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Comment by Rangi42 | Hacker News Reader

This list seems to exemplify Alfred Whitehead's statement that "the safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." (With many of those footnotes by Aristotle.)

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> is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato

It depends, really. As a Democritus fanboy I always take "offense" when hearing similar remarks, and I usually try (and fail) to make my point by offering a witty remark which might sound like Hobbes or Epicurus might have said it.

On a more serious note, this list is really bogus when it comes to "ancient Philosophy" because it ignores all the pre-Socratics. Ok, maybe some Sophists were not the most trust-worthy bunch of them all, but you cannot really omit Heraclitus or Democritus himself.

I completely agree on the pre-Socratic point. Where's my man Parmenides? But in fairness, many pre-Socratic works are so fragmentary that it's difficult to even consider them works, nevermind philosophical works. Thus they typically fall under the purview of Classics departments. It's unfortunate that they're not taught more broadly and in a context that's more appropriate to their subject, but Classicists are probably the best equipped to handle these authors, given how time has present them to us.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but don't most of what we know about pre-Socratic philosophers come from secondary texts reporting on these philosophers' views? If so, then it will be difficult to consider these texts that have informed us about these authors as philosophical texts themselves.

For the most part, yes. Some fragments survived, but the majority of what we know about the pre-Socratics has been filtered through later doxographical works. While it certainly isn't optimal, together there's certainly enough of an understanding of the majority of the pre-Socratics to discuss them in a philosophical context without relegating them to Classics departments. Particularly given their relation to later thinkers. If you're interested, this article is an interesting place to start:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doxography-ancient/

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