Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
As I said in an early post, philosophers accept a genealogical structure. Whoever are my influences are my parents. Such that there is a tree. I bet one could find some of these on google. There was one a student made in the graduate lounge.
So each thinker, you, me, anyone, has a branch to which they belong, off that tree. Some branches are more revered, famous, accepted. Some are sort of in the back, in the garage [in analogy, like a garage band]. Scn is sort of fringe on that tree. A suspect branch at least that has no impact on the history of philosophy to mention.
Oh! I just thought of something neat.
A way to think of philosophers and what they do.
Philosophy is an eristic (think gymnastic) and agonistic (argumentative) SPORT. It is FUN.
When someone studies philosophy it is akin to learning chess or wrestling. One learns the moves and plays.
One also studies the History of Philosophy and learns all the plays that are important in the history of philosophy.
So it's not only learning to philosophize but also learning all the attempts to philosophize (studying the games played by the masters).
The history of philosophy allows on to play very well.
Not all students in philosophy specialize in both of those. I happen to have specialized in history of philosophy and when I was working, it was what I taught.
I used to mostly teach my students: how to argue, how to read the argument of others and zero in on it, and how to do that in context of the history of philosophy.
That is war strategy: to see all the philosophical arguments is a cool thing. I tried to show that to my students so they could learn to make their own arguments.
I would debate them, destroy them, and they loved it and worked hard to counter me. They learned a lot doing that.
It was SO MUCH MORE fun than bullbaiting or TRs.
In fact, it is TRs at mach 10!!!!
