
Why read old philosophy? - diodorus
https://meteuphoric.com/2017/01/04/why-read-old-philosophy/
======
weichi
Most of the comments here are completely missing the point of the article.

The article is not about whether the ideas espoused by old philosophers are
worth learning about, or about whether old philosophers are worth reading. The
article asks the question of why philosophers prefer to read the original
works of old philosophers, instead of reading descriptions of these ideas by
authors who have demonstrated competence is explaining philosophical ideas.
Which is the way that education is handled in most (all?) scientific fields.

~~~
westoncb
Interesting. I was just writing about this yesterday:

 _If the book 's ideas were of lasting consequence, it's a near certainty that
more clear statements of them have been produced in the intervening years. You
may lose some of the aesthetics of the original—but often times the true
aesthetic value is debatable (or at least relative), and if it's truly there
it still may not be worth losing the increased clarity and further refinement
of ideas found in later works._

~~~
Senderman
I have to disagree with the author of that paragraph. Concepts usually get
diluted as they pass from person to person, not more clear. They also mention
there is often times a "debatable" aesthetic value - to me, that's all the
more reason to at least look at the original work and make your own
interpretation.

~~~
westoncb
> Concepts usually get diluted as they pass from person to person, not more
> clear.

That is only possible if the concept has no practical utility. If the concept
is being _used_ , the historical pattern is improving refinement.

The author of the article provides a nice list of reasons why that would be
the case (Bob is a modern day expositor of Alice's older, original idea):

 _Alice’s understanding of the Alice effect is probably the most confused
understanding of it in all of history, being the first ‘understanding of the
Alice effect’ to set itself apart from ‘confusion and ignorance about the
Alice effect’.

In the billions of lifetimes that have passed since Alice’s time, the world
has probably thought substantially more about The Alice Effect than Alice
managed to in her lifetime, at least if it is important at all.

Alice’s very first account of the effect probably contained imperfections. Bob
can write about the theory as it stood after years of adjustment.

Even if Alice’s account was perfectly correct, it was probably not perfectly
well explained, unless she happens to have been a great explainer as well as a
great physicist.

Physics has made many discoveries since Alice’s time, such as Claire forces,
Evan motion and Roger fields. It might be easier to understand all of this by
starting with the Roger fields, and explaining the Alice effect as a
consequence. However literature from the likes of Alice is constrained to
cover topics chronologically by date of discovery.

Bob speaks a similar version of English to me

Bob can be selected for having particular skill at writing and explanation,
whereas Alice must be selected for having the scientific prowess to make the
discovery.

Bob is actually trying to explain the thing to a 21st Century reader, while
Alice is writing to pique the interest of some seventeenth century noblemen
who lack modern intellectual machinery and are interested in issues like
whether this is compatible with religion. An accurate impression of a 21st
Century reader would probably cause Alice to fall over._

~~~
Senderman
I see your point. I had never thought of 'clarity' as being synonymous with
'utility', but I can't argue with it.

------
arca_vorago
Because too many people these days are the "school is overrated, vocational
schools are all we need" types who don't understand the basic value of going
through the old philosophers... the title is case in point. To me it seems so
obvious that there are numerous reasons that it just seems click-baity.

You know what they teach at the elite schools (like Eton for example) that
most others don't? The trivium and quadrivium. Together, they form the seven
liberal arts, and are a vital parts of the preperation for reading the old
philosophers. More than that though, they are vital parts of having a well
rounded education where knowledge at a base level in areas almost always
elevates your ability to think well in others.

It is also extremely important to be able to go back and see how the old
philosophers were right and how they were wrong, but also just to see the
amount of wisdom they had. I'm a constitutionalist myself, so reading
Montesquieu for example is a great way to dig into the meat of the
underpinnings of the checks and balances system, for example. I hardly see a
modern textbook get half as deep as him on the subject...

There is still vast amounts of wisdom to be gleaned from the old philosophers,
and I highly disagree with the assertion of the author about it being more
like poetry than knowledge.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
It's not a contradiction to love the old philosophers and also think that our
society has a schooling problem that teaches too much, too badly, and often on
the wrong topics.

