One problem is that often these old philosophers is they wrote in another language as well as time. Not only do you have to contend with the fact that no translation every fully conveys the meaning of the original work, you also don't have the context of the time and culture the author lived in.

So how to read them? I confess, I'm more of a philosopher that creates, not a fan of reading other people's works. I've done it many times and often times its an exercise in frustration. Here are a few things to help.

1. Try to nail the definitions down as soon as possible. Things like 'intuition' in Hegel's time and language are not the way most people use intuition today. Articles can help with this, but be careful. Many philosophers may start with a clear definition but quickly muddy it as they continue in their works. So always be aware of the context of what they are saying.

2. Do not over analyze one paragraph or piece. Analyze the full scope of the work. Often times a philosopher's work is a journey in itself. They may start one place and the initial reading seems like its X, but by the time you get to the end you realize they were really trying to end at Y all along.

3. Do not ever elevate the work because of the author. It does not matter that other people think this person deserves a spot light in philosophy. There are countless reasons for other people praising a work, and because we are human, it sometimes has nothing to do with the actual argument of the work itself. The argument is all that matters. Pretend its some guy on the street telling you the idea. If the argument is actually good on its merits and not merely because it hit a cultural niche at the time, you'll see how good it is yourself.

4. Understand that some philosophy is historical, but has been completely invalidated by modern day understanding. I advice you approach these as a fan or someone with historical curiosity only. Spending time on an old and outdated work is only for the biggest of fans, but is an entertainment exercise only.

5. Do not waste time on philosophical reading that has poor language, definitions, or easily disproven premises. I am amazed at the amount of people who will spend hours analyzing a piece of work that is invalidated within the first opening chapter of the discussion.

Often times a philosopher's work is a journey in itself. — Philosophim

Yes indeed. I would go further and say that the philosophy is in that journey, not in its conclusions or theses.

Otherwise your post is mostly bad advice.

Yes indeed. I would go further and say that the philosophy is in that journey, not in its conclusions or theses.

Otherwise your post is mostly bad advice. — Jamal

Also OP avoid trolls that contribute nothing to the discussion but insults. A person who is open to discussion may disagree with your points, but they'll address them and provide counterpoints if they're being honest with you.

That's an excellent approach, and i commend your clear and sectioned response. Writing is not easy. I wrote a book of poetry years ago, but it took me regular discussions and test runs with a poetry group before I had enough material for a book.

I guess the hardest part with philosophy is that it's harder to be original and also communicable. We have inhereted a rationalist/secular mentality that allows us to come to easy conclusions quickly. For example, my response to the "all belief is irrational" thread was original in wording, but very similar to all the other critics who participated in terms of finding the error in the OP.

I'm currently more interested in the history of philosophy at the moment than I am in writing a book or internet essay for this reason...i recently wrote an alternative position to free will, determinism, and compatibilism, but i just don't know how to polish it so that others will get where I am coming from. The satisfaction of coining a new term for a position is not trivial, but that's not nearly enough for sharing it...sometimes i'm impressed with the knowledge people have on here about philosophy positions, but in the end we are all just coming from different vantage points.

Hegel's ideas accrued a lot of fame overtime, but what exactly can we make of such a complex and multi-dimensional proposition? For me, to really get this, i would have to break it down word-for-word and ask a ton of questions, even for this very small section — ProtagoranSocratist

I have been reading this particular Hegel for 6 weeks and it will be several more before I finish it. I reread those sections several times. There is a certain kind of familiarity with concepts and lingo that is required, but even then you can't beat re-reading and asking questions. It is good that it is provocative I think.

To make the question more direct and concrete, what philosophy writing will make your writing survive better through the ages, what philosophy writing will receive little in the way of fame, praise, or hostility? — ProtagoranSocratist

I’ll talk about the quality of writing, not necessarily the quality of the ideas, although I guess it’s not easy to separate them. There’s a quote I read somewhere that I can’t find again. I’ll paraphrase it—Clarity is so important and so unusual, it is often mistaken for truth. Here’s another— Clarity means expressing what you mean in a way that makes it obvious you’re wrong.

So… clarity. I’m pretty smart. I should be able to figure out what you’re trying to say and whether I agree with it. Reality is not all that complicated. If you can’t describe it so a reasonably intelligent adult can understand it, I question the value of what you have to say.

I’ll think about it and see if I can come up with anything else.

That's an excellent approach, and i commend your clear and sectioned response. — ProtagoranSocratist

Thank you for your kind words.

Writing is not easy. I guess the hardest part with philosophy is that it's harder to be original and also communicable. — ProtagoranSocratist

Well said. I've written many original philosophical works over the years, and coming up with the correct vocabulary to describe an idea is half the battle. Language needs iterations and steps. Too little and someone will tell you, "That's not what the word means." And they're right. Too much and they won't understand the concept. Its a difficult balance.

