Classical Philosophy Useful or Useless?

[vfr]

Going back to the ancient Pre-Socratics to the Classical Age and ending up with the Greco Roman Moralists. Are these areas of study what philosophy is all about? Or are they just old relics and withered seeds of bygone days that have lost their glory in favor of more modern thought?





Take Care,


V (Male) Christian-Buddhist...for free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion or belief of any group or organization.

[kennethamy]

Going back to the ancient Pre-Socratics to the Classical Age and ending up with the Greco Roman Moralists. Are these areas of study what philosophy is all about? Or are they just old relics and withered seeds of bygone days that have lost their glory in favor of more modern thought?





Take Care,


V (Male) Christian-Buddhist...for free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion or belief of any group or organization.

It would, I think, be hard to read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics carefully and not think that he has hit a lot of nails right on the head. Or to read Plato on justice, and not think that he is asking just the right questions.

[comiezapr]

Classic philosophy is pretty worthless. The ideas there are superceded as a result of further advancement in philosophy. The analysis there is supersceded by modern philosophical analysis and its wider variety of tools and methods. Some classical philosophy is correct but it mostly wasnt supported in a way that would stand up to modern scrutiny. What is correct and supported adequatly is very sparse in the literature. Whatever is right about classical philosophers can be espoused much more concisly, with more illumination on the subject, from a modern perspective (and in fact this is usually what is done).

The value of classical philosophy is only so much as it shows the history of philosophy. I cant even say that the ideas are present in a more understandable or readily acessible manner.

Classical philosophy is history, not philosophy, and should be viewed as such.

[kennethamy]

Classical philosophy is history, not philosophy, and should be viewed as such.


Makes me wonder how much of it you have read.

[comiezapr]

It would, I think, be hard to read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics carefully and not think that he has hit a lot of nails right on the head. Or to read Plato on justice, and not think that he is asking just the right questions.

I read alot of Plato and think that hes way off target, and hopelessly outdated. The right questions to ask about justice are ...

What is the relation between language and the world?
What is the ontology of a moral system?
What is the relation between the apriori, necessary and analytic statements and under which category do ethical statements fall?

I dont see Plato inquiring about any of these topics. And if he did mention these topics (my memory here is pretty unreliable) i am absolutly certian that what he said was naive. (I do understand that he doesnt really espouse his opinions within his work.)

Plato was, correctly, focused on alot of language analysis. This is to his credit but i think any romp through Russel will get the same thing across in a much better fashion.

I can go out and read volumes about some rediculous subject, like phrenology, and get some useful knowledge out of it. The question is, what is the most effective way to get this knowledge. The answer is obviously not to read volumes on phrenology. The same applies to classic philosophy; forget it. You can gain the tools to hone your thoughts much more efficiently (and sometimes you can only get them) from a modern (last 100 years) perspective.

[comiezapr]

Makes me wonder how much of it you have read.

I really havent read alot. I ended up suffering through a "complete dialogouges of plato" book but i cut out after about 600 pages. I read physics, metaphysics and the organan by Aristotle. I read humes treatise on human nature, on liberty by mill, descartes meditations, berkleys treatise on human knowledge and hegels phenomenology of spirit. I am aquinated with others secondarily.

I started my philosophical studies with Russel and moved quickly through to Lewis and Davidson, whom ive studied extensivly. I only retrospecitvly read the classics and found them an utter waste of my time in comparison to what ive read. My biography has alot to do with my views here.

I think Scott Soames "Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century" and the works it cites are more valueable, philosophically, than every work in philosophy before Frege. I judge this based on my conversations with people that have studied the classics exclusivly, or primarily.

[kennethamy]

I read alot of Plato and think that hes way off target, and hopelessly outdated. The right questions to ask about justice are ...

What is the relation between language and the world?
What is the ontology of a moral system?
What is the relation between the apriori, necessary and analytic statements and under which category do ethical statements fall?

I dont see Plato inquiring about any of these topics. And if he did mention these topics (my memory here is pretty unreliable) i am absolutly certian that what he said was naive. (I do understand that he doesnt really espouse his opinions within his work.)

[ ]Plato was, correctly, focused on alot of language analysis.[/] This is to his credit but i think any romp through Russel will get the same thing across in a much better fashion.

I can go out and read volumes about some rediculous subject, like phrenology, and get some useful knowledge out of it. The question is, what is the most effective way to get this knowledge. The answer is obviously not to read volumes on phrenology. The same applies to classic philosophy; forget it. You can gain the tools to hone your thoughts much more efficiently (and sometimes you can only get them) from a modern (last 100 years) perspective.

In Plato's Meno Socrates raises this question:

Why is it better to have true belief than to know? And he points out that a guide who has a true belief of how to get to Larissa is no better a guide than one who knows how to get to Larissa.

Socrates gives an answer, but one that needs a lot of help, even if true. But, what I am trying to point out with this example, is that this question seems to me an interesting question, and I don't know the answer. Neither do I know of any contemporary philosopher who has tackled this question, let alone, has given a satisfactory answer.