Of the many people who have studied those philosophers over the years in
schools, how many got anything out of it? I'd wager that a 1% guess would be a
bit high. The time spent on that for the other 99% is pure waste. But how will
we know which are the 1%? Well, we can't get a more blunt selection mechanism
than teaching it to everyone, so any other selection mechanism is likely an
improvement.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Could you define "got anything out of it" for me? And what is a universal item
that literally everyone will use in their life? We could probably stop general
education after grade 3 if that was the goal of education.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
>Could you define "got anything out of it" for me?

Retained any information that gave them skills or enrichment. Skills we can
measure as an increase in human capital. Enrichment is tougher, but for
enrichment to take place the information has to be retained, and we have
plenty of data on the abysmal state of retention.

> And what is a universal item that literally everyone will use in their life?
> We could probably stop general education after grade 3 if that was the goal
> of education.

That was not a requirement I implied needing to set. Literacy and basic
mathematics are useful far beyond grade 3 (though their pedagogy and targeting
could be drastically improved), but as a rule, most knowledge doesn't need to
be taught to everyone. We can come up with selection mechanisms that are
better than the crudest imaginable: teaching everyone and hoping that a
minuscule fraction get something out of it. Extending/adding recess would be
far better than that.

~~~
always_good
I procrastinated my core courses and took Philosophy my last semester of uni
at 22.

I'm so glad I took it that late. It was easily one of the best courses I ever
took, of course with the professors to thank for that.

What did I get out of it? It got me thinking about all sorts of concepts,
especially concepts I never would've thought about on my own. How do you
quantify that? Who knows? I still think about Callicles from the Gorgias and
how he'd observe some modern social phenomena and such.

But I think your posts are the sort of overfixation on "getting anything out
if it" that the OP is talking about. It's a tempting question because it's
usually unanswerable except in the obvious cases. But, for example, learning
long division isn't helpful because you do it in the field (I haven't done it
since school), rather it's helpful because you're exercising problem solving.
Just like philosophy can exercise rationalism.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
Congratulations, you're the 1% who got things out of it.

As a former teacher, I can assure you that (optimistically) 90% of what
happens in school does not teach any problem-solving skills (and that's backed
up by the literature). The 10% that does is in literacy and mathematics up to
Algebra (not including Geometry, which almost no one remembers, nearly zero
people use, has been demonstrated to make little or no difference in problem-
solving skills, and yet is still somehow a required course almost everywhere).

~~~
runesoerensen
This remind me a bit of my elementary school math teacher who’d usually answer
any question or curiosity with a dismissive “you don’t have to understand it
you just have to do it”.

That didn’t help spark any particular interest in the field. It’s very
difficult to learn something that doesn’t interest me.

I later ended up failing high school math, which made it difficult to get
accepted for my college education. I was accepted on the condition that I’d
take the math course again, and pass the exam within 6 months.

Incidentally (and fortunately) I studied philosophy and business
administration. Philosophy (and particularly the ancient Greeks) got me much
more excited about math, and I got an A in my exam shortly after.

Just a personal anecdote, but thought you might find it interesting.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
Oh, I'd love for kids to understand it -- it's far more important than doing
it, and if we were teaching that understanding it would likely all be
worthwhile. I'm saying that we know from the data and qualitative studies that
we don't teach kids to understand most things we teach them, and they forget
how to do them very quickly.

------
scandox
> And if philosophy is about having certain experiences, like poetry, but then
> it would seem to be a kind of entertainment rather than a project to gain
> knowledge, which is at least not what most philosophers would tell you.

I think all this trouble comes from the perverse desire to make Philosophy
"valuable" in the way that sciences are perceived to be, rather than
recognizing that it is indeed like poetry.

Not poetry "a kind of entertainment" \- which is a gross reduction...but
poetry as a means of direct experience and illumination.

Maybe philosophy cannot be "used" to model anything, predict anything or
instrumentalize anything...but at the end of time when we have catalogued
every atom, it's what we will have left with which to examine the remaining
mysteries - which is ultimately a personal journey ... not some kind of
utilitarian social achievement.

~~~
Numberwang
Islam has the ultimate answer to all these personal journey questions. No need
for greek philosophy.

~~~
igravious
If I asked you to furnish me with the reasons why Islam has the ultimate
answer (rather than Buddhism, or Christianity, or ultimately Philosophy) you
would immediately find yourself in the terrain of the philosopher. Sorry.

The only way in which religious thought survives the 21st century is a set of
once sacred truths rendered palatable for the secular world. The past belonged
to you, the present and future belongs to us.

~~~
JackFr
> The only way in which religious thought survives the 21st century is a set
> of once sacred truths rendered palatable for the secular world.

The irony is that you've internalized the revealed truths of your worldview to
the point that you don't realize you have any. You don't believe that your
philosophy and ethics make any assumptions (but they do). And when confronted
the only response is that they're not assumptions, they're self-evident
truths.

You're no better than a medieval European peasant in that regard.

------
JasonFruit
I'm not sure that I can agree with her even about reading physics. I've found
that the earliest works on scientific topics, as well as in math and
philosophy, explain things in a way that is comprehensible to someone with no
prior knowledge of the subject. That's probably because _nobody_ had prior
knowledge when the work was written. I find I'm very often able to learn
topics from the originators' writings that I found otherwise intractable. For
me, at least, this is true in general.

On the other hand, I have a consistent bias toward the past, and this may be a
rationalization after the fact.

~~~
ahtu123
Philosophy is a cumulative field just like programming. If you're only
involved with the most modern framework, there is a lot of magic happening
underneath the surface. Most of the value to me seems to be in understanding
an idea and then reading and understanding someone refute it later. That's
basically my whole experience in reading philosophy "chronologically".

~~~
jhbadger
Is it though? Has philosophy actually made any advances in understanding the
"great questions" of the meaning of life and what not? Perhaps the reason that
people find reading Plato and Aristotle worthwhile is that people are still
beating their heads against the same unanswerable questions.

~~~
empath75
Yes. It’s just that when they do, it becomes known as logic or science and
philosophers get less interested in continuing to think about it.

Almost all of the early work in what we’d call computer science was done by
philosophers before computers even existed.

~~~
jhbadger
But that's just because philosophy originally meant all scholarly pursuits.
All of science was called "natural philosophy" before it got its own name.
That doesn't mean that what we'd call science today is the same as what we
call philosophy, even if some ancients like Aristotle did both.

~~~
rwnspace
I believe the author was referring to work done in reason, logic and 'natural
philosophy' from the time of Kant/Hume/Leibniz onwards, so, 18thC+.

One of the reasons philosophy doesn't seem so well these days - I think - is
because the value our society places on software engineers is so much higher.
The same kinds of natural ability which help with reasoning about the
behaviour of some function, help with reasoning about the shape of some
concept in philosophy.

I don't particularly lament this shift, as a philosophy grad who is working on
becoming a software engineer. I only lament that experimental and multi-
disciplinary philosophy is becoming cool and interesting only in the past
decade or so.

------
byproxy
I liked the skateboarding analogy. I might be skewing it, but it hearkens
towards evolution of an art-form, maybe..

60s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pXYTJgxY30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pXYTJgxY30)

70s: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKC-
XBwQ_pA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKC-XBwQ_pA)

80s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA1a21RTFZI90s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA1a21RTFZI90s)

90s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDSlB7fy8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDSlB7fy8I)

00s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjSx2Xe9pZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjSx2Xe9pZ8)

And the idea of summarizing. In many of those videos you may be able to say
"skater does a kickflip", but such summarizing is devoid of context.

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Interestingly the biggest difference I see are in the board itself (less flat,
wider) and the addition of dedicated environments enabling new styles and
tricks. That said I wouldn't be surprised if a skateboarder today could take
one of those old boards and ride it very differently today.

------
forapurpose
Why read new philosophy? The old stuff has had the weak ideas weeded out and
has a proven track record.

 _" The Yale Report of 1828" \-- an influential document written by Jeremiah
Day (who was at the time president of Yale), one of his trustees, and a
committee of faculty -- distinguished between "the discipline" and "the
furniture" of the mind. Mastering a specific body of knowledge -- acquiring
"the furniture" \-- is of little permanent value in a rapidly changing world.
Students who aspire to be leaders in business. medicine, law, government, or
academia need "the discipline" of mind -- the ability to adapt to constantly
changing circumstances, confront new facts, and find creative ways to solve
problems._

\- Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, in "Top of the Class: The Rise of
Asia's Universities", Foreign Affairs, May/June 2010

~~~
Symmetry
I think it's rather the opposite, where modern philosophy benefits from
centuries of argument and having had all the weak points removed but they're
clearly there for any to see in old philosophy. Reading _The Republic_
recently made me appreciate that there can be such a thing as progress in
philosophy.

------
igravious
I would place this sort of article and the "Why do we need to bother with
philosophy at all?" articles within the same pool of thought.

That people keep dipping their toes into this murky pool demonstrates to me
that one of the things philosophy has spectacularly failed to do is explain
itself to itself. Even at this late stage in the game!

To address this article directly though: Katja uses the analogy of
skateboarding. This is philosophy as craft, philosophy as art. Think of
disciplines being divided into the "what" (subject matter) and the "how"
(methods).

Philosophy cares about thinking correctly. Philosophy cares about what it
means to acquire knowledge about something. Philosophy cares about the
difference between quantifying and qualifying. Philosophy cares about
fallacies.

This means that one learns about how concepts works–how to construct a
concept, how to take apart a concept–how to trace its history–how to trace its
connections and relations over time.

Why read old philosophy? (1) Because "how". In philosophy you read clear
thinkers from any age in order to learn how to think clearly. (2) Because
"what". In philosophy we trace concepts back as far as we can, ideally with an
understanding of the culture and language in which they were expressed.
Nietzsche and Derrida would have read Aristotle and Plato in the Ancient
Greek, do we do that nowadays? How can we be sure we can trust the
contemporary translations?

Philosophy cannot usefully be compared by way of analogy with any of the sub-
disciplines of the sciences or humanities because the domain of philosophy and
the methods of philosophy only overlap with those at strategic points.

~~~
j7ake
Nice point. The fundamental questions that we wrestle with are universal
across time and geography. Questions such as how we should lead our life and
how we should function in a society. The ancients are the best source for
understanding these questions and their virtue of having survived through
generations is a testament of their value to society.

We are often too quick to dismiss the ancients, who end up more often than not
being right all along.

------
jeremiahwv
> An old work of philosophy does not describe the thing you are meant to be
> learning about. It was created by the thing you are meant to be learning
> about, much like watching a video from skater-Aristotle’s GoPro. And the
> value proposition is that with this high resolution Aristotle’s-eye-view,
> you can infer the motions.

tldr; read old philosophy to learn how to reason, read new physics to learn
the results of reasoning.

~~~
Raphmedia
So, in a metaphorical way, reading old philosophy isn't about reading a legacy
code base. It's about reading the git history and project documentation.

~~~
jeremiahwv
Hmm, I'd say more like reading the (original) source code of git itself to
learn about Linus and his coding"philosophy" [0] vs reading a modern tutorial
about how to use git.

[0] I haven't done this so not putting any value prop on this specific
example.

------
gkya
One reason to read old philosophy is that it is way more approachable. Most of
the time, the approachability is an inverse function of the date the
philosophical material appeared (understandable given our knowledge and
thoughts have grown to be more complex throughout history). If you want to get
into philosophy, reading a platonic dialogue (except Timaios and those with
the Eleian) or one of the simpler texts of Aristotle (like Poetica) is way
more easier than say reading Schophenauer, which is in turn easier than
Wittgenstein, which in turn is probably easier than reading Derrida. Also,
building up on examples of older pieces of philosophy, you have more tools for
approaching the new stuff, because, surprise, it's built on not only the
concepts, but examples and myths from and references to the old stuff.

