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Strictly speaking this is a joke, but here is my explanation anyway. If new philosophy requires the study of philosophy, the study of philosophy requires the s

• yamtaddle 4y ago
  In practice, the set of historical philisophical works considered vital doesn't grow quickly, and tends to gradually discard works even as it gradually picks up others. Part of the trouble with this paper is that it acts like the only qualities that keep works in the common set that most or all philosophers will study, is that they're old and that they're influential. As if the set is not heavily narrowed by other criteria, including quality of the writing and arguments, and that they've been widely observed to be improving to study over hundreds of years. Works that are simply wrong and have no other redeeming qualities tend to be discarded except by specialists deep-diving into a niche, even if they were very influential. I don't think most philosophers read much more than excerpts of a handful of famous arguments or passages from the whole centuries-long scholastic movement, for instance, unless they're very specifically Christian religious philosophers or apologists. Or the Neo-platonists, et c., et c. The ones that stick around do so because they are repeatedly, generation after generation, found to be useful, having endured through the aforementioned narrowing process while dozens or hundreds of once-vital works have fallen into obscurity.