So a lot of you folks read Plato, Aristotle, some of you even the Pre-Socratics

So a lot of you folks read Plato, Aristotle, some of you even the Pre-Socratics.

I find this bewildering, surely, atleast with the Pre-Socrates and definitely with a good chunk of the arguments put forth by Plato and Aristotle, you can't actually find them agreeable? (just picking some common examples by the way) It seems many folks who read these works are more interested in getting an idea of how a certain thought developed as opposed to finding thoughts they disagree and agree with and establishing why.

Wouldn't you folks find it more interesting to read philosophers whose thoughts make you think, "I can't seem to deny this, wait let me try, no, shit, I can't". In so far as those philosophers are concerned, Philosophers of Language and Logicians seems far more worth reading.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are people who read philosophers not commonly characterized as PoLs and Logicians who find them agreeable too, but I can't help but think that a large chunk of people reading these philosophies, going through historically prominent authors, are waiting for it to "get good", or just reading to expand their knowledge of different systems of thought, trying decipher what X person was trying to say, without actually agreeing with what X person was trying to say (in which case I'd ask, isn't it boring to argue over what X person believed? Isn't questioning what you believe, given what X person said, more interesting? I've seen arguments that go to the tune of "Hey Nietzsche said Z" // "No, actually if you read A he said Y" // at which point I'd much prefer the argument going along the lines of "Okay, let's assume he said Y, now the reason I wouldn't agree with Y either is..." // but I usually find people arguing along the lines of "No he did not say Y, if you read B he said...")

And it just so happens that Philosophers of Language and Logicians use more rigid analysis in so far as they try very hard to firmly establish something, be it with the use of Quantified Logic or whatever, say Frege for example started of by pointing to undeniable difference between the statements a=a and a=b with the rest of his paper focusing on how this difference arose.
The more phenomenological kind of authors have a much more limited audience in so far as not as many people would not find their starting points agreeabale, in so far as you are the kind of person that does find them convincing, I can imagine you having fun reading these authors, but given that I feel a lot of persons don't actually have any opinion on whether the author said something correct or incorrect, I don't see how that's any fun.

TL;DR: @people who read philosophies they don't agree with, why do you bother?

>TL;DR: @people who read philosophies they don't agree with, why do you bother?

It's in my interests.

are you retarded?

why would you just read people that you agree with? to validate your opinions?

are you american?

>why would you just read people that you agree with? to validate your opinions

I should have been clearer, sorry...
>as opposed to finding thoughts they disagree and agree with and establishing why.
>disagree and agree with and establishing why.
>disagree

People don't seem to be interested in reading these authors to establish why they disagree with them either. It's more of a "to be well-read" sort of thing.

Here's Kant on one kind of the people I refer to (the history of philosophy buffs being only one subset of the folks I'm talking about):

>For some learned people, philosophy is just the history of philosophy (ancient and modern); these preliminaries aren’t written for them. They must wait their turn. When those who work to draw ·truth· from the well of reason itself have done their work, then the historians can give the world the news about their results. ·But they won’t regard it as news, because· nothing can be said now that the historians won’t think has been said already! And it is safe to predict that they’ll think the same about anything said in the future; human understanding has busied itself for centuries with countless topics in many ways, so it is to be expected that every new idea will resemble something that has been said in the past

And no, see, you assume I'm some kind of genius. Just because I agree with where someone is starting from doesn't mean I already have opinions that will be "validated" of where they end up.

>And this is important.
Taking the same example of Frege, I didn't agree with the conclusions he drew, but in so far as I had to agree with his first point (of a=a and a=b being different) given that I didn't agree with his thought of how this difference can exist, I had to form my own thoughts, or rather, see people who responded to this problem and try and build off their thoughts in the same manner.

I'll bring up what Kant said about this here, he always wanted people to go through the CoPR argument by argument, slowly finding that each of them were undeniable and he much preferred reviewers who went through the book in this way and brought up problems as opposed to folks who gave a general "I don't agree but it was fun" feedback.

Many people find Aristotle's ethics to be agreeable.

>why would you just read people that you agree with?
I should have clarified that it's impossible to know, ex-ante, which people you will agree with and which you won't. Still people seem to go in with no intention of establishing whether they agree or disagree with a philosopher. Or (and this was the more prominent kind of people I was referring to in my TL;DR) people seem to read a philosopher despite having established that they don't agree with his basic principles, or have no opinion on them, and I don't even mean this along the lines of "I have no opinion on this as of now because I have to wait for him to clarify some points he made" I mean, they have no intention of having an opinion.

I should rephrase my TL;DR:

Change:
>@people who read philosophies they don't agree with, why do you bother?
To:
>@people who read philosophies whose "truth" they don't have an opinion on or don't plan to have an opinion on, why do you bother?

>It's in my interests.

How so? Which are?

Seriously? Can someone else shed light on this?

The Pre-Socratics recommendations confuse me the most but I can imagine that those are mostly trolls.

Still, taking a more popular example, how many people actually found the conclusions in the Republic agreeable and certainly true? Especially the idea that what is good for the sum can be "downsized" to find what is good for the parts and what not.

Those guys have fewer "layers". For some reason scientists seem to think they exist in a vacuum where everything they do is not influenced by anything else. Since Aristotle we've had Christianity, the rennaissance, the age of reason, the world wars etc. and each one adds a layer of subconscious consideration that you can't really get rid of without looking at thinkers from before they happened.

Essentially reading the ancient philosophers allows you to have a conversation with someone truly free from the many waves of western thought.