And the best thing reading philosophy teaches to the non-academician is how to
think with structure and method, avoiding dogma and bias, and embracing
scepticism. Reading the dialogues has changed my life entirely because of
that.

~~~
imaadrashied
> "And the best thing reading philosophy teaches to the non-academician is how
> to think with structure and method, avoiding dogma and bias, and embracing
> scepticism. Reading the dialogues has changed my life entirely because of
> that."

Completely agree - I find my philosophy degree being most useful in what
you've laid out and also in empathizing (or at least understanding) with what
someone else is saying, especially if that person is bad at communication or
cannot express themselves as clearly as they'd like.

The older philosophers tended to take the reader on a mental journey / through
a mental exercise, and not always a clear one, so you're forced to extrapolate
what's important from what seems to be nonsensical stream of consciousness.

I come across folks at work all the time who can't really explain what they're
saying, but I'm able to extrapolate based off a few key words / phrases. It's
a valuable skill for product discovery / design.

Caveat here is that one can develop the above skills without philosophy so
it's not a requirement to read old philosophers, but rather one path among
many.

------
bordercases
There are two conditions I would want to see fulfilled by explanations of
philosophy that would allow me to outmode reading older philosophers:

That the explanation adequately creates distinctions between the terms used by
the philosopher and other such terms that are similar but must be
distinguished.

That the viewpoint of the philosopher is contextualized by the diff between
various other viewpoints on the same issue.

(Ian Hacking is a philosopher of statistics in science which is very good at
this, and he didn't even have to invent statistics.)

But oftentimes when the explainer caste of writers seeks to summarize
philosophy, they do so in a way that focuses on the conclusions and takes for
granted the presuppositions that had to be explored in order to reach those
conclusions.

When asking someone who has taken the summary to unpack each term in a sort of
reverse-analysis, I think that they would have a difficult time because they
didn't see the struggle that would have motivated the analysis in the first
place.

The author of the OP is correct that there is resistance that makes
philosophical explanations less fungible than, say physics methods. It's
because the terms used by philosophers are not mathematical in a way that can
be easily copied. Instead they are the thing that _constructs_ the semantics
of terms which are eventually reified by mathematical syntax.

------
DrNuke
Quantitative subjects are progressive and new discoveries or technological
advancements make past theories obsolete; on the contrary, old philosophy aims
at studying the world we are all in from different perspectives and with
different methods or goals, so that it is cumulative indeed: past theories go
out of fashion never becoming obsolete, still being re-usable in need, at
different times or epochs.

------
jonbarker
Old philosophy is fun in the same way old science is fun. Watching someone
from thousands of years ago use a process to determine a more accurate or
valuable way of thinking about the world, with rudimentary tools, should
inspire us to go use the tools we have now better.

------
mkempe
Knowledge of ancient philosophy, and of its history through the Enlightenment,
is necessary to understand and then deliberately change the nature and present
course of civilization.

------
infodroid
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348502)
(2017)

------
woodandsteel
Some interesting points in the article, but it misses the most important
reason to read old philosophy. This is that, because unlike science,
philosophers today are still arguing over many of the same basic points the
earlier ones were.

In addition, there is the fact that Western Civilization, including modern
democracy, science, technology, and economics, is greatly based on ideas from
Greek philosophy, so in reading it you are understanding much about our modern
world.

------
jl2718
Actually it’s kind of interesting that primary code is not studied in CS.
Given all the Carmack lore going around, I’ll add that I learned quite a bit
of x86asm from his Wolf3D release that could not have come from any book. I
guess the value was mostly in trying to figure out why he did something
instead of having it explained.

------
debt
Philosophy presents a methodology for argument. The arguments made by Plato
through Wittgenstein need not be objectively true, rather they serve as simply
great arguments of history.

Many teachers forget to instill the fact that when we as a species infuse
reason and language to make persuasive arguments, we call that philosophy.

~~~
nsomaru
Are you referring to the earlier W. or the later W.?

