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yeah encyclopedias don't provide any guidance. Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of this. They have a section on the side bar for "Influences" (who inf

by tyre 7y ago

yeah encyclopedias don't provide any guidance. Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of this. They have a section on the side bar for "Influences" (who influenced this philosopher and "Influenced" (who this philosopher influenced.) Aristotle has this epic entry: Influences: Plato Influenced: Virtually all subsequent Western philosophy, Christian philosophy and pre-Enlightenment science (see List of writers influenced by Aristotle) When I was in my first Philosophy seminar, our professor started off by saying, "all of western philosophy is a footnote to Aristotle." He was a real one. You could also google for philosophy course syllabi, but it's not always easy to know _why_ one philosopher influenced another or the significance in political theory, ethics, etc.

ezequiel-garzon 7y ago
Did your professor point to Whitehead’s original quote? “So far as concerns philosophy only a selected group can be explicitly mentioned. There is no point in endeavouring to force the interpretations of divergent philosophers into a vague agreement. What is important is that the scheme of interpretation here adopted can claim for each of its main positions the express authority of one, or the other, of some supreme master of thought - Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant. But ultimately nothing rests on authority; the final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness. The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.” https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.html https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.h...

by tyre 7y ago

ezequiel-garzon 7y ago

Did your professor point to Whitehead’s original quote? “So far as concerns philosophy only a selected group can be explicitly mentioned. There is no point in endeavouring to force the interpretations of divergent philosophers into a vague agreement. What is important is that the scheme of interpretation here adopted can claim for each of its main positions the express authority of one, or the other, of some supreme master of thought - Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant. But ultimately nothing rests on authority; the final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness. The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.” https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.html https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.h...