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Originally written by Najosz Thjsza Kjras:

All parties concerned suck. By providing answers about the nature of reality rooted in supposition, they changed learning from a process of experience to a process of acculturation, a trend which continues to this day in the wank-fests that pass for philosophy and literature departments.

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Similarly, by learning enough that you could quote Aristotle (for the sciences) or Plato (for the arts) on anything ipse had dixit, you could fly by without learning anything in the academic circles of Europe.

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The long and short of it is, until a society develops the scientific method, philosophy is useless at best and at worst an impediment to progress. Once you've got enough of it, you don't even have to learn anything.

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While Plato and Aristotle did the best they could with what they had, they retarded scientific progress by centuries, maybe millenia, by providing easy answers that meant nothing.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

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Originally written by Najosz Thjsza Kjras:

All parties concerned suck. By providing answers about the nature of reality rooted in supposition, they changed learning from a process of experience to a process of acculturation, a trend which continues to this day in the wank-fests that pass for philosophy and literature departments.

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They didn't change any such thing. The pre-Socratic philosophers were not in any way concerned with experiment or even "experience," whatever your definition of that vague term is. They were concerned with theories of everything, just like Plato and Aristotle.

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I'm not sure what your problem is with modern-day philosophy and literature departments, but I doubt you could come up with anything better than what they regularly do.

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Similarly, by learning enough that you could quote Aristotle (for the sciences) or Plato (for the arts) on anything ipse had dixit, you could fly by without learning anything in the academic circles of Europe.

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Your Latin is terrible. :P

Also, if you try to be a scientist solely on the basis of Aristotle, I don't think you'll get very far in the academic circles of Europe. I think you're being a more terrible wanker with this statement than any department of philosophy ever was.

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The long and short of it is, until a society develops the scientific method, philosophy is useless at best and at worst an impediment to progress. Once you've got enough of it, you don't even have to learn anything.

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You'd be surprised to know, then, I suppose, that ancient natural philosophers did discover things about the world. Hipparchus discovered the precession of the equinoxes, for example. Science in the ancient world was a strange thing and not very recognizable to us, but then, science as we know it is only about three or four hundred years old, and people still were able to figure things out for several millenia before that. It wasn't the incredible rush of expansion of knowledge that we've experienced since, say, Galileo, but there was technological progress nonetheless.

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While Plato and Aristotle did the best they could with what they had, they retarded scientific progress by centuries, maybe millenia, by providing easy answers that meant nothing.

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It's interesting to note that Plato's actual answers are often far less definitive than your dismissive treatment would suggest. Socrates goes around trying to figure out what makes a man virtuous and wise, and he comes to some conclusions, but not much. It's the question that matters, because apparently people had not done very effective or systematic probes of the issue before. Some of the moral and ethical questions posed in Plato's work are still debated today, even when Plato did give answers, because there's no reason we have to accept his answers, and people didn't, even in the ancient world. (Indeed, his dialogues may be in part for the purpose of discussion and debate, not to give final answers to things, because his predecessor Gorgias wrote similar works for that very purpose.)

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It's worth noting, too, that Plato's influence was not merely by his ideas, which are the most easily accessible of his contributions in today's world. His writing style was of utmost importance in the history of Greek prose, because he was an unparalleled master. Ask any classicist who the greatest prose stylist of Greek was, and Plato's name is invariably on the short list.

Also, their contributions to oratory and various other area of the humanities were enormous.

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

we really ought to distinguish Platonism and Aristotelianism

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