humility.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Having done a philosophy degree and been a programmer, in my opinion you're adding far too much weight to what is a very easy domain to understand. All the complicated bits became their own discipline (maths/physics/chemistry/social science/psychology). Philosophy's not particularly complicated to someone who understands basic logic. In some ways it's not a real subject as there's nothing to study as it's all thought experiments. There's no weird data mucking up elegant theories, or strange earth movements, or bizarre lights patterns. These days philosophy tends to be just an argument about what a word actually means. It's certainly nothing like a programmer dabbling in maths and claiming they've solved p v np.
  - n72 10y ago
    This is one of those moments when you sigh and don't bother. If you've done an undergrad in philosophy and still don't think there are parts which aren't very sophisticated and difficult, we'll... Sigh.
    - ianai 10y ago
      Even my math books admit that math is less subtle than human interaction. A single mathematician can nail down a truth for all eternity, but that'll never be the case for ethics.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      This is one of those moments when you wonder why someone bothered to reply without mentioning a single one of these "sophisticated and difficult" parts of philosophy that we could then happily explain in simple terms. You only had to mention a single name or sub-discipline. For example one of my modules was philosophy of mathematics. It was sophisticated and difficult, but not complicated or meaningful. It was just a fairly pointless thought experiment. The actual important bits are just called "mathematics". It's like today's social science. It's an extension of moral and political philosophy. But moral and political philosophy are fairly pointless and get bogged down by fairly meaningless arguments about the meaning of "self" or "altruism", while social science attempts to make people's lives better. You know, I studied 3 separate modules on formal logic. I did 36 hours worth of lectures, wrote various essays and read multiple expensive philosophy text books. I learnt more about logic from a single 1 hour high school electronics lesson than I ever did from all that. pg has a good essay about why he doesn't particularly rate philosophy: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
hyperpape 10y ago
Why read old philosophy? Why not read the work that's created now? Why study programming languages? Why not just use the best programming language? Just as we don't know or agree about the best programming language (or we admit there's no "best" for every purpose), one answer is that the ancients may be right. That's a fine answer, but I think it's actually secondary. Just as you don't have to think a programming language is the best to want to learn about it, you don't have to think the ancients were right to study them. What studying other programming languages/older philosophers gives you is insight into the different ways you can formulate ideas or see the world. It's a struggle to enter into a new way of thinking, much harder than learning a new programming language. You have a tremendous number of assumptions that you can't even state that interfere with your understanding. When you start out, a historical philosopher often either looks incomprehensible, or like a modern who is constantly wrong. With enough work you can come to understand how that philosopher conceived the world, so that their arguments begin to make sense. Those different ways of seeing the world are themselves of philosophical value, but they also help you understand how our contemporary understanding arose, and therefore also help you understand which aspects of our contemporary understanding are accidents or optional.
ianai 10y ago
My problem lately hasn't been a lack of need to read philosophy. It's been a lack of time. When I do have idle moments I want to turn my brain off.
eruditely 10y ago
Just FYI for the folks here, every time Aristotle's works were translated they caused a golden age, Rome, Classical Arabia. No scientist would ever disavow epistemology, no matter how much they pretend once an issue really comes down to it, it really matters. For example I will link a picture out of Gregory Clark's a farewell to alms that shows that Classical Athens was ahead pound for pound than 1800's England! Classical Philosophy is also important for learning how to rule well w/o over reliance on the industrial revolution, the entirety of science's false glory is the glory of industry and technology. The below link shows that Athens/Ancient Assyria had a better economy than 1800's England, much better, and Roman Egypt is competitive. https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/818184068604960768 https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/81818406860496076... Afaik, modern sociological research is proving Hegel correct see Ricardo Duchesne, the real problem is, is that the civilizational distance isn't that large, or actually doesn't exist between Rome and say 1800's England, I effectively consider it continuous if you know what I mean.
rampage101 10y ago
The same could be said about any other time period. If it was 1970 you could say we have televisions and cars, how could the ancients' advice possibly benefit us. Next the author will tell us about an article he read about the Singularity.
- eruditely 10y ago
  Lindy effect.
braft 10y ago
The author seems to take the goal of studying philosophy to be knowledge/technique collection, for an eventual goal of some type of measurable output. In other words, she expects philosophy to have something in common with the study of physics that it just doesn't have. One reads Plato (for example), not to collect facts about the world, but because Plato's Socrates still represents one of the most noteworthy and admirable ways of being towards the world. You read Plato to learn how to comport yourself better towards death, injustice, and most of all, your own ignorance. The bias I'm trying to get at is shown here: > 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. Dividing experience into "knowledge" and "entertainment" belies an ignorance of much of the subject matter Plato treats. Many works of ancient philosophy are still some of the most worthwhile texts to read because they are education in how to live. They represent some of the most admirable and imitable responses to the puzzle/experience of being a fragile creature who knows that it will die but doesn't know why it's here nor quite how to find out. Scientific inquiry can treat "why" questions when we understand "why" to mean "by what means?" but not when we understand "why" to mean "for the sake of what?" Many today would contend that "why" questions in the latter sense are not meaningful nor admit of answers, and you can't present empirical data in rebuttal, nor do much else besides try to inspire a sense of skepticism about their broadest assumptions, habits, etc. And encourage them to read Plato. As others have observed, many of Aristotle's scientific claims have been falsified, and personally I didn't get much out of reading his Physics. But the Nic. Ethics made a permanent change in the way I think and feel, in part because it revealed to me how incomplete and shallow my justifications about ethics had been my whole life, and that a coherent way of thinking about ethics was possible. Also, studying the history of philosophy and philosophy of science are the best ways to become aware of the (often questionable) philosophical assumptions that underlie the contemporary scientistic attitude towards knowledge.