------
freeduck
I think it comes down to the scientific method. In math and physics new
theories are proven extensions or replacements of previous theories. In
philosophy you do not have the same kind of proof, there is more room for
interpretation. And then of cause there is the beauty and concisenes of the
old texts

~~~
runesoerensen
There is much less room for interpretation than most people seem to think.
Philosophers often go to fairly extreme lengths to define exactly what they
mean (e.g. by carefully describing their use of a word or term to avoid
confusion/misinterpretation).

Also, scientific methods and processes are based on theories and thoughts
developed primarily by philosophers.

------
willart4food
Well, what's your goal?

Get your feet wet into Philosophy? See what Philosophy is all about? Do you
enjoy Philosophy?

If so, you already know the answer (hint: YES). Otherwise Philosophy is not
for you and George Pólya is a more suitable reading.

------
planetmcd
It is usually on sale since it is older. Sometimes it is still perfectly good.

------
Dowwie
Economists continue to revere Adam Smith today..

------
menexenus
This post is misguided on so many levels. It never once occurs to the author
that the reason we still study the ancients is because they were _right_. Like
90% of HN readers, the author tacitly assumes that old ==
wrong/outmoded/bygone/eclipsed. She thus concludes that the only possible
reason to read the ancients is to study their methods (e.g., _how_ Aristotle
wrote) and not their actual ideas (e.g., _what_ Aristotle wrote).

This is the same mindset that plagues the obsession with "critical thinking"
in education policy today. Everyone thinks that to think "critically" means to
think in a particular _way_ , and so the best way to teach such a thing is to
teach techniques of logic, reasoning, etc. Hence, on this view, ancient
philosophy provides merely a source of examples of how to think about problems
in a certain way. Of course, this argument goes, those problems themselves are
no longer relevant (or at least the solutions that the ancients proposed to
solve them are not). But it is still worthwhile to see why they were wrong,
and how we have improved since then. Hurrah, "critical" thinking! We are so
"advanced" in our critique!

This perspective is offensive to philosophers everywhere, and should be
offensive to most people in general, if they only knew enough to be offended.
It leads quickly to a path of historicism, if not relativism. "Philosophy"
comes from the Greek words _philos_ and _sophia_ , meaning "love" and "wisdom"
respectively. This tells us two important things. First, _pace_ the author,
philosophy is a way of life after all -- it "is about having certain
experiences," as she puts it. This is indicated by the idea of "love" that is
captured in its name. Loving is a way of being. It is not something that you
"do" and "stop" and "start," like a conscious process controlled by our ego.
Philosophy, accordingly, is much more than a field of academic inquiry -- it
is a way of life, a way of being in the world, properly understood. Second,
the object of its love -- _sophia_ \-- is important as well. Insofar as it is
oriented toward wisdom, philosophy aims at something much higher than the
author admits. It aims at knowledge of the whole, not simply the part [0].
Thus, it is impossible to divorce the _form_ of philosophy from its _content_
, as the author here wants to do. In other words, it is not merely the "how"
of what Aristotle wrote that is ahistorical, transcendental, and thus still
useful for readers today -- it is also the "what" that he wrote as well. We
therefore must take seriously the actual _content_ Aristotle wrote, and not
simply dismiss it as eclipsed by all the "progress" we have experienced in the
intervening years.

So what, precisely, did the ancients think? This is the ultimate reason to
study ancient philosophy. That reason is this: The ancients saw things more
clearly than we see them now. The saw the same world that we did (basic nature
has not changed in 2000 years), but it disclosed itself to them in a different
way, in a way that was perhaps more original and less encumbered by our modern
concepts and dispositions. The ancients saw more clearly many of the
fundamental problems that we still grapple with today -- for example, the
tension between equality and freedom, between the right and the good, between
the community and the individual. (To take examples from political
philosophy.) Those problems still abide, but they are covered up in modernity
and hard to see. By returning to the ancients, we can recover insight into the
precise nature of those tensions, the reasons that they exist, and the reasons
that they may be unsolvable. (Contra the modern/Enlightenment conceit that all
problems are solvable given enough knowledge.) This doesn't mean embracing a
sort of nihilism. Quite the contrary -- it means seeking out a kind of
"wisdom" that is presently occluded.

For a thought experiment (though this may be hard for atheists to stomach),
imagine if the author had suggested that the only reason to still read the
Bible today was to understand "how" Jesus acted the way he did, or "how" God
did what he did. That would be ridiculous. Of course there is more reason to
read the original text than that. And Bible is a very old text indeed.

[0] For a discussion of the five different ways of knowing
(episteme/techne/phronesis/nous/sophia, or
science/art/prudence/intellect/wisdom) see Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics,
Book 6, Chapter 7.

~~~
msla
Thinking there's anything wrong with relativism is perverse, and a disgrace to
philosophy as a whole. Trying to discredit relativism means you think there's
one, and only one, standard of right and wrong, and that our ethics can never
improve based on philosophical thinking. It's anti-progress and, therefore,
utterly anti-philosophy.

~~~
menexenus
Isn't your statement itself an absolutist statement? (I.e., that trying to
discredit relativism "means" something, as a matter of fact?) If you're being
ironic here, well played.

~~~
msla
Of course I'm not being absolutist, and the only reason you say I'm being
ironic is because you cannot refute my statement.

------
clavalle
It is interesting to see how we got here. Seeing a long arc of...dismissed
ideas, let's say, can give us perspective on the ideas we hold today that are
more or less a historical accident and, hopefully, the conceptual room to
change them if they don't work.

I haven't read the article, but does that about sum it up?

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danarmak
No, that is quite unlike both the problem the article poses and solution
answer is proposes. I would explain them here, but I encourage people to read
the article instead.