For example, my response to the "all belief is irrational" thread was original in wording, but very similar to all the other critics who participated in terms of finding the error in the OP. — ProtagoranSocratist

True, you may see that, but do others? And that's the frustrating part. We see our own ideas clearly but they can get lost in translation. At the least it has made me more sympathetic to people who seem to miss the initial point. As long as the poster is acting in good faith, I try to assume its that I need to refine my point, not that they 'don't get it'.

I'm currently more interested in the history of philosophy at the moment than I am in writing a book or internet essay for this reason...i recently wrote an alternative position to free will, determinism, and compatibilism, but i just don't know how to polish it so that others will get where I am coming from. — ProtagoranSocratist

I fully understand. Part of reading other philosophical history is to learn 'the lingo'. Sometimes arguments are historical, and without that historical context a lot of meaning is lost in the writing. If it helps, I really work to get the main idea out of what is being stated. A lot of philosophical argument start with strong premises that are built upon. It is the building where the scaffolding often starts to show its cracks. But beware! If you enter into the lingo and terminology of another philosopher, you are often stuck there. Being able to extract the ideas from the terminology and put them into approachable terms for a modern day and generic audience allows you to build in the direction you want to go without the restriction of their narrow vocabulary and concepts.

Finally, don't be too intimidated to share. You'll spend years refining it, posting it, and it likely being ignored or having a few people ignore what you're saying to tell you things they believe. Post your heart. Ignore the one's who don't give it the proper read that it deserves and forge onwards. Hopefully you'll find one or two people who really read it and can converse with you. Don't worry if its not perfect. Post it as a conversation topic and see what others think.

in spite of @Jamal’s snotty, if amusing, dismissal, I think this is a good summary.

Try to nail the definitions down as soon as possible. — Philosophim

In my experience, failure to agree on definitions at the beginning is the primary reason for the failure of discussions here on the forum.

Do not ever elevate the work because of the author. — Philosophim

I don’t actually disagree with this, but I sometimes find it useful to bring in the words of well-known philosophers as a way of showing that a particular idea is not that far out of the mainstream.

Understand that some philosophy is historical, but has been completely invalidated by modern day understanding. — Philosophim

I’m not sure exactly how to take this. Seems to me we’re still arguing about the same things Aristotle and Confucius did.

I’ll talk about the quality of writing, not necessarily the quality of the ideas, although I guess it’s not easy to separate them. There’s a quote I read somewhere that I can’t find again. I’ll paraphrase it—Clarity is so important and so unusual, it is often mistaken for truth. Here’s another— Clarity means expressing what you mean in a way that makes it obvious you’re wrong.

So… clarity. I’m pretty smart. I should be able to figure out what you’re trying to say and whether I agree with it. Reality is not all that complicated. If you can’t describe it so a reasonably intelligent adult can understand it, I question the value of what you have to say. — T Clark

I'll second that

Understand that some philosophy is historical, but has been completely invalidated by modern day understanding.
— Philosophim

I’m not sure exactly how to take this. Seems to me we’re still arguing about the same things Aristotle and Confucius did. — T Clark

Yes, many are still relevant, but some are not. Leibniz' Monads for example. Older philosophy of mind theories that have been invalidated by neuroscience.

Do not ever elevate the work because of the author.
— Philosophim

I don’t actually disagree with this, but I sometimes find it useful to bring in the words of well-known philosophers as a way of showing that a particular idea is not that far out of the mainstream. — T Clark

There are great works out there in which an academic interpreter was speaking for someone else, yet, for it to be memorable, it has to do more than that. For example, I think Walter Kaufman was the best Nietzsche translator. I've read plenty of the other english translations as well; part of what allowed me to read N's provocative works with confidence and pleasure is that Kaufman explains a lot of the errors that N oppponents make, and points genuine flaws in his reasoning. The hollingdale translations came later and "won" historically, but I think Kaufman's selections in translation style reflect more of a holistic attention to Nietzsche's works (rather than just picking and choosing the right words and leaving footnotes, which is the way hollingdale's translations looks to me at times...). Like philosophism pointed out, the language barrier is a whole other issue in itself, so in the end there can't be a superior Nietzsche translator...the hollingdale, kaufman, and stanford press editions are all sufficient at least for discussion.

Seems to me we’re still arguing about the same things Aristotle and Confucius did. — T Clark

there is a cyclical current to debate, even though there are indeed some things that science has clearly proven to be false or invalid.

snotty — T Clark

trolls — Philosophim

Fair. I am a snotty troll occasionally.