I think it's important and interesting to understand how and why we think the way we think in our respective times and places. When I read historical philosophers, I find myself understanding more clearly the origin of ideas I take for granted. Besides, there is more value to reading people like Plato than merely to see whether or not they are presenting good arguments/the truth. I like the method of the Socratic argument. I like the presentation of the human condition in Plato's account of his trial. How can I disregard ancient philosophers if I don't even understand them? Surely it would be a better exercise to educate myself and to actually come to conclusions on their works myself, than to just be informed by the cultural context that surrounds me.

Revisiting old thought puts nothing new forward.

...

This is true and history is worthless. Keep progressing forward, change is progression. Who's with me!?

>Essentially reading the ancient philosophers allows you to have a conversation with someone truly free from the many waves of western thought.
Are you?
Let's assume that people are shaped by cultural context, noone thinks in a vaccum, yada, yada.

How many of you folks actually read these works, and, after a lot of drudgery to escape your cultural context, assuming it exists, can actually see what these more ancient philosophers have said as "true", in so far as your "belief" and a certain amount of "certainty" is considered.

>I think it's important and interesting
The latter refers to your response, which, I assume is in fact present and my question is to try and see why exactly it is there in the first place.
The former, I don't understand? Why is it important or, extrapolating the meaning of important, advisable to do? Is it important because it is interesting itself or something more?

>How can I disregard ancient philosophers if I don't even understand them?
Quite easy to, I assume you're willing to agree that you physically have the capacity not to read them?
In so far as you are saying it's not advisable to do so...What do you mean by "understand" if you mean "seeing the basis of their argument and the progress of claims that form a part of their arguments and lead to their conclusions" it won't take you long to notice that for a lot of ancient philosophers many of these links in their chain of arguments is absent and hence, although you haven't fully understood them since you haven't gone through all the chains of arguments they have presented in all their works, I would say it's advisable to disregard them since if the absences in the chain of arguments are particularly jarring in some cases chances are the same absences will be found elsewhere.

>Surely it would be a better exercise to educate myself and to actually come to conclusions on their works myself, than to just be informed by the cultural context that surrounds me
This is absolutely absurd and ridiculous, you still make the conclusions you make "yourself" regardless of whether you make it without or with informing yourself of the cultural context that was present at the time the author wrote what he wrote.
Surely you aren't implying that someone who, say, typed up a conclusion on Thales being "wrong" didn't do it "(him)self" if he didn't read up on other philosophers and history.
You seem to be making a point about human agency, but I don't see what you're trying to say.
If you're saying it's "better" to make a conclusion about, say Thales, after educating oneself of his context, than without doing so, I'd disagree, I'd predict even after being read up on what people at the time thought like, I'd still not be convinced, despite my knowledge of what people at the time thought of I would be no closer to any satisfying truth.

Oh also, note that I'm not trying to make statements about it being, in general, a bad idea to not read philosophy to see...
>whether or not they are presenting good arguments/the truth
I'm just trying to get an idea of what people who don't do this read philosophy for.
You have given me an idea of that too, so thank you.

Lot of spooks in this thread.

I'm OP, that's not me ofc.

I have a huge problem with the ideas being put up here:

>puts nothing new forward.
Who cares about coming up with something new? Do you folks honestly think you're going to make your mark on intellectual society? In so far as academics are concerned it's an absolute must to read all (or most) philosophers regardless of how trash you think they are just so you are good at expressing how trash they are, a skill you'll need if you want to refute them, not to mention you're generally going to have to look cool and well-read.

>history is worthless
There's not an ounce of truth in this comment.

>Keep progressing forward, change is progression
Most of us are quite stupid when we compare us to the likes of I dunno Wittgenstein and whose not, even if we weren't, it's still advisable to see what they said, it will save time if nothing else.

Disregarding this idea of this discussion in anyone involving gamechangers looking to "progress" and cause any real difference to the world, I'm looking at this more from the point of view of the average twenty something who reads philosophy as a hobby (i.e. most people on this board) and who hence has a very limited amount of time within which I feel it would be much more entertaining not to waste time looking at past philosophers with disagreeable ideas.

>anyone
anyway*

It's a good intellectual exercise to familiarise yourself with those 'chains' you refer to, and for future reference when reading contemporary responses to old philosophical problems.

What's more, I think you can't legitimately say that you have spotted flaws in a person's argument unless you're acutely familiar with the 'language' they are writing in. Reading a 5 step summary of a logical argument on Wikipedia will probably give you a poor understanding of the actual argument itself, because of the differences in meanings of terms and lack of reference to established axioms.

You're moving the goalposts, because I said that one is fit to make a conclusion regarding the works after they have read them, but you are talking about their cultural context. Obviously I think cultural context plays a factor, but what I was saying wasn't a fatalistic comment about people being dictated by their backgrounds, but in more words I think that we should address our assumptions about a text by actually engaging with it. We might change our minds and if we don't, we have still learned something.

I personally agree with Aristotle's virtue ethics. I think, at its core, it's a very pragmatic concept which explains the existence of ethical values and justifies why one should follow them

>the arguments put forth by Plato
When where how etc

Plato's all about the aporia bro

The further back in time you go, the closer to the truth you get. Many Presocratic philosophers were material or substance monists. Spinoza glimpsed the truth as well. Not many modern philosophers can even come close to understanding the truth which is advaita.

Logical positivism is the most poisonous anti intellectual stance in our society. Stop it.

So you agree with Kant that there is a difference between philosophy in-and-of history, and philosophy itself, the latter having first priority.
This distinction is in itself fully Aristotelian.

Plato's dialogues, as well as most pre-socratics, can be lead to quite many insights about questions of truth, morality and philosophy itself, and I don't understand how you can deem these philosophers uninteresting. It seems to me that you make this decision based on historical distance, but your post makes it seem like you find history itself unphilosophical.