- braft 10y ago
  This section stuck out to me also: > Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? Especially since Newton had more to show for his thoughts than an account of what his thoughts were like. I suspect the difference is that because physicists invent explicit machinery that can be easily taught, when you learn physics you spend your time mastering these tools. And perhaps in the process, you come to think in a way that fits well with these tools. Whereas in philosophy there is much less in the way of explicit methods to learn, so the most natural thing to learn is how to do whatever mental processes produce good philosophy. The notion of having "more to show" is beside the point. The goal of philosophy can not be described as "producing good philosophy." The goal, at least for many of the ancients both in and outside Greece, is coming to know the truth, possessing wisdom, but not in the sense of holding in mind a set of facts about the world. It is a goal of reconciling oneself to the world, reaching the best understanding of how to live and think properly that is available to human beings.
mannykannot 10y ago
The paradox goes away once you realize that philosophy is more like literature than it is like science.
tempz 10y ago
So, entertainment with role models. That is the best description of philosophy I ever heard.
mybrid 10y ago
Wisdom is the product of knowledge and knowledge is often times the product of foolish mistakes. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and changes the weather in California. Unknowns is the one word answer to your question. You have your known knowns, your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns. We have to make decisions every day with known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Philosophy is a body of knowledge that is in built up on trial-and-error over time. Those first trials start for us when history first started. We've been building on them ever since. We still know next to nothing about consciousness. Philosophy today primarily deals with consciousness. Once we've modeled the conscious brain and can completely control and predict human nature then there truly will be no need for philosophy.
- draw_down 10y ago
  Don't forget about the unknown knowns! The things we know but which we don't know that we know.
k1841894 10y ago
I read old books because I would rather learn from those who built civilization than those who tore it down.
Ericson2314 10y ago
These are good points. I don't consider philosophy outmodded, and I do think that in every field you should study its history too to learn it's dirty secrets and biases. But I don't think that in philiosophy this is any more or less true, as the author seems to also suspect.
nice1 10y ago
Were there any actual female physicists (or philosophers) in the 17th century? It sounds really ignorant (and strange) to use a female name (Alice) in the example invented by the author of this article.
joeclark77 10y ago
The author is ignoring the 800-lb gorilla in the room which is the anti-truth, anti-rationality fashions -- modernism and post-modernism -- that have dominated and corrupted philosophy for the past century. The analogy to physical science would make sense only if the mainstream of science since about 1910 was dominated by politics and founded on a premise that whatever makes you feel happy, man, must be what makes the universe go round. In such an environment, it would be entirely reasonable to ignore the modern trash and have your kids read Newton...
- typon 10y ago
  Cultural marxist straw feminists ruining modern civilization, oh no!
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Oh, cmon. You don't need to buy into that whole "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory to believe that postmodernism is a cancer to philosophy (and so much else). All it takes is reading some postmodernist writings, really.
glenstein 10y ago
I think at least two of the explanations dismissed by the author are intriguing, even if not fully adequate as answers to her question. >Philosophy is not trying to communicate normal content that can be in explicit statements, of the kind you might be able to explain well and check the understanding of and such. I think there's something to that. Some forms of philosophy advocate broad conceptual systems that "hang together" in a way. I don't know how you would teach Kantian philosophy without reading passages from Kant, for instance. >Philosophy is about having certain experiences which pertain to the relevant philosophy, much like reading a poem is different to reading a summary of its content. I think that applies to writers such as Nietzsche, and some of the more substantive writers continental philosophers. It also applies, for better or worse, to writers who in my opinion wrote nonsense, but are nevertheless written in a style intended to be "experienced." And at least in principle I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And beyond those two bullet points, I can think of a few more. One is we're supposed to believe that philosophy deals with timeless subject matter. So it's not necessarily surprising that at certain points in history some people might do a really good job writing about it, expressing ideas that continue to be relevant and which aren't improved upon by attempts to elucidate. Another reason to read old philosophers is the same reason some courses teach math or physics in a way that emphasizes the historical circumstances where the ideas first originated. I've even heard of some courses that teach almost entirely in primary sources. You can view the ideas with a sense of discovery and an appreciation for the ingenuity involved. A lot of the magic in very beautiful ideas tends to die when it's clinically summarized in a textbook. Now, all of that said, I still think there are many branches of philosophy where you don't need to read old sources. Things like language, logic, meta-ethics, and probably many others can just be summarized while ignoring historical sources, saving a lot of time. But again, contra the author's suggestion, from what I know it's at least relatively common to have graduate level courses on philosophical subjects that are focused on cutting edge literature.
mtdewcmu 10y ago
I'm not sure about philosophy, but for physics, the most elegant expression of new discoveries is mathematical equations and numeric measurements. The words used by the original discoverer are not that important, because they just introduce the equations and numbers and provide context. When they appear in textbooks, the equations are usually expressed in the same form as the original discoverer expressed them, so in that sense, you are reading the original (equations).
lolive 10y ago
After old philosophy, came several centuries of war and monotheism. This dark age gave wrong explanations to several important questions. Once Renaissance rediscovered old philosophy, then came back the strategies to formulate questions relevantly and avoid wrong answers. From there, monotheism was doomed. And eventually, rationalism was on its way to success. Nowadays, old philosophy and rationalism are considered too complex and abstract. We are coming back to simple (wrong) answers: monotheism and war (and I would add propaganda). The difference with the previous dark ages is that nowadays old philosophy is still widely available. Just that no one considers it as a way to ask good questions and never be fooled by wrong answers.
ommunist 10y ago
Well, Aritotle is famous for his description of fly with eight legs. He was so much in empireae, that did not bothered to count the fact, flies have 6 legs.

227 points by Hooke 10y ago

alexpetralia 10y ago

Really enjoyed reading this - Robert Pirsig had a similar criticism of philosophy in academia.

ndr 10y ago
There's also this one from pg: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- saycheese 10y ago
  >> "In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college. I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable was to shock people." Really miss PG being more active on his blog, HN, YC, etc. PG is active on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg

redsummer 10y ago

The old philosophers had much greater breadth because the whole vista was open to them. They were treading on soil for the first time. Newer philosophers are dry academics who are just filling in a few details. Who wants to read that?

Cozumel 10y ago
Too add most modern 'philosophers' publish for the sake of publishing, not because they actually have anything new or interesting to say. Philosophy is an unbroken conversation going back thousands of years, why would we want the cliffnotes summary written by 'academics' who most times demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of what they're writing about when we can go straight to the source and read the original.

petters 10y ago

Towards the end: > This doesn’t explain why philosophy is different to physics (and basically all of the other subjects). Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? And I don't feel convinced the author has an answer.

gumby 10y ago
She walks up to it but doesn't get there (yet -- it doesn't sound like she's read much philosophy yet). All other disciplines have split off / descended from philosophy (not just in the case of western/Greek philosophy) because "philosophy" essentially just means "science". I say "disciplines" because I mean the formal study of action; thus I include Engineering in this (the Greeks recognized a difference between tradecraft (techne) and theory of which modern engineering is the amalgam). She clearly hasn't yet been exposed to this (she writes, "The story I hear about philosophy—and I actually don’t know how much it is true—is that as bits of philosophy come to have any methodological tools other than ‘think about it’, they break off and become their own sciences."). This is precisely true, yet wrong! Think of it as abstraction: chemistry and physics broke off semi-independently; they are clearly highly related disciplines; yet trying to work with chemistry solely at the subatomic level would be a disaster. Likewise biology and ecology. I can very well believe that there are very interesting quantum sensing phenomena involved in how, say, a group of pitcher plants lure insects, phenomena which are very important to the integrity of the rainforest; yet trying to save it by working at that level would be futile. It's better to think of chemistry, physics, ecology, and religion as technologies (trades) and work with them. They practical use has shifted from the brain to the hand. These fields still have useful roots in philosophy and can make valuable use of "traditional" philosophical tools. For example it's clear that almost all (but not 100%!) of the arguments against worrying about anthropomorphic global climate change are made by people who have a very limited understanding of epistemology, which is probably the most important subject to understand for anyone in the practical sciences. Which brings her to the second part of her answer, which she also gives: "...suggest that in physics students are maybe missing out on learning the styles of thought that produce progress in physics.... might partially explain why Nobel prizewinner advisors beget Nobel prizewinner students." Well, umm, yes. If you study under someone who works on "X" you'll become skilled in "X". If your goal is the areas in which the Nobel committee award prizes, yes, this can help. But the problem is broader than that and applies to all disciplines. If you want to become a master craftsperson/artist like Noguchi, you should study under him (except he's dead) -- not to duplicate his work but to understand how he thought. This is no different in programming: we read others' code to learn how to think about programming. There are still many gems in the old literature, overlooked by cultural stigma. In fact the characterization of "old" is a misnomer. In my professional life I have frequently had recourse to Wittgenstein, Heidigger and Plato (sorry, I don't like Aristotle) and they are not only useful in shaping my direct work but when discussing it with coworkers -- essentially this understanding itself forms a techne.

kdazzle 10y ago

Interesting article, and I agree that a lot of the reason for reading old philosophy is so that you know how philosophers should think and argue. But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues that have been covered and are still being covered. Plus, old philosophy isn't necessarily irrelevant to contemporary ideas - Pre-socratics had theorized about atoms, for example. Or it's not like ethics, epistemology, or phenomenology will suddenly become irrelevant, though theories surrounding them might change a little bit and be refined and lose references to god.

hashkb 10y ago
Yes, a key reason to read it would be so you don't have to think of it yourself.
gumby 10y ago
> But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues that have been covered and are still being covered. Sorry to disagree, but that's a "just so" argument: you have to do this because everybody else does. She asks, "why does everybody else do this?" which is a good question. My thoughts on this are in another long comment on a different thread so I won't waste your time by pasting them again here.
- hyperpape 10y ago
  Not at all: if other people reference old philosophy, you may need to understand old philosophy in order to understand them, regardless of whether or not they should be referencing old philosophy. Compare: if there is a guy speaking French to you in the US, you need to understand French to understand him, even if it would be a whole lot more effective for him to speak English.
  - gumby 10y ago

jfaucett 10y ago

As an undergrad there was a brief point where I got really into philosophy i.e. its core disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, because I had never encountered it before but after about a year and a half I got completely sick of all the confused vagueness and have never returned. The impracticality of the whole discipline is what frustrated me in the end, and is why all my free reading to this day is about maths, physics, engineering, computer science, etc. topics that are applicable in the real world and help me solve problems. I suppose that if you plop logic, game theory, and enough other formal science disciplines under the philosophy rubric you can make philosophy seem more reasonable but to me that's just mathematics and you're fooling yourself calling it philosophy. I know many will disagree, but IMO there is hardly a discipline more pointless than philosophy, its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are questionable at best i.e. armchair I think its so so its so.

red75prime 10y ago
I like Richard Feynman's position. He attended one philosophical seminar, complimented cleverness of arguments, then he hadn't attended philosophical seminars anymore.
ritchiea 10y ago
Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? Humans have wants and needs that exist outside of the type of problems that can be solved with CS & engineering. Present day science isn't even very useful in helping us understand human emotion. Your attitude reminds me of traditional economics, anything that doesn't fit neatly in the model we might as well pretend doesn't exist.
- jfaucett 10y ago
  > Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? The point of philosophy is to discover answers to questions. Such as how does the mind work? Is there a mind? What is the right action in a given situation? How do we know we know something? etc. This is not even remotely related to the goals and reasons for art, literature, and film, which exist for aesthetic enjoyment. My point is that for answering most of the questions philosophy tries to answer the best method is the scientific method and its framework of approach.

kitbrennan 10y ago

I'm not convinced by the author's argument. The difference between philosophy and physics is that old philosophical arguments do not become less correct over time. In physics, later physicists build on the earlier body of knowledge and refine it, making it more correct. In philosophy, later philosophers may suggest a counterargument to the early philosopher, but as philosophy does not normally deal in absolutes it is impossible to say the later philosopher is now more correct and worth reading instead of the earlier philosopher. For example: a philosopher may argue that murder is morally wrong, and a later philosopher may argue that murder is morally right. Neither answer is factually wrong or right. We should therefore read the work of both philosophers to get the most value out of our studies and to form our own opinions. --- I'd also argue that it's not always worth reading the earlier philosopher's work if someone else can rewrite it in a better form. Personally I think Immanuel Kant's philosophy is interesting but poorly written, and you'd get more value out of reading a later text about his philosophy that his works himself. Other writers such as Plato have stood the test of time and are worth reading (assuming you have a good translation).

mjburgess 10y ago
There is an outstanding issue though: it really is the case that contemporary analysis of philosophical issues are far better than historical ones. Since the middle of the 20th C. every academic discipline, including philosophy, has devloped to the point where there are many new issues -- and of the old outstanding issues, these are presented much more clearly. There are a great number of mistakes in the history of philosophy which only became apparent after a systematic treatment. The reason I think, people read old philosophy is due to how academic contemporary research philosophy is. Research conducted on clearly identified and analysed problems exists in journals and in quite forboding books. Historical philosophy is part of a cultural discussion and is often presented in a simpler, smaller and more digestible way. As far as research goes, contemporary research philosophers in academic depts do not read the history of philosophy. Lay people do.
- paganel 10y ago
  > As far as research goes, contemporary research philosophers in academic depts do not read the history of philosophy. Lay people do. I'd say that is a very grave mistake, and I admit I'm a lay person. Just a week or so ago there was a philosopher that died and whose views on morals and life and death were shared on HN, and I have to say that they didn't seem more profound than what a high-school pupil would have written, I certainly learned more from skimming through the pre-Socratics than reading that philosopher's views on stuff. Maybe that is an issue with the US Analytical school of philosophy, which seems to me that it really tries to answer "serious" questions like what's the difference between right and wrong and other nonsense like that, like there is a "guaranteed" answer to these types of questions. It's a stupid positivist view on human understanding that I thought died in the early 1800s.

bsenftner 10y ago

I have an old, leather bound "History of Philosophy" text from Harvard Press - printed around 1913, I seem to remember. It's about 1200 onion-skin thin partially transparent pages. I have it sealed in an air tight bag in a strong box now, but back in the mid 80's (during my undergrad fascination with Existentialism) I read most of the book. My favorite is Ionian philosophy, the first humans to try to reasoning about their world, and they concluded that the Gods were both evil and insane, the world is their navel, and we are the lint inside. Literally.

mcguire 10y ago
Amy idea who the author is?
- bsenftner 10y ago
  Looks like many authors, the binding says "Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy" and "Harvard Press". Inside it says published 1923; I got the date wrong above. It's very fragile now...
  - mcguire 10y ago
    With a date like that, it should be out of copyright. But I can't find it in any of the usual sources. I'll keep an eye out, though. Thanks!

RyJones 10y ago

I've really enjoyed the time I've spent listening to PEL[0]. If you start from the beginning and listen in order, they mostly try to build on previous episodes. [0] https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/ https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/ it's worth it to become a PEL citizen for access to the archives

IsaacL 10y ago

This is not a very good article. Like a lot of writers in the Lesswrong-rationalist sphere, the author is very smart and describes her thought process in great detail, but has too many erroneous premises and ends up with wrong conclusions. I understand her conclusion as "people study old philosophers, not to learn about their views, but to learn about their thinking techniques". In contrast, I would say that the primary reason for studying old philosophers first-hand is to properly understand philosophy. (I wouldn't start by studying the old philosophers - I would start by reading modern summaries, especially those that focus on the actual philosophical problems. Study the old philosophers only if you want a full understanding). You have to understand what philosophy is. It's studying the fundamental nature of reality and our thoughts about it. When you get down to fundamental issues, there are often a very small number of plausible answers, and much of philosophy is extrapolating the consequences of those answers. These issues are timeless and still relevant. The pervasive modern belief is that philosophy is mostly meaningless word-games that can be dismissed, and science should be the basis of everything. But collecting more observations of reality does not help answer these questions. Furthermore, without knowledge of the implications of certain answers, you easily wind up advocating positions that don't actually hold up. (E.g., many people think neuroscience has disproved the existence of consciousness, when all it has proved is that consciousness is closely related to the brain). Like Katja, I used to follow Lesswrong-style rationalism, but after studying different philosophies I concluded that Objectivism made the most sense. (Whatever you may have heard about Ayn Rand, I recommend evaluating her views for yourself). Leonard Peikoff gave an excellent and comprehensive course on the history of philosophy from an Objectivist POV: https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philosophy https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philoso...

deleted 10y ago
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miloshadzic 10y ago
I'd recommend a classical treatment of presocratic philosophy. I'm watching the Heraclitus episode and he completely misrepresents him. The sparseness of fragments that remain make it very easy to read into them what you like, and that is exactly what happens here.

stevenmays 10y ago

The problem with modern philosophy is it rides the curtails of physics and other sciences. It basically exists to explain the phenomenon the physics cannot (think schrodinger's cat). Ancient philosophy was all intertwined with science because the philosophers were the scientists. Ancient philosophy still has its place in teaching readers how to think better and more rationally. And I think modern philosophy will increase in value as we build more intelligent machines.