I may try to respond to the OP directly later---I have things to say---but first I'll address the three most objectionable points of @Philosophim's post. I think my responses to them will go some way to answering your questions.

3. Do not ever elevate the work because of the author. It does not matter that other people think this person deserves a spot light in philosophy. There are countless reasons for other people praising a work, and because we are human, it sometimes has nothing to do with the actual argument of the work itself. The argument is all that matters. Pretend its some guy on the street telling you the idea. If the argument is actually good on its merits and not merely because it hit a cultural niche at the time, you'll see how good it is yourself. — Philosophim

This is lacking in nuance. On the one hand, yes, it is supremely anti-philosophical to sanctify works of philosophy and expect their canonical status to confer persuasive power in argument; an argument from authority is indeed a fallacy. On the other hand, no, Kant, Plato, et al are not just "guys on the street". They are people who took part in a conversation spanning centuries and cannot be understood when removed from that context. And their work is not reducible to isolated arguments, because it relies on a conceptual framework made up of their own wider body of work and their engagement with the tradition and with their peers.

On first reading Plato we might think that Socrates is annoying and manipulative, and often just really bad at making arguments---and what's worse, his interlocutors hardly ever push back! It requires humility and patience for us to move past this, to realize that this initial reaction is due to ignorance, and to see that Plato and Socrates are not so obviously wrong as you think. When one makes the effort to study these works of philosophy, putting them in the right context so as to understand the arguments, then one is doing philosophy: opening oneself up to learning from others.

You have to understand an argument before passing judgment on it; its premises, terms, and motivations have a context that makes any simplified reconstruction of the argument controversial. There is no substitute for studying the text and, with the help of others, coming to your own view.

And we should avoid the contradiction of thinking simultaneously that (a) it's not worth studying Plato and Aristotle because we refuse the canonical authority of philosophical texts; and (b) relying on the authority of secondary literature to tell us what is in those texts!

But why read them at all? Why should we treat them with such respect just because people say they're "Great"? The reason is their fertility: for hundreds or thousands of years, ideas have grown from them. They have provoked reactions from the most philosphically minded people. They have been found to be endlessly interesting. This is not just because people say they're great, but also because of their own special qualities. On top of that, this all means that culture is built on them, so intervening intellectually in culture (having an intellectual debate) happens in terms of their ideas, whether you know it or not.

One thing that philosophers are remembered and continue to be studied for is the way they can redirect thought by transforming the terms of discussion. To reduce this series of dynamic interactive historical interventions to isolated arguments is to misunderstand what philosophy is.

Philosophy is an ongoing conversation and an experience. You do not understand what you are saying until you understand how the terms you are using have been used in the past, and you don't understand that until you read the philosophers and immerse yourself in the experience of others.

4. Understand that some philosophy is historical, but has been completely invalidated by modern day understanding. I advice you approach these as a fan or someone with historical curiosity only. Spending time on an old and outdated work is only for the biggest of fans, but is an entertainment exercise only.

This suggests a picture of philosophy as a series of refutations leading to the culmination of the 21st century, in which we are closer to the truth than ever. Nobody who has studied the history of philosophy could seriously maintain this view. Philosophy does not proceed by refutation, since whether a single philosopher's refutation actually works is itself a philosophical problem with no possibility of external verification. Idealism, materialism, and scepticism live on even after they have been "refuted" a thousand times. What changes are frameworks, motivations, interpretations, and interests.

Or else there's the idea that philosophy is like natural science, progressing through empirical discovery. It's true that some philosophy relied on incorrect explanations of empirical phenomena, but it doesn't follow that studying it is just an "entertainment exercise". There are many reasons to study Aristotle's Physics even though there's a lot in it that's wrong. For example, we understand ourselves and the ideas that have power in our society by understanding the precise way in which the Scientific Revolution overturned Aristotle and shaped the Enlightenment.

And who says a particular philosophy is outdated? And are you sure it's outdated? Might you be persuaded to question that view---you know, philosophically? It was once thought that the ethics of ancient Greece was completely superseded by utilitarianism and Kantian ethics, but then virtue ethics made a comeback in the late 20th century. This kind of thing happens all the time.

5. Do not waste time on philosophical reading that has poor language, definitions, or easily disproven premises. I am amazed at the amount of people who will spend hours analyzing a piece of work that is invalidated within the first opening chapter of the discussion.

Philosophers struggle to express, and they handle this in different ways. Wittgenstein is superficially plain, but his prose embodies painful mental struggle. Others, like Adorno (I may come to him in another post, because he has quite a lot to say about philosophical writing) believed that language had been corrupted by the modern age and that the only way to properly express philosophical experience in writing is creatively, with a density on the level of poetry.