[TheMathGuy]

I have often wondered a similar thing. Not exactly the question you were asking, but rather "Is philosophy of any use?" I have personally gotten into plenty of discussions involving abstract metaphysical nonsense (things like "What's the difference between being and nothingness?" or "How do we know that any of what we percieve is actually the way it is?" or "Is there even a such thing as objective reality", etc...), and the discussion just ended up going nowhere. Nobody concluded anything at the end and I got the feeling nothing ever could be concluded. If a person derives pleasure from speculating about unanswerable questions, then I have no problem with that, but I find myself doubting whether it has any purpose beyond that.

[kennethamy]

I have often wondered a similar thing. Not exactly the question you were asking, but rather "Is philosophy of any use?" I have personally gotten into plenty of discussions involving abstract metaphysical nonsense (things like "What's the difference between being and nothingness?" or "How do we know that any of what we percieve is actually the way it is?" or "Is there even a such thing as objective reality", etc...), and the discussion just ended up going nowhere. Nobody concluded anything at the end and I got the feeling nothing ever could be concluded. If a person derives pleasure from speculating about unanswerable questions, then I have no problem with that, but I find myself doubting whether it has any purpose beyond that.

The questions you put are unanswerable since they are far too vague and amorphous. However, if they are put more exactly, and notions like "objectivity" and "reality" are not so much defined as understood, progress can be made, and has been made. A bull-session, which is what you were having, is one thing. Philosophizing is a different thing. For instance, suppose you see a book on a table (it is important to start with a concrete example so that the question does not get lost in abstraction) and you ask, "How do I know that the book is the way I see it?" I suppose that means something like, "The book looks rectangular and red, so how do I know it is rectangular and red?" And, now, suppose someone asked you, "Why do you suppose the book isn't rectangular and red? Do you really doubt that it is? If so, why? What reason have you to suppose that what you see is not what you got?" And that would force you to ask yourself whether the question you are asking is a "real" question, or whether it is just a fun or a pseudo-question. For, don't you need some reason to think that in this particular case, your perception is not reliable? Isn't that what you are really suggesting? Don't you need a reason for doubting that what you see is a red rectangular book?

Doesn't it seem to you that we might get someplace by looking at the matter that way? In ordinary life, we don't doubt that what we perceive is as we perceive it unless we have some particular reason for doing so. (Imagine you and your friend both looking at the same book, and then you, out of blue, saying, "I wonder whether that object is a book, and whether it is rectangular and red?" If your friend did not know you were just being a "philosopher" he might think you had flipped your lid. "Why do you wonder such a thing? Is there something going on that I don't know about?"

How would you reply? I mean, really, how would you reply? Just in the abstract with, "Well it might not be the way it seems!" And the answer, at least from me, would be, "Well, yes. I guess it might not be a book, and red, and rectangular, but why is that any reason for doubting that it isn't that way?"

And how would you reply to that?

[comiezapr]

ken,

While there is no reason to doubt, in everyday life, that what i percieve is as it is, there still is an issue of skepticism. Its a philosophically fruitful issue that has generated alot of great philosophy (in particular the Natural Language style of philosophy you seem to be advocating here!)

The reason for doubting that what we percieve is the way it is ISNT because we normally dont percieve what really is there. The reason is that it gives a good framework to get to the bottom of philosophical issues with. Why would you expect philosophical questions to be related to everyday life? Thats entirely to restricitve, imagine doing the same to science! Wierd ....

My quetions are vague but arent unanswerable upon an adequate analysis. Alot of essays and books are devoted to these questions in the general form that i put them. Philosophy isnt aimed at answering questions that arise in daily life, they are aimed at answering questions that arise in philosophy.

If you think otherwise we have a very different view of what philosophy does and how it advances. I dont want to argue these issues to much.

[kennethamy]

ken,

While there is no reason to doubt, in everyday life, that what i percieve is as it is, there still is an issue of skepticism. Its a philosophically fruitful issue that has generated alot of great philosophy (in particular the Natural Language style of philosophy you seem to be advocating here!)

The reason for doubting that what we percieve is the way it is ISNT because we normally dont percieve what really is there. The reason is that it gives a good framework to get to the bottom of philosophical issues with. Why would you expect philosophical questions to be related to everyday life? Thats entirely to restricitve, imagine doing the same to science! Wierd ....

My quetions are vague but arent unanswerable upon an adequate analysis. Alot of essays and books are devoted to these questions in the general form that i put them. Philosophy isnt aimed at answering questions that arise in daily life, they are aimed at answering questions that arise in philosophy.

If you think otherwise we have a very different view of what philosophy does and how it advances. I dont want to argue these issues to much.

I don't really understand your objection. It seems to me that the OP was complaining that philosophy is useless because there seems to be no resolution of question like, whether objects are as I perceive them. I pointed out that I thought that it was the question that needed scrutiny before any answer was sought. And it seems to me that part of that scrutiny would be to ask why the fact that it is possible to doubt that things are as they seem, is a good reason for thinking that we do not perceive things as they seem to be. That is, that the argument:

It is possible that things are not as they seem: therefore, we have some reason to suppose that what I now am looking at is not as it seems

seems to me to be invalid.

I agree that discussing all this may lead to interesting philosophical issues. But I don't think saying that would particularly satisfy the OP, because his is skeptical about whether philosophical issues (or at least whether such philosophical issues) are of any interest in the first place. In fact, isn't that the point of his post?