Talk:History of philosophy

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Split again

note

Okay, I've given the section on Western philosophy a quick once-over. I did my best to explain edits in the description fields, but please just tag me if anything is unclear or seems wrong.

You're not consistent between "pre-Socratics" and "Presocratics." I'd incline towards the former, but I don't know which (if either) is best practice. Whatever you decide, just Cnt-A and standardize.

It would also be nice to have something on how the analytic-Continental distinction largely fell apart in the late 20th century and is no longer operative in most circles today. But that can, of course, be added later. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

@PatrickJWelsh: Thanks for all the thoughtful improvements! Many of these things are easily missed if one just follows the standard overview sources. I went with "Presocratic" since this spelling seems to be favored by our sources and Google Ngram. The decline of the analytic-continental divide was also my impression. But I'm not sure that it is generally accepted. See, for example, the first sentence of .
I've two points regarding your changes:
  1. I think it should be mentioned that Plato's Academy and other schools had to close at the start of the medieval period. It underlines the socio-cultural climate of that age and the role of religion. You are right that it was not Church itself that shut them down. What do you think about the following sentence that makes this more explicit: "The Christian Emperor Justinian forced schools of philosophy, such as Plato's Academy, to close." (Grayling 2019: Plato’s Academy (the ‘School of Athens’) was closed by the Emperor Justinian in 529 CE, along with a general ban on the teaching of philosophy because it conflicted with Christianity.; From Blackson 2011: By convention ancient philosophy ends in 529 when the Christian Emperor Justinian prohibited pagans from teaching in the schools)
  2. Since Hegel is the most important German idealist, I think we should have a sentence or two to give a very rough overview of his philosophy. What do you think of the following: "For him, the unifying principle was spirit. He tried to show how various aspects of concrete reality can be understood as a manifestation of spirit." (from Critchley 2001: unifying principle ... For Hegel, it was the notion of Spirit; from Kenny 2006: Cosmic history, according to Hegel, consists in the life story of spirit(Geist). The internal development of spirit manifests itself in concrete reality.) But you are probably better versed in Hegel so I'm open to other suggestions.
Phlsph7 (talk) 08:13, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Phlsph7, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. To your points:
0) The decline of the analytic-continental divide is widely, though not universally, accepted. But you are right, of course, that it should be so qualified and needs a source with a good discussion of this vexed (and ultimately, I think, philosophically unimportant) distinction in academic philosophy.
1) I did not realize that! By all means do include.
2) I'll write a sentence or two on Hegel to add.
3) I changed a few of your numerals to spelled out numbers because in all the styles I know you're not supposed to start a sentence with a digit