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Comment by _yb2s | Hacker News Reader

> the view that philosophy is supposed to be therapeutic

I think this is what is missing from most modern philosophy, that makes it so easy to dismiss as useless. In Ancient Greece most of the philosophers were strong people, that had personally done great things, or endured incredible hardships with the aid of their philosophy, and these real world tests stood as evidence of its value.

People strove to become a Stoic because the people they admired most in life had been guided by it.

I think philosophy ideas can and do have the ability to prove their own utility in the real world. To the extent that modern philosophy has mostly failed to do so, is probably because it is either wrong and/or useless, OR is just not developed far enough to get to that point.

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> In Ancient Greece most of the philosophers were strong people, that had personally done great things, or endured incredible hardships with the aid of their philosophy, and these real world tests stood as evidence of its value.

Are you just describing Stoicism here? The only "strong man" ancient philosopher I can think of is Marcus Aurelius (not Greek, incidentally). Plato's Republic didn't come from his experience as a statesman. Aristotle's Metaphysics wasn't "proven to have utility in the real world." These people were very much "ivory tower" figures.

Yes, I am mostly talking about Stoicism, but the older philosophers that the Stoics revered like Socrates were often discussed or admired by Stoics more in the context of their personal lives, rather than their philosophy.

Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato were all soldiers or military leaders. Epictetus was a slave that was crippled from abuse. Viktor Frankl and James Stockdale are both fairly modern people that survived extreme hardship using stoic ideas.

That seems to be an argument also for religion. Plenty of people also survived extreme hardship using their beliefs.

Not saying there is anything wrong with this thesis, but I want to point out that this is not what philosophy usually thinks of itself, and it may not transfer. The philosophy the helped X may not help Y under similar circumstances.

I think the lines between a practical philosophy, a religion, and a psychotherapy technique are pretty blurry. In ancient Greece and Rome, people would often identify with a philosophical school in the same way people identify with religions nowadays, choose them based on the practical benefits, and practice them as a lifestyle or religion (instead of just conceptual understanding).

I don't think it's mysterious or hard to predict where techniques from a philosophy or religion will be useful in real life, and where they will not... it's pretty easy to understand what they are, and how they apply. Modern therapy techniques like CBT, ACT, and Mindfulness therapy are pretty much just extracting these ancient ideas and practices in a systematic way, so they can study the effects clinically and actually be able to say in which real world context they are reliably useful.

Wasn't Plato a wrestler who would occasionally win arguments by just flexing? Or have I been mislead by internet pop culture...? :P

He was a wrestler of some renown in his youth and his coach nicknamed him 'Platon,' after his size or big shoulders (depending on who's telling it). Winning arguments by flexing is apocryphal, as far as I know.

It also doesn't really sound out of character, in a general sense. It's not like being an ancient philosopher also meant you didn't have a sense of humour (assuming the flexing was humour, if true).

I don't think there are philosophic problems that require strength. There are pessimistic misconceptions indeed, but therapy here is finding optimistic truth, then there's no reason for pessimism anymore.

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