4 ms·

Learning the pre-Socratics well made Plato and Aristotle make a lot mote sense for example, but medeival times are also filled with people who are either forgot

Learning the pre-Socratics well made Plato and Aristotle make a lot mote sense for example, but medeival times are also filled with people who are either forgotten or misrepresented. Closer to now we have people who had enormuos impact but are rarely talked about let alone credited like maybe Bergson and Mach, for example. Pyrrhonist and other skeptics usually aren't taken very seriously either which I think leads to a lot of arrogance. Edit: I was talking about temporal gaps in the Western canon here but if we're going to go with spatial/cultural gaps then I have to say Indian (especially Buddhist) and Chinese philosophy have had an enormous impact on me and it's really a crime that people like Nāgārjuna aren't covered in standard courses.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> it's really a crime that people like Nāgārjuna aren't covered in standard courses. I think I'd find a "standard course" (e.g. 1 term) on Nagarjuna deeply unsatisfying. He's often presented as the inventor of Buddhist logic, but I don't think prajnaparamita makes a lot of sense as a philosophical system. Nagarjuna was a meditator's meditator, and his system of "logic" was supposed to rid the mind of conceptual thought. Also, one course wouldn't really cut it; people spend lifetimes studying prajnaparamita, and barely scratch the surface.
- guerrilla 3y ago
  People spend lifetimes studying Kant. They still need to be mentioned in introductory courses for people to study them further.
justin66 3y ago
Thanks. I'm not sure how much of that sounds like "gaps" the normal History of Philosophy curriculum would ignore, but I get the point. (certainly, it's a mistake that so much gets spun off into "Asian Philosophy" types of classes, so I agree strongly on that point) I wouldn't want to claim I really studied all that stuff but the only thing that didn't immediately ring a bell was Mach. I see that he's got a couple of minor mentions in Copleston's history and none in Russell, so a podcast about his work seems like a really good idea. The title of the podcast sure is a clunker, though.
- guerrilla 3y ago
  You should definitely check out Mach if you want to understand Einstein better (but also the previous Newtonian debates in philosophy of physics.) There were others who Russell missed but I just can't remember off the top of my head right now. In the end, you can't cover everyone in one course but it does seem like some people are completely ignored sometimes. Like maybe Occam will get a line (often misrepresentative) but the majority of time will go to Aquinas, but if you look at the SEP articles on Aristotelian topics (the scholastic debates) for example then you get a different picture of what the context for these things was. It's fine if people don't know, but the problem I have is that people think they know because of how the gaps are kind of paved over if you will. It's nice to tell a story but it would also be good to admit and clarify that the story isn't literally true.
  - justin66 3y ago
    It's been a really long time but I remember History of Philosophy courses at my university being rather specific to a given historical context, down to the whim and expertise of the professor teaching the course that quarter, with the goals of the course listed in the course description. Which is perhaps not engendering in undergrads the global view you'd hope for, but it's maybe a little more realistic and honest. Possibly they weren't all like that (like I said, it's been a long time) but I imagine the global view was meant to be explored during the intro courses - and as I said, probably not including much outside of Western philosophy, which is a problem. But there's really only so much you can cram into a semester. I'm stretching here but I remember History of Philosophy being a 300 or 400 level course, unlikely to draw any grad students, but a bit further along. I certainly will check out the podcast, which sounds interesting.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> it's really a crime that people like Nāgārjuna aren't covered in standard courses. I think I'd find a "standard course" (e.g. 1 term) on Nagarjuna deeply unsatisfying. He's often presented as the inventor of Buddhist logic, but I don't think prajnaparamita makes a lot of sense as a philosophical system. Nagarjuna was a meditator's meditator, and his system of "logic" was supposed to rid the mind of conceptual thought. Also, one course wouldn't really cut it; people spend lifetimes studying prajnaparamita, and barely scratch the surface.

guerrilla 3y ago
People spend lifetimes studying Kant. They still need to be mentioned in introductory courses for people to study them further.

justin66 3y ago

Thanks. I'm not sure how much of that sounds like "gaps" the normal History of Philosophy curriculum would ignore, but I get the point. (certainly, it's a mistake that so much gets spun off into "Asian Philosophy" types of classes, so I agree strongly on that point) I wouldn't want to claim I really studied all that stuff but the only thing that didn't immediately ring a bell was Mach. I see that he's got a couple of minor mentions in Copleston's history and none in Russell, so a podcast about his work seems like a really good idea. The title of the podcast sure is a clunker, though.

guerrilla 3y ago
You should definitely check out Mach if you want to understand Einstein better (but also the previous Newtonian debates in philosophy of physics.) There were others who Russell missed but I just can't remember off the top of my head right now. In the end, you can't cover everyone in one course but it does seem like some people are completely ignored sometimes. Like maybe Occam will get a line (often misrepresentative) but the majority of time will go to Aquinas, but if you look at the SEP articles on Aristotelian topics (the scholastic debates) for example then you get a different picture of what the context for these things was. It's fine if people don't know, but the problem I have is that people think they know because of how the gaps are kind of paved over if you will. It's nice to tell a story but it would also be good to admit and clarify that the story isn't literally true.
- justin66 3y ago
  It's been a really long time but I remember History of Philosophy courses at my university being rather specific to a given historical context, down to the whim and expertise of the professor teaching the course that quarter, with the goals of the course listed in the course description. Which is perhaps not engendering in undergrads the global view you'd hope for, but it's maybe a little more realistic and honest. Possibly they weren't all like that (like I said, it's been a long time) but I imagine the global view was meant to be explored during the intro courses - and as I said, probably not including much outside of Western philosophy, which is a problem. But there's really only so much you can cram into a semester. I'm stretching here but I remember History of Philosophy being a 300 or 400 level course, unlikely to draw any grad students, but a bit further along. I certainly will check out the podcast, which sounds interesting.