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There is a very clear heritage of the ideas of those Ancient Greek thinkers which have moved and influence world history. So I'm befuddled how you don't see suf

There is a very clear heritage of the ideas of those Ancient Greek thinkers which have moved and influence world history. So I'm befuddled how you don't see sufficient evidence, nor what constitutes such sufficiency for genius? I highly recommend you read Arthur Schopenhauer's essay On Philosophy at the Universities: https://archive.org/stream/23341891SchopenhauerParergaAndParalipomenaV2/23341915-Schopenhauer-Parerga-and-Paralipomena-V-1 https://archive.org/stream/23341891SchopenhauerParergaAndPar... It is a persuasive essay that, no matter the resources, genuine philosophers or geniuses pursue the truth for its very sake. I concur that historically this has been the art of the aristocracy, but so what? Hypothetical or "unrewarded genius" doesn't amount to much in world history. Results do. And such fruit is actually the result of a cohesive organization of a society, ie genius is the goal of civilization proper. Plato and Descartes both had to have their trash picked up by somebody in order for them to impact us today.

gliese1337 7y ago
> There is a very clear heritage of the ideas of those Ancient Greek thinkers which have moved and influence world history. Yes, there is. But that is a very different thing from having very clear evidence that those ideas originated uniquely in a specific small set of brains whose owner's names are recorded. "This person's writings have a clear influence on history" is a very different claim from "This person was the very first person to ever think the thoughts that he wrote down."
- achillesheels 7y ago
  Original minds do not find satisfaction in being derivative. Searching for truth leads to originality for this very reason. So it is safe to say that Socrates was a novelty in the human race because of his philosophical turn towards examining moral knowledge, which there was no previous recording of. I guess I don’t see the point in questioning it, chiefly because such genius is normally a culmination of rare and successful inter-generational cultural growth, so it really is “one-of-a-kind.”

gliese1337 7y ago

> There is a very clear heritage of the ideas of those Ancient Greek thinkers which have moved and influence world history. Yes, there is. But that is a very different thing from having very clear evidence that those ideas originated uniquely in a specific small set of brains whose owner's names are recorded. "This person's writings have a clear influence on history" is a very different claim from "This person was the very first person to ever think the thoughts that he wrote down."

achillesheels 7y ago
Original minds do not find satisfaction in being derivative. Searching for truth leads to originality for this very reason. So it is safe to say that Socrates was a novelty in the human race because of his philosophical turn towards examining moral knowledge, which there was no previous recording of. I guess I don’t see the point in questioning it, chiefly because such genius is normally a culmination of rare and successful inter-generational cultural growth, so it really is “one-of-a-kind.”