hyperpape 10y ago

It's worth noting that philosophy grad school is not necessarily focused on history. I went to Pitt (philosophy, not History and Philosophy of Science), which is arguably a department dominated by Kantians and Aristotelians, and in general people who care a lot about the history of philosophy, and the requirement was still 3 historical courses (1 modern, 1 ancient, 1 of either) out of the 12 courses needed for comprehensive evaluation. Also, not all contemporary philosophers like history. There are plenty who think that the philosophy worth worrying about starts sometime around Quine, or maybe David Lewis. I think they're wrong, but they're out there.

biesnecker 10y ago

A professor of Marxist political philosophy at my university told our introductory course that the point of (political, at least) philosophy wasn't to learn the philosopher's ideas on how to fix his world but rather how his thought process could be used to analyze and fix ours. I don't remember much else from the course but that bit has stuck for all these years.

wry_discontent 10y ago
Sounds like he was quoting Marx himself > The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
- biesnecker 10y ago
  Haha, could well have been. :-)

danielam 10y ago

There seem to be a couple of different questions and concerns in this post that have been confused (the first step: clarify the question). One seems to be the question of why we study old philosophers in the first place (1), another is the question why we study them in their original language (2). The most discernible answer the author proposes, to the first question at least, is that reading old philosophers is a way of learning about the methodologies employed by a philosopher. My brief response... (2) The original text is the original data. The first task is to understand what exactly it is that a philosopher said. Nailing that down can itself be the subject of debate. As multilingual people who've used more than one language in the course of intellectual work know, translation is often an approximation of the original text. Language is bound up with culture and what words denote, their connotations, their significance, etc, aren't always translatable in a straightforward fashion. By comprehending the language, we have a better grasp of the content the philosopher was trying to communicate to us. That doesn't mean good translations can't exist, but that, too, can be the subject of debate. From there, we have all manner of commentary which begins a tradition and can spin off into still other traditions. Science operates in essentially the same way. There is a scientific tradition with important figures that have initiated fruitful traditions themselves and who are likewise inheritors of still older traditions. Some traditions fade for a number of reasons. Understanding both the commentary and the original text can clarify things better than understanding just one of the two. Your understanding becomes more perfect. (1) The notion that philosophical theories at time T+1 are necessarily better than those at time T is an appeal to novelty, i.e., a fallacy. Theories fall out of favor not necessarily because whatever takes their place, so to speak, is more formidable. That kind of progress isn't a given nor is it that straightforward. For example, that Cartesianism and its fallout has dominated a good chunk of western thought for the last few centuries does not mean that the Aristotelianism it "replaced" was inferior. In response to the proposal that we read Aristotle to absorb his methodology, I'd like to answer in the context of what I wrote above. The methodologies he uses are communicated through the tradition and numerous commentaries have been written on the methodologies Aristotle employes (they vary depending on the subject matter he is attending to). However, it is a mistake to think that that is the only thing Aristotle offers. Aristotle's methodology, after all, is a means to the truth. Philosophy is a theoretical endeavor where "theoretical" means it is done to know things for their own sake.

charles-salvia 10y ago

I realize there's a (stereotypical) tendency for scientists and engineers to look down on philosophy - and I think this tendency colors this whole discussion to the extent that it almost borders on being a touchy subject. But a lot of the claims about the uselessness of philosophy in the modern world are probably based around the fact that, at least from the perspective of an Ancient Greek like Aristotle, there was no actual distinction between "science" and "philosophy". It was all just sophia (wisdom) to him. It was applying abstract inductive reasoning to arrive at universal truths. And this is patently obvious from simply reading Aristotle or the Pre-Socratics. These writers routinely make what modern readers would consider outright scientific claims. A lot of what Aristotle wrote is testable and falsifiable, and has indeed been falsified. But to Aristotle there wasn't any inherent epistemological difference between reasoning about physics and reasoning about justice. But today, we clearly separate these two spheres via empiricism - a method of thinking that wasn't really available to the Ancient Greeks, because it wouldn't be truly appreciated as part of a formal, scientific method, until the Medieval Arabs and later the European Renaissance thinkers really formalized it. So in that sense, it's understandable why some modern students might find reading Aristotle as silly as reading, say, a Medieval book about medicine or alchemy. I would argue, however, that Aristotle (and many of the ancient philosophers) are actually very valuable to read precisely because of their historical impact, and how their works shaped the course of human thought for millennia. Aristotle's particular ideas about physics might be hopelessly wrong, but his thought processes and writings influenced Europe and the Middle East throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It is therefore critically important to have a good understanding of Ancient Greek philosophy if you are to have any hope of understanding the history of Western thought in general.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Ancient Greek is stained by history - it was the only science taught in Universities for what? a thousand years. That's the catch - its revered beyond all reason due to history. Simultaneously its old-fashioned and outdated for the same reason. Hard to disentangle the two. I read the Philosophers in College. But I cannot imagine I would ever again pick up a book of Ancient Greek Philosophy. There's just nowhere to go from that stuff. Informative as history, and as an intro to the subject. But I been there; done that.

ThomPete 10y ago

There are so many reasons to read philosophy none of them have to do with philosophy as such. Just because you know a lot about philosophy does not make you a great philosopher. But what reading philosophy do IF you are able to combine it with other skills is to provide you with an ability to think about what you do in a differen perspective. The actual questions as interesting but not as such why you should read philosophy. You should read it because you want to have another perspective to think about what you do.

goodjam 10y ago

“This concern with aim or results, with differentiating and passing judgement on various thinkers is therefore an easier task than it might seem. For instead of getting involved in the real issue, this kind of activity is always away beyond it; instead of tarrying with it, and losing itself in it, “this kind of knowing is forever grasping at something new; it remains essentially preoccupied with itself instead of being preoccupied with the real issue and surrendering to it. To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgement and comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all.” Excerpt From: G. W. F. Hegel. “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Oxford University Press.