The need for definitions is another problem. It's absurd to answer the question "What is justice?" with "Define justice." This is not only evasive but asks the first speaker to state what they think justice is, and that's supposed to be the very topic under discussion. The same goes for "Is time real?" Asking the questioner to define time first is to miss the point, since any relevant definition of time has its reality or unreality baked into it.

Definitions fix meaning, but philosophy is inquiry into meaning. Definitions are more akin to what philosophy aims towards. Clear and definite thoughts are not necessarily achieved through clear and definite writing, but towards the end of the struggle.

However, a definition certainly can be a useful starting point, precisely insofar as its inadequacy shows us something about the meaning of the concept. This is why Socrates begins in the Republic by extracting a definition of justice from Cephalus's casual chat.

As for errors, they can be reavealing. There are inconsistencies in the Critique of Pure Reason. But whether they really are inconsistencies and what they mean either way is up for debate. And this debate is not a waste of time as claimed by @Philosophim, but can reveal underlying insights struggling to break through.

Generally, @Philosophim's philosophical attitude is instrumental and biased in favour of the present. I don't think these are good attitudes for philosophy. Philosophy is interpretive, and consists of dialogue, whether this is direct or in the form of written works reacting to each other.

It is also meant to be reflective. The tempting attitude that you know better than the ancients is a distinctly unreflective one. To think of the philosophers of the past as merely less advanced stages on the road to the present unreflectively favours one's own contingent conceptual framework without trying to inhabit that of the past: what seems obvious to you now may only seem so because of transient ideologies and conceptual habits. For example, the idea that consciousness is located in the head may seem obvious, but it's built on a whole host of historically mediated metaphysical commitments which might be wrong. The presumption that present-day thinking supplies the standard of truth is a fallacy.

The result of all this is that the interpretation of significant thinkers becomes impoverished. You cannot expect to find much in philosophy if you feel yourself to be in a privileged position, surveying the intellectual landscape from the highest point yet achieved. This kind of interpretation is hardly interpretation at all; it is projection, not understanding.

As I said, another problem with this view is its instrumentalism, the idea that old philosophers are only good insofar as we can productively and efficiently and without much labour put them to good use. This is a philosophy of capitalism, plainly. Again, where is the reflection here?

Aristotle basically was the first of the Greeks to lay down our modern scientific process (feel free to attack and debate this...). — ProtagoranSocratist

I think I heard most say Hobbes laid down the foundations of Modern Science.

With writing in general, I think the most popular principal is concision: you try to take something you write and remove as many words as possible, getting a similar message across. However, many would argue that such an approach doesn't always work, especially when describing something complex. — ProtagoranSocratist

I agree. I like the way Kant put it in COPR (not that I memorised verbatim). He said in trying to say somethign precisely we can make it fairly obtuse. I also like Husserl's approach about diving into the 'obvious'.

If possible I think a multifacted approach is best. Be both concise and then back it up with greater detail where needed. I think of Heidegger here, as for me he wasted a lot of paper explaining concepts I already took to be obvious. I am certain there are texts out there I woudl read and need greater detail where others would not. This is just the nature of our own individual starting points.

To make the question more direct and concrete, what philosophy writing will make your writing survive better through the ages, what philosophy writing will receive little in the way of fame, praise, or hostility? — ProtagoranSocratist

All I can say abotu this is that people come along and generally change the landscape of philosophy a little by reiterating those who came before them more concisely OR by applying old ideas for modern application, which can reveal something of quite unique interest.

I feel where we are the moment is in a state where too many people have too narrow a field of interest. I think we need more of Berlin's 'Foxes' who have a more comprehensive overview of various subjects, rather than being confined to their own little corners--often oblivious to how misguided some of their thoughts are.

To look deeper into this I think takigna page from writers of fiction could be of extreme use. Neitzsche was someone who broke the mould in some ways, but sadly I think too many recently have tried to mimic his approach instead of doing how he instructed--to rise above and discover yourself beyond yourself.

Hegel's ideas accrued a lot of fame overtime, but what exactly can we make of such a complex and multi-dimensional proposition? For me, to really get this, i would have to break it down word-for-word and ask a ton of questions, even for this very small section. — ProtagoranSocratist

I’ve tried to read philosophy many times over the years, but whether it’s Nietzsche or Plato, I’ve never been able to make much sense of it or find it absorbing. Not everyone is suited to philosophy, and I’d say I’m one of those people. I’m here mainly to get a sense of what I’ve missed and to see what others think by putting forward questions that are sometimes naive and occasionally insolent. My framework is simple-minded curiosity, leaning toward modern secularism and perhaps a kind of unflinching instrumentalism. I have no problem being a creature of my times. :wink: