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Mila Taylor's avatar

I am amazed. I am eager to read this book. Awesome review. This book asks the same question as I do on my https://philosophyessay.org/ blog. You are always welcome there.

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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Maybe Strauss since he is pretty damn esoteric (or just confused) himself but generally that's crazy. The interpreted ideas are always the better ones to read.

Do you read Newton in the original? What about Leibniz's work on calculus. How about Kepler? Or even Gauss. What about ancient alchemists?

Don't you find it really really weird that in mathematics or the empirical sciences even when truly monumental genius exists (Gauss, Newton etc..) but we have the best ability to actively check people's understanding (they prove true results or predict physical events correctly) we have universally abandoned reading the original authors?

Why? Well no matter how smart you are you are still human and sometimes just didn't think things through or said dumb shit, e.g., despite inventing the calculus Newton got the product rule wrong. These errors and missteps can be noticed and corrected by far less amazing minds than the originator so why read things littered with errors and misstatements rather than just the parts that panned out?

Moreover, better ways to present and understand a given idea inevitably emerge only after it is investigated and explored at greater length. Coming up with calculus, gravity etc.. required a genius on Newton's scale but it wasn't until later that we learned how best to present and understand his ideas. Remember the progenitor of the novel idea still has in his head all the missteps and misconceptions that prevented it's early recognition and dogged his first attempts. Only in light of the right answer does it become easier to conceptualize it and explain it most clearly.

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Most importantly, however, is the fact that the popular ancient writers have been read and considered by so many bright minds over the years. If all of them didn't understand an idea from the ancient, and say so in a way that, in clear understandable prose, provides good reason to think it is correct, over all those intervening years it is surely less productive to try and extract some idea all those other smart people missed than just thinking up things on your own. Plato wasn't a god only a smart man and if 2,000 years of other smart men haven't been able to explicate what he said in a convincing non-obscure fashion then YOU won't have the magical key to doing so. So simply read the people who aren't super confusing or who haven't had time to be properly understood yet if you want to reach truth.

If you really care about the truth you don't care if Plato thought it or some other guy. Given the number of books of Plato interpretation published do you really think you are the ONE destined to find the hidden gem of truth that everyone else has failed to pull out of his ideas and into modern understandable presentation?

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Now sure, certain disciplines and scholars are quite suspect in their approach. But if you don't care whether Plato said it it is always easier to evaluate truth when it is said quite clearly in a way accessible to current thinkers/readers.

So unless you really believe you are the only truth-seeker out there surely you can dig out the non-politicized modern writers and read them. If you can't tell why assume Plato isn't just as much a politicized hack.

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