Every pre-modern philosopher would hold completely different views if they were to experience modern life, with its variety of technology, cultures, value systems, scientific inquiry, religions, etc. Given their tragically incomplete knowledge, why should anyone give the works of pre-modern philosophers consideration?
For instance, Plato didn't know what electricity was, and electricity is now absolutely central to human existence. The same goes for microprocessors, nitrogenous fertilizers, fossil fuels, you name it. If Plato were to philosophize in the year 2023, he would hold entirely different beliefs on every subject, from the nature of reality to what it means to live a good life.
america is a disease
How about you try reading him, then you would see how stupid this thread is
banal idiot thread
This seems to be the ad hominem board. I'll take it to IQfy some other time for a more serious discussion.
>Plato btfo by telephone poles
Leave
Far from it, Plato may love telephones because they allow for more oral exchanges. Plato would probably post on IQfy and Discord, too, as it fosters a dialectic, unlike Reddit or most other social media sites. But if he witnessed something like a photorealistic game, or had a more complete knowledge of subatomic particles, don't you suppose he'd revise his theory of forms? Operating out of such incomplete knowledge, why put stock in such a person's ideas when they're so clearly borne of ignorance despite their best efforts? The same goes for other philosophers even up to the present day - we're all operating with incomplete knowledge that will surely look antique to future generations.
Saldy it's the same there only childish insults.
Yes ofc all though is shaped by its specific historical period but there are certainly some "eternal truths" that can be discovered by almost all human societies because of the relative consistency of our condition and environment.
True, although obvious.
As a side-note, people get stuck on "start with the Greeks", misunderstanding the phrase fundamentally. You don't start with them because they're the "best" or some kind of untainted, ultimate and universal catch-all "truth". Rather because their in-hindsight "obvious" questions and thoughts had to be laid out as a foundation for what came after, like with most things.
But some statue-pfp's don't get it, assuming "olderer gooderer". Might explain why they think "Biology 101" or "Economics 101" is an argument at all, when in truth they're just the crudely simplified basics.
/rant
samegay
you are an eclipse of the Mind
you are monumental
you are moron
Do you have a point?
Given pre-modern philosophers have no experience with modern life (which is very different from pre-modern life), why are pre-modern beliefs and strictures relevant (outside of a historical context)? I don't mean anyone should stop teaching, reflecting, or practicing it, but because it's so divorced from the everyday lives we live in 2023, what gives it more merit than "our very intelligent forefathers produced this and thought this"? This extends to key religious figures and ideas like astronomy and evolution.
It's something like an offshoot of the US Supreme Court's argument for Constitutional originalism vs. as a living document. There's an intense argument about what the Founding Fathers "intended" when writing the Constitution, even while the Supreme Court takes up issues the Founding Fathers never could've dreamed of, ie internet policy. Why is there so much debate about what philosophers "intended" regarding their methods and beliefs, even when most philosophers could've never imagined the internet, cell phones, or aspirin, any of which may have altered their original intentions had they knowledge of them?
Give an example of philosophical belief that is contradicted by modern knowledge that is still accepted in modern philosophy.
Many modern “philosophers” still believe in the soul.
How does electricity or fertilizers contradict the idea of souls?
>why are pre-modern beliefs and strictures relevant (outside of a historical context)?
They're not.
Pre-modern philosophy was pretty divorced from the everyday life of 5th c. Athens too. You should read more of them, it's fun.
If you think Plato and Aristotle are obvious you didn't come within miles of understanding them.
>If you think Plato and Aristotle are obvious you didn't come within miles of understanding them.
That's not what I said, dumbass. Think. There are a lot of philosophical principles that are today taken for granted, which at first were not so. That is precisely why one should start with the Greeks, to learn where these ideas have come from and then built upon.
Just like with Sun Tzu's ideas such as "attack when strong, defend when weak" may today at a first glance seem self-evident, someone, somewhere, at some time has had to give these ideas their first debut. That is what I meant by "obvious" and that one should not be dissuaded from studying something that seems familiar, but rather delve into it, frickface.
Begone, critical troony. No changes of technology or circumstance change the valid arguementation. Nobody 'believes' in Plato like a prophet. His opinions were well arguemented and absolutely deserve consideration. Same as everyone else. You're coming from the positin of denying reason and philosophy all together. Nobody cares about YOUR opinion.
Plato’s books are great for teaching you how to reason. And it’s also a good idea to read Aristotle and the Scholastics for Logic since modern logic is totally detached from perception and epistemology. Though most books pre 20th century on logic will suffice.
People 30 years ago didn't know about iphones, so we shouldn't read them either because of their incomplete knowledge.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philosophy-backwards/
>let's talk about death BUT!!!! don't forget to consider nitrogenous fertilizers
Sometimes
They had technology, culture, value systems, scientific inquiry, and religions. These all differed from what is around now, but the thinking of someone like Plato or Aristotle is so "high level" that it would not have been affected by these differences.
If anything, the philosophies that Socrates/Plato/Aristotle were reacting against were basically analogous to elements of the "modern" world view. They were arguing with people who thought that only matter exists, and that reality is adequately defined as some primordial "stuff" (atoms, ether, the four elements) that is rearranged in different ways, whether by chance or even by God (as Anaxagoras held). They were arguing with people who thought there was no absolute truth, but that man creates the truth based on what seems good to him. Also radical skeptics, and people like Heraclitus who thought everything was in a state of constant flux such that "being" is an illusion, there is only a continuum of becoming. And then there's the glacial mysticism of Parmenides. If these ideas sound familiar to you, it's because these are the sorts of things that almost everyone believes nowadays, whether they're into philosophy or not.
So no, Plato would not have said "oh man they have PLASTIC??? There goes the form of the good and reincarnation! What a silly billy I've been!" Similarly, neuroscience would not have moved them a bit, ancient people were quite aware that the physical body is tied up with consciousness (alcohol, blows to the head), and in fact most people did not believe in life after death. The whole idea that we have souls, as a philosophical rather than a religious (Orphic) idea, goes back to Plato. Modernism is in many ways a step backwards into the presocratics.
>the thinking of someone like Plato or Aristotle is so "high level" that it would not have been affected by these differences.
this pseud idol worship bullshit is way worse than the OP. The OP is just trivial and has a non-philosophical mindset, while this is just plain delusional. For example, Aristotle’s metaphysics were intimately tied to his physics and the belief that an object comes to rest without a force. He would have to rework his whole philosophy if he knew about modern physics
His mistakes on things like the vacuum and force/motion have no bearing on the general first cause argument in the Physics, nor on the Metaphysics. You're conflating issues of ontology and causality with issues of the physical sciences, because like most modern people you don't understand the difference. So when you read a word like "rest", you can only imagine a marble sitting on a table as opposed to the absence of change.
You got filtered by Aristotle bro, the gods being the prime mover is tied tk the physical world, that’s why they are the stars, and it’s not just metaphorical motion in the prime mover argument. You’re trying to save him with an anachronistic interpretation.
You don't even understand what motion is for an Aristotelian. Motion is change in general, motion in space is only one kind of motion - one that Aristotle buggered up due to lack of knowledge. The prime mover argument has nothing to do with motion through space, and so it has nothing to do with Newton's inertia, it's about the fact of change in general, and the causality behind change. You can argue with this, many intelligent people disagree with it obviously, but to say "hurrr Newton proved Aristotle wrong" just shows that you don't understand Aristotle.
Yes, there are many kinds of motion, and aristotle defined them all - change of place, rotation, and alteration in size, all clearly meant of bodies. Considering Aristotle always uses precise language and defines all the ways he’s using something, he would have clarified if he was using the word for some mind of non-bodily “change” in general. Can you please cite ANY passage where he explicitly states that motion is not only of bodies? The fact is you’re assuming Aristotle had a post-kntian mindset that disconnected the physical world from his a priori philosophy, which is completely anachronistic. The very fact that he used pure reason rather than experiment to arrive at the propositions of his physics proves that he he did not separate the world of mind and perception from the physical world like this. The gods PHYSICALLY move the world.
If Aristotle talks about motion without specification, he's talking about "change" in general. Read the physics again.
"alteration in size" - yes, also alteration in general, changes in affections, i.e. a pot of water growing hot. I can't believe you would try to talk down to me when you're so clearly out of your depth.
I’m sorry you felt I was talking down to you
A pot of water is a body
Does anyone on here actually read? Frick I’m not even a very big “reader” nor am well read but it’s like some of you ACTUALLY don’t do it at all whatsoever. It’s like you all watch school of life videos on Plato and think you know everything…