2 ms·

> for most people it is not valuable to read the history of the argument but rathar an up to date summary of it Agreed. Unless you're studying philosophy acade

> for most people it is not valuable to read the history of the argument but rathar an up to date summary of it Agreed. Unless you're studying philosophy academically, it's not usually that helpful to dig out the original papers; instead, you read a contemporary commentary or two. If the commentaries disagree, sure; go back to the original papers, and work it out for yourself. But somebody has to write those commentaries; and they're written by people who study history of philosophy.

davidivadavid 4y ago
To me that's akin to saying you don't need to understand the history of physics because hey: F = ma Is all you need. I mean sure? But then we have a different concept of what "understanding" something means. The idea that you can ignore history and have some sort objective summary of it is, to me, verging on cargo cult science — the opposite of what scientific (and philosophical) education should be.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > akin to saying you don't need to understand the history of physics I must have expressed myself badly. I think it's necessary to understand the history of philosophy. I think it's mostly history. Is post-modernism history yet? Well, unless you are an actual historian (or an academic philosopher), you aren't usually qualified to trace the threads of thought development through time, and across continents and language barriers. As it happens, the philosophers I focused on for my BA[0] were Nietsche and Wittgenstein. In both cases I read all their published work; then read many commentaries and books on each; then re-read the base works (all in English of course - I had only conversational German). But I was doing a degree; I had to read all of Nietsche, because I was writing a paper on him. It's perfectly OK to approach the work of philosophers through the commentaries (although it's a shame not to read the base texts[1]). [0] I scraped a pass. Nietsche wasn't a popular topic where I studied. [1] Postmodernism crashed in after I studied, so I missed that boat. From what I've read, I wouldn't include that in my remark about base texts)

davidivadavid 4y ago

To me that's akin to saying you don't need to understand the history of physics because hey: F = ma Is all you need. I mean sure? But then we have a different concept of what "understanding" something means. The idea that you can ignore history and have some sort objective summary of it is, to me, verging on cargo cult science — the opposite of what scientific (and philosophical) education should be.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> akin to saying you don't need to understand the history of physics I must have expressed myself badly. I think it's necessary to understand the history of philosophy. I think it's mostly history. Is post-modernism history yet? Well, unless you are an actual historian (or an academic philosopher), you aren't usually qualified to trace the threads of thought development through time, and across continents and language barriers. As it happens, the philosophers I focused on for my BA[0] were Nietsche and Wittgenstein. In both cases I read all their published work; then read many commentaries and books on each; then re-read the base works (all in English of course - I had only conversational German). But I was doing a degree; I had to read all of Nietsche, because I was writing a paper on him. It's perfectly OK to approach the work of philosophers through the commentaries (although it's a shame not to read the base texts[1]). [0] I scraped a pass. Nietsche wasn't a popular topic where I studied. [1] Postmodernism crashed in after I studied, so I missed that boat. From what I've read, I wouldn't include that in my remark about base texts)