Comment by bobthechef | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobthechef | Hacker News Reader

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> I guess what rubs me slightly the wrong way about this list is it seems focused on "who said what, and when" and not necessarily what's true.

There is some merit to this observation. Frederick Wilhelmsen[0] criticized Great Books for this reason, that not only was it selective and culturally restricted, but that it tends to degenerate into a he-said-she-said sort of relativism and leave it at that with no real finality to the whole thing. (Some will likely counter that philosophy isn't about the truth but considering "ideas", but that's nonsense. If we consider ideas, it is only because we are trying to determine if they're true and no other reason.)

Incidentally, it did not escape my notice that medieval philosophy appears nowhere on this list. This is preposterous. To venture from the ancients to the moderns while skipping over Scholasticism is lunacy. I don't necessarily blame the author. There may be a general ignorance and silence about the medieval period at may universities.

[0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/09/great-books-e...

> Incidentally, it did not escape my notice that medieval philosophy appears nowhere on this list.

A more careful reading will show that Anthony Kenny's Medieval Philosophy appears in two different positions on the list, under Histories of Philosophy and under Electives. There's also another medieval text listed which I'm not familiar with that includes readings from the familiar trifecta of Aquinas, Augustine, and Scotus among others.

> If we consider ideas, it is only because we are trying to determine if they're true and no other reason.

I hope this is a definitional quibble (a poorly thought out one, I think) about what it means to be doing "philosophy" and not literally a statement of what you believe to be true. If we observe fallacious or false ideas popping up in literature or culture it's normal to do some work trying to understand the thinking that brings those about. That is work that has nothing to do with determining those ideas' truth or falsehood, which we've already decided upon.

Agree. I sort of understand why though - we live in a religious plurality. Secular themes are the safe area. You say Scholasticism, I say the Eastern ancient Holy Fathers, another person would say Buddhist teachings, another Hindu teachings and yoga.

In a way, the major accomplishment of today's philosophy curriculum is showing that it is not sufficient. I'm sort of okay with this :-)

> There may be a general ignorance and silence about the medieval period at may universities.

Or an outright hostility toward Christian philosophy. St. Augustine[1] is conspicuously absent there as well and he’s certainly not medieval.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/

Well, most of the claims and structures of that period have been discredited. We do talk about them a little, but mostly in the same way as the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers: They were wrong, and it's interesting to examine how they were wrong.

That isn't true, but I'm not surprised that's what you learned at a typical university.

I gave you all weekend -- Friday, Saturday, and Sunday -- and you didn't reply with actual evidence. So, let's actually see what Christian philosophers have given us.

For starters, they all assume Jehovah exists, or seek to prove he exists. However, we have falsifications for most of the claims of Jehovah:

* Egyptology disproves the Exodus

* The Documentary Hypothesis disproves inspiration of the holy texts

* Quantum mechanics disproves omnipotence and omniscience

So the field of Christian philosophy is built upon sand which has already been washed away; the foundations already collapsed. How about the main philosophers?

* Aquinas just parroted Aristotle

* Augustine claimed that war can be justified and that souls exist

* Erasmus didn't really say anything of note

* Ockham gave us tools for breaking out of Christianity!

The main contribution of Christian philosophy to the rest of philosophy is the confirmation that Jehovah is an epistemic dead end.

> I gave you all weekend -- Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

That's quite generous of you. In the spirit of charity I'll reciprocate and then some. I'm going to give you the rest of your life to learn why love of God and love of wisdom are duals. Don't worry, given your obvious philosophical immaturity I don't expect you to figure it out anytime soon, but I honestly hope that you do in good time. A good place to start would be a deeper study of the three normative sciences: ethics, aesthetics, and logic. Respectively they can be thought of as the sciences of what is good, what is beautiful, and what is true. Pay particular attention to their necessary premises. As with all human understanding, they are subject to confusion, so be very sure to keep your thoughts both clear and distinct.

As for your particular examples, they are one and all either nonsense or irrelevant. One thing that Aristotle taught us is that there are persons who cannot be educated, only persuaded. Try not to be one of them.

I gave you three days to rise, but your words are still impotent. Read a book besides the Bible already.

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