Greeks BTFO'd

"Now the wisdom of the Greeks was professorial and much given to disputations; a kind of wisdom most adverse to the inquisition of truth. Thus that name of Sophists, which by those who would be thought philosophers was in contempt cast back upon and so transferred to the ancient rhetoricians Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Polus, does indeed suit the entire class, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus, and their successors Chrysippus, Carneades, and the rest. There was this difference only, that the former class was wandering and mercenary, going about from town to town, putting up their wisdom for sale, and taking a price for it; while the latter was more pompous ... their doctrines were for the most part (as Dionysius not unaptly rallied Plato) “the talk of idle old men to ignorant youths.

The elder of the Greek philosophers, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Zenophanes, Philolaus, and the rest (I omit Pythagoras as a mystic), did not, so far as we know, open schools; but more silently and severely and simply—that is, with less affectation and parade—betook themselves to the inquisition of truth ... Still even they were not altogether free from the failing of their nation, but leaned too much to the ambition and vanity of founding a sect and catching popular applause. But the inquisition of truth must be despaired of when it turns aside to trifles of this kind. Nor should we omit that judgment, or rather divination, which was given concerning the Greeks by the Egyptian priest, that “they were always boys, without antiquity of knowledge or knowledge of antiquity.” Assuredly they have that which is characteristic of boys, they are prompt to prattle, but cannot generate; for their wisdom abounds in words but is barren of works. And therefore the signs which are taken from the origin and birthplace of the received philosophy are not good."

-Francis Bacon, New Organon Book 1, 71-72

Given that all the Greeks were motivated by vanity and nothing practical came of the Greeks, tell me why we want everybody to start with them again?

"Nor does the character of the time and age yield much better signs than the character of the country and nation. For at that period there was but a narrow and meager knowledge either of time or place; which is the worst thing that can be, especially for those who rest all on experience. For they had no history, worthy to be called history, that went back a thousand years; but only fables and rumors of antiquity. And of the regions and districts of the world, they knew but a small portion; giving indiscriminately the name of Scythians to all in the North, of Celts to all in the West; knowing nothing of Africa beyond the hither side of Ethiopia, of Asia beyond the Ganges; much less were they acquainted with the provinces of the New World, even by hearsay or any well-founded rumor; nay, a multitude of climates and zones, wherein innumerable nations breathe and live, were pronounced by them to be uninhabitable; and the travels of Democritus, Plato, and Pythagoras, which were rather suburban excursions than distant journeys, were talked of as something great. In our times, on the other hand, both many parts of the New World and the limits on every side of the Old World are known, and our stock of experience has increased to an infinite amount. Wherefore if (like astrologers) we draw signs from the season of their nativity or birth, nothing great can be predicted of those systems of philosophy."

"Now, from all these systems of the Greeks, and their ramifications through particular sciences, there can hardly after the lapse of so many years be adduced a single experiment which tends to relieve and benefit the condition of man, and which can with truth be referred to the speculations and theories of philosophy. And Celsus ingenuously and wisely owns as much, when he tells us that the experimental part of medicine was first discovered, and that afterwards men philosophized about it, and hunted for and assigned causes; and not by an inverse process that philosophy and the knowledge of causes led to the discovery and development of the experimental part. And therefore it was not strange that among the Egyptians, who rewarded inventors with divine honors and sacred rites, there were more images of brutes than of men; inasmuch as brutes by their natural instinct have produced many discoveries, whereas men by discussion and the conclusions of reason have given birth to few or none.
Some little has indeed been produced by the industry of chemists; but it has been produced accidentally and in passing, or else by a kind of variation of experiments, such as mechanics use, and not by any art or theory; for the theory which they have devised rather confuses the experiments than aids them. They too who have busied themselves with natural magic, as they call it, have but few discoveries to show, and those trifling and imposture-like. Wherefore, as in religion we are warned to show our faith by works, so in philosophy by the same rule the system should be judged of by its fruits, and pronounced frivolous if it be barren; more especially if, in place of fruits of grape and olive, it bear thorns and briars of dispute and contention."

>agreeing with an Anglo
The absolute tragedy of Veeky Forums

>did not, so far as we know, open schools
>they were not altogether free from the failing of their nation
Nigga Heraclitus was from Ephesus in the West of the Persian Empire, and Eleatics' school was in Elea, a colony in southern Italy. How about you start with the fucking Greeks and don't get your education from the viscount of English breakfast.

lol English are the kind that are most distant from philosophy and their barbaric tradition and wont of alcoholism prohibits any abstract and philosophical thinking and it is no wonder the cult of science and materialism and the enlightenment garbo originated from that little island which corrupted the morals of youth more than Plato ever reputed to have done.

this

>Turkey and southern italy being a wide geographical range

"I'm a conty and because I use big words and like to think about weird abstract concepts that don't actually exist I'm so smart and can shit on reason and experience and people that actually interface with what is right there in front of them"

>Given that all the Greeks were motivated by vanity and nothing practical came of the Greeks,
Actually made me think.

Really, no, really, i want to see how Veeky Forums comes out of this one, they have zero chance for recovery.

>inb4 le eternal anglo XD
Grow up.

So, our whole civilization is built on inspiration of an useless country that might be todays Bolivia?

>practical
The nerve of this Anglo

>Heraclitus was from Ephesus in the West of the Persian Empire, and Eleatics' school was in Elea, a colony in southern Italy. How about you start with the fucking Greeks and don't get your education from the viscount of English breakfast.
CHECKED. OP btfo.

Bacon was the very start of the most recent age of scientific rigor. it would be unfair for me to diminish those who came before him, but he he judged from ignorance. it's unfortunate the pompous brainlet didn't possess the graciousness that god gave your humble user.

the pseud fears the anglo

"Again, men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in the sciences by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men accounted great in philosophy and then by general consent. Of the last I have spoken above.

Nor must it go for nothing that by the distant voyages and travels which have become frequent in our times, many things in nature have been laid open and discovered which may let in new light upon philosophy. And surely it would be disgraceful if, while the regions of the material globe—that is, of the earth, of the sea, and of the stars—have been in our times laid widely open and revealed, the intellectual globe should remain shut up within the narrow limits of old discoveries.

And with regard to authority, it shows a feeble mind to grant so much to authors and yet deny time his rights, who is the author of authors, nay, rather of all authority. For rightly is truth called the daughter of time, not of authority. It is no wonder, therefore, if those enchantments of antiquity and authority and consent have so bound up men’s powers that they have been made impotent (like persons bewitched) to accompany with the nature of things."

lol there's still nobody defending the Greeks

this is the best thread ive read on this fucking subreddit.

>ugh the anglo
>wow anglos right?
>reee anglo
is this some very thinly veiled form of WE WUZZING? are our anons saying they were of greek ancestry once? are you actual greeks, anons? because if not, wow lol.

Greeks truly BTFO'd

Not even one fanboy gave his arguments.

now we know that anglos were a psyop to destroy greek philosophy

you mean england?

i mean greeeeceeee loooool psudo anglos literally and unironically BTFO, ur all outside the ratings guys, u could just die already.

thats it, folks, "start with the greeks" pseuds truly BTFO.

These Englishmen are no race of philosophers. Bacon signifies an attack on the spirit of philosophy in general; Hobbes, Hume, and Locke have been a debasement and a devaluing of the idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. Kant raised himself and rose up in reaction against Hume. It was Locke of whom Schelling was entitled to say, "Je méprise Locke" [I despise Locke]. In the struggle with the English mechanistic dumbing down of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were unanimous - both of these hostile fraternal geniuses in philosophy, who moved away from each other towards opposite poles of the German spirit and in the process wronged each other, as only brothers can.13 What's lacking in England, and what has always been missing, that's something that semi-actor and rhetorician Carlyle understood well enough, the tasteless muddle-headed Carlyle, who tried to conceal under his passionate grimaces what he understood about himself, that is, what was lacking in Carlyle - a real power of spirituality, a real profundity of spiritual insight, in short, philosophy.14 It is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race that it clings strongly to Christianity. They need its discipline to develop their "moralizing" and humanizing. The Englishman is more gloomy, more sensual, stronger willed, and more brutal than the German - he is also for that very reason, as the more vulgar of the two, more pious than the German. He is even more in need of Christianity. For more refined nostrils this same English Christianity has still a lingering and truly English smell of spleen and alcoholic dissipation, against which it is used for good reasons as a medicinal remedy - that is, the more delicate poison against the coarser one. Among crude people, a subtler poisoning is, in fact, already progress, a step towards spiritualization. The crudity and peasant seriousness of the English are still most tolerably disguised or, stated more precisely, interpreted and given new meaning, by the language of Christian gestures and by prayers and singing psalms. And for those drunken and dissolute cattle who in earlier times learned to make moral grunts under the influence of Methodism and more recently once again as the "Salvation Army," a twitch of repentance may really be, relatively speaking, the highest achievement of "humanity" to which they can be raised: that much we can, in all fairness, concede.

Hume, Locke and Hobbes got us some good science pratices and no nonsense antropological philosophy. Germans what did give? Hegel, aka communism. Oh and Kant, the spiritual father of the UN.

GEE WHO DO I CHOOSE.

nice quads, and nice sniffin lad

>12 poster
Take your pills, also shit thread

>t.

Why cant you read?

Greeks cuckt.

I agree with his sentiment insofar as it works for scientists. They need to believe in this and follow this mode of thought to do their work successfully.

For the enterprise of philosophers, however, this all appears as the infantile reading of the Greeks that it is.