ianai 10y ago
My best philosophy reads were almost always when I felt connected to the writer. They mostly all talk straight to the reader, but that doesn't mean I'm always feeling on the same level as them. But when I do it's like A close friend is telling me a story and I can understand their mind's machinations. Hegels quote there is why I never spoke up in philosophy class. The other students would hear the tone of my voice or maybe the first 3 words out of my mouth and nothing else. They'd respond to fewer. It made me feel alienated. As for why people should read philosophers: to learn. You can learn about wild individuality through Thoreau and Ed Abbey. Ethics from Kant, Aristotle, and many others. Life, death, and the meaning of both from many. We all have lives to lead and philosophers can help in the day to day and the big struggles. Oh and the Socratic method is worth it, too.
- goodjam 10y ago
  I feel somewhat similar.. on a side note Hegel's way of thinking is very "algorhythmical". For example the art of the metaobject protocol explores common lisp in a similar way as Hegel explores the absolute spirit. Hegel is a macrologist par excellance!

holri 10y ago

I read them because I find there timeless truths.

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chrismealy 10y ago

I haven't read a ton of philosophy, but I'm almost always surprised by how different the original is from the interpretations. People are weird and surprising. Textbook explanations smooth out the rough edges. And they always take out the jokes.

innocentoldguy 10y ago

I like reading both old and new philosophy, because I feel philosophy tends to explore ideas with less bias and polarity. The point isn't to be "right" as much as it is to think and explore. For example, one philosopher can ask "Why shouldn't we eat babies," without other philosophers engaging in political demonstrations, leaflet campaigns, and anti-baby-eating benefit concerts. The goal isn't to leave the philosophy meeting and find a baby to eat, but rather to explore the topic intellectually.

laichzeit0 10y ago

During my first year as a student at University I stumbled upon the book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke in the philosophy section. It was the critical edition by Peter Nidditch, beautifully typeset and bound. I flipped through it and the style of English looked intriguing so I took the book out. I spent about a month reading through it and when I finally finished it I felt like it had profoundly changed my way of thinking and moved me deeply. It also made me never want to read another "summary" or anything but the original work of a philosopher ever again. It's very hard to explain or understand if you haven't experienced it yourself. I feel the same way after reading Schopenhauer, although I've never had the privilege of reading him in German. The translations by Saunders is so amazingly good in English and I've read that Schopenhauer's German is a real delight, so I can't even imagine how good it must be to read him in the original. But I imagine it would be something as beautiful and touching as Locke if you're a native English speaker.

goodjam 10y ago
German is very suitable for abstract thinking because you can form compound words with ease and put the function at the end of the sentence. These compound words are hard to translate (aufhebung - sublation is a famous example). Hegel wrote about this in his Logic. German is like a different programming paradigm compared to English.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  That is a very Whorfian view, but McWhorter, among others, would question whether it is at all plausible that these differences in what is little more than syntax can really make a profound difference in meaning. To put it another way, if these language features do make that much of a difference, then is there much more to these texts than a self-referential discussion of the meaning of the language used in these texts? Your programming-paradigm analogy is perhaps unintentionally apt, as underneath their particular representations, they are all Turing-equivalent.
  - VLM 10y ago

jackson1372 10y ago

I'm a philosophy Philosophy PhD student. There can be a number of different reasons to read the original text of some older work of philosophy. But two central reasons that seem to be ignored here are: 1. Philosophy is closer to logic/math than science. And the reason to learn 'what Aristotle said about X' is similar to the reason to learn 'what Pythagoras said about triangles'. The pythagorean theorem doesn't become outdated in the way that scientific knowledge becomes outdated. (The difference here is just between a priori and a posteriori domains of knowledge.) 2. Explaining philosophical reasoning is, itself, doing philosophy--it requires careful reasoning and argumentation. The central thing we do (in UC Berkeley Philosophy classes) is evaluate philosophical reasoning. And so you can't simply rely on some interpreter's take on the original text--you must grapple with it yourself. Sometimes interpreters do get things right, but sometime's they don't. And telling the difference requires doing some philosophy.

mcguire 10y ago
That's the best description I have heard.
gus_massa 10y ago
About 1: Only a small groups of researches of mathematical history reads what exactly Pythagoras said about triangles, in mainstream mathematics people just have a general idea of the results of Pythagoras or some rehash of his ideas and a few later/former mathematicians. Moreover, most theorems names are misattributed. The name of Pythagoras is more a nice historical anecdote about triangles and the equation x^2+y^2=z^2. Moreover, IIRC none of his books have survived. It's just a mix of folklore and indirect sources. A better example is the work of Euclid. He wrote some books and some copies survived and you can still read them. Anyway, most mathematician don't read them, they have only a general idea of what Euclid wrote. I'm not sure what parts of his books were original and what parts were only a recompilation of the common knowledge of his time. He had a very interesting idea. You can choose some sensible axioms and derive all the geometry from them. [Whatever sensible means.] This idea survived, but the axioms he choose were wrong. Some are confusing, there are some missing cases ... IIRC with the Euclid's axioms you don't get the "real plane" with all it's points of , you can use them in a smaller plane were x and y are algebraic numbers, like fractions and square roots, ... but the point (x=pi, y=e) doesn't exist. IIRC the modern versions of axiomatic geometry use about 20 axioms, and some are very technical. With most people like Gauss or Euler gets a few theorems named after them and a few anecdotes, but most mathematicians don't read the original material. In some cases, it's nice to see as a curiosity a copy of the original publication. IIRC there are some copies of the work of Newton, Leibnitz or Cauchy were you can see that the notation they used is very similar to the current notation. In other cases, the following mathematicians buried completely the original work and only the original name remains but most of the intermediate steps and notation are not made by the original author. IIRC all what you usually study about Galois theory is actually the version that was written later by Artin and Noether.

n72 10y ago

You know how, when your opinionated uncle reads a very high level description of some tech thing you know a lot about and then tells you how it will or won't work, you kind of sigh and don't even bother to try to explain just how much he doesn't know about the subject? Engineers who've taken a few philosophy undergrad courses should keep that in mind when drawing broad conclusions about philosophy. I'm not saying you shouldn't opine, but I'd suggest doing so with the appropriate amount of humility.

mattmanser 10y ago
Having done a philosophy degree and been a programmer, in my opinion you're adding far too much weight to what is a very easy domain to understand. All the complicated bits became their own discipline (maths/physics/chemistry/social science/psychology). Philosophy's not particularly complicated to someone who understands basic logic. In some ways it's not a real subject as there's nothing to study as it's all thought experiments. There's no weird data mucking up elegant theories, or strange earth movements, or bizarre lights patterns. These days philosophy tends to be just an argument about what a word actually means. It's certainly nothing like a programmer dabbling in maths and claiming they've solved p v np.
- n72 10y ago
  This is one of those moments when you sigh and don't bother. If you've done an undergrad in philosophy and still don't think there are parts which aren't very sophisticated and difficult, we'll... Sigh.
  - ianai 10y ago
    Even my math books admit that math is less subtle than human interaction. A single mathematician can nail down a truth for all eternity, but that'll never be the case for ethics.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    This is one of those moments when you wonder why someone bothered to reply without mentioning a single one of these "sophisticated and difficult" parts of philosophy that we could then happily explain in simple terms. You only had to mention a single name or sub-discipline. For example one of my modules was philosophy of mathematics. It was sophisticated and difficult, but not complicated or meaningful. It was just a fairly pointless thought experiment. The actual important bits are just called "mathematics". It's like today's social science. It's an extension of moral and political philosophy. But moral and political philosophy are fairly pointless and get bogged down by fairly meaningless arguments about the meaning of "self" or "altruism", while social science attempts to make people's lives better. You know, I studied 3 separate modules on formal logic. I did 36 hours worth of lectures, wrote various essays and read multiple expensive philosophy text books. I learnt more about logic from a single 1 hour high school electronics lesson than I ever did from all that. pg has a good essay about why he doesn't particularly rate philosophy: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

hyperpape 10y ago

Why read old philosophy? Why not read the work that's created now? Why study programming languages? Why not just use the best programming language? Just as we don't know or agree about the best programming language (or we admit there's no "best" for every purpose), one answer is that the ancients may be right. That's a fine answer, but I think it's actually secondary. Just as you don't have to think a programming language is the best to want to learn about it, you don't have to think the ancients were right to study them. What studying other programming languages/older philosophers gives you is insight into the different ways you can formulate ideas or see the world. It's a struggle to enter into a new way of thinking, much harder than learning a new programming language. You have a tremendous number of assumptions that you can't even state that interfere with your understanding. When you start out, a historical philosopher often either looks incomprehensible, or like a modern who is constantly wrong. With enough work you can come to understand how that philosopher conceived the world, so that their arguments begin to make sense. Those different ways of seeing the world are themselves of philosophical value, but they also help you understand how our contemporary understanding arose, and therefore also help you understand which aspects of our contemporary understanding are accidents or optional.

ianai 10y ago

My problem lately hasn't been a lack of need to read philosophy. It's been a lack of time. When I do have idle moments I want to turn my brain off.

eruditely 10y ago

Just FYI for the folks here, every time Aristotle's works were translated they caused a golden age, Rome, Classical Arabia. No scientist would ever disavow epistemology, no matter how much they pretend once an issue really comes down to it, it really matters. For example I will link a picture out of Gregory Clark's a farewell to alms that shows that Classical Athens was ahead pound for pound than 1800's England! Classical Philosophy is also important for learning how to rule well w/o over reliance on the industrial revolution, the entirety of science's false glory is the glory of industry and technology. The below link shows that Athens/Ancient Assyria had a better economy than 1800's England, much better, and Roman Egypt is competitive. https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/818184068604960768 https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/81818406860496076... Afaik, modern sociological research is proving Hegel correct see Ricardo Duchesne, the real problem is, is that the civilizational distance isn't that large, or actually doesn't exist between Rome and say 1800's England, I effectively consider it continuous if you know what I mean.

rampage101 10y ago

The same could be said about any other time period. If it was 1970 you could say we have televisions and cars, how could the ancients' advice possibly benefit us. Next the author will tell us about an article he read about the Singularity.

eruditely 10y ago
Lindy effect.

braft 10y ago

The author seems to take the goal of studying philosophy to be knowledge/technique collection, for an eventual goal of some type of measurable output. In other words, she expects philosophy to have something in common with the study of physics that it just doesn't have. One reads Plato (for example), not to collect facts about the world, but because Plato's Socrates still represents one of the most noteworthy and admirable ways of being towards the world. You read Plato to learn how to comport yourself better towards death, injustice, and most of all, your own ignorance. The bias I'm trying to get at is shown here: > 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. Dividing experience into "knowledge" and "entertainment" belies an ignorance of much of the subject matter Plato treats. Many works of ancient philosophy are still some of the most worthwhile texts to read because they are education in how to live. They represent some of the most admirable and imitable responses to the puzzle/experience of being a fragile creature who knows that it will die but doesn't know why it's here nor quite how to find out. Scientific inquiry can treat "why" questions when we understand "why" to mean "by what means?" but not when we understand "why" to mean "for the sake of what?" Many today would contend that "why" questions in the latter sense are not meaningful nor admit of answers, and you can't present empirical data in rebuttal, nor do much else besides try to inspire a sense of skepticism about their broadest assumptions, habits, etc. And encourage them to read Plato. As others have observed, many of Aristotle's scientific claims have been falsified, and personally I didn't get much out of reading his Physics. But the Nic. Ethics made a permanent change in the way I think and feel, in part because it revealed to me how incomplete and shallow my justifications about ethics had been my whole life, and that a coherent way of thinking about ethics was possible. Also, studying the history of philosophy and philosophy of science are the best ways to become aware of the (often questionable) philosophical assumptions that underlie the contemporary scientistic attitude towards knowledge.

braft 10y ago
This section stuck out to me also: > Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? Especially since Newton had more to show for his thoughts than an account of what his thoughts were like. I suspect the difference is that because physicists invent explicit machinery that can be easily taught, when you learn physics you spend your time mastering these tools. And perhaps in the process, you come to think in a way that fits well with these tools. Whereas in philosophy there is much less in the way of explicit methods to learn, so the most natural thing to learn is how to do whatever mental processes produce good philosophy. The notion of having "more to show" is beside the point. The goal of philosophy can not be described as "producing good philosophy." The goal, at least for many of the ancients both in and outside Greece, is coming to know the truth, possessing wisdom, but not in the sense of holding in mind a set of facts about the world. It is a goal of reconciling oneself to the world, reaching the best understanding of how to live and think properly that is available to human beings.

mannykannot 10y ago

The paradox goes away once you realize that philosophy is more like literature than it is like science.

tempz 10y ago

So, entertainment with role models. That is the best description of philosophy I ever heard.

mybrid 10y ago

Wisdom is the product of knowledge and knowledge is often times the product of foolish mistakes. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and changes the weather in California. Unknowns is the one word answer to your question. You have your known knowns, your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns. We have to make decisions every day with known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Philosophy is a body of knowledge that is in built up on trial-and-error over time. Those first trials start for us when history first started. We've been building on them ever since. We still know next to nothing about consciousness. Philosophy today primarily deals with consciousness. Once we've modeled the conscious brain and can completely control and predict human nature then there truly will be no need for philosophy.

draw_down 10y ago
Don't forget about the unknown knowns! The things we know but which we don't know that we know.

k1841894 10y ago

I read old books because I would rather learn from those who built civilization than those who tore it down.

Ericson2314 10y ago

These are good points. I don't consider philosophy outmodded, and I do think that in every field you should study its history too to learn it's dirty secrets and biases. But I don't think that in philiosophy this is any more or less true, as the author seems to also suspect.

nice1 10y ago

Were there any actual female physicists (or philosophers) in the 17th century? It sounds really ignorant (and strange) to use a female name (Alice) in the example invented by the author of this article.

joeclark77 10y ago

The author is ignoring the 800-lb gorilla in the room which is the anti-truth, anti-rationality fashions -- modernism and post-modernism -- that have dominated and corrupted philosophy for the past century. The analogy to physical science would make sense only if the mainstream of science since about 1910 was dominated by politics and founded on a premise that whatever makes you feel happy, man, must be what makes the universe go round. In such an environment, it would be entirely reasonable to ignore the modern trash and have your kids read Newton...

typon 10y ago
Cultural marxist straw feminists ruining modern civilization, oh no!
- int_19h 10y ago
  Oh, cmon. You don't need to buy into that whole "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory to believe that postmodernism is a cancer to philosophy (and so much else). All it takes is reading some postmodernist writings, really.

glenstein 10y ago

I think at least two of the explanations dismissed by the author are intriguing, even if not fully adequate as answers to her question. >Philosophy is not trying to communicate normal content that can be in explicit statements, of the kind you might be able to explain well and check the understanding of and such. I think there's something to that. Some forms of philosophy advocate broad conceptual systems that "hang together" in a way. I don't know how you would teach Kantian philosophy without reading passages from Kant, for instance. >Philosophy is about having certain experiences which pertain to the relevant philosophy, much like reading a poem is different to reading a summary of its content. I think that applies to writers such as Nietzsche, and some of the more substantive writers continental philosophers. It also applies, for better or worse, to writers who in my opinion wrote nonsense, but are nevertheless written in a style intended to be "experienced." And at least in principle I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And beyond those two bullet points, I can think of a few more. One is we're supposed to believe that philosophy deals with timeless subject matter. So it's not necessarily surprising that at certain points in history some people might do a really good job writing about it, expressing ideas that continue to be relevant and which aren't improved upon by attempts to elucidate. Another reason to read old philosophers is the same reason some courses teach math or physics in a way that emphasizes the historical circumstances where the ideas first originated. I've even heard of some courses that teach almost entirely in primary sources. You can view the ideas with a sense of discovery and an appreciation for the ingenuity involved. A lot of the magic in very beautiful ideas tends to die when it's clinically summarized in a textbook. Now, all of that said, I still think there are many branches of philosophy where you don't need to read old sources. Things like language, logic, meta-ethics, and probably many others can just be summarized while ignoring historical sources, saving a lot of time. But again, contra the author's suggestion, from what I know it's at least relatively common to have graduate level courses on philosophical subjects that are focused on cutting edge literature.

mtdewcmu 10y ago

I'm not sure about philosophy, but for physics, the most elegant expression of new discoveries is mathematical equations and numeric measurements. The words used by the original discoverer are not that important, because they just introduce the equations and numbers and provide context. When they appear in textbooks, the equations are usually expressed in the same form as the original discoverer expressed them, so in that sense, you are reading the original (equations).

lolive 10y ago

After old philosophy, came several centuries of war and monotheism. This dark age gave wrong explanations to several important questions. Once Renaissance rediscovered old philosophy, then came back the strategies to formulate questions relevantly and avoid wrong answers. From there, monotheism was doomed. And eventually, rationalism was on its way to success. Nowadays, old philosophy and rationalism are considered too complex and abstract. We are coming back to simple (wrong) answers: monotheism and war (and I would add propaganda). The difference with the previous dark ages is that nowadays old philosophy is still widely available. Just that no one considers it as a way to ask good questions and never be fooled by wrong answers.

ommunist 10y ago

Well, Aritotle is famous for his description of fly with eight legs. He was so much in empireae, that did not bothered to count the fact, flies have 6 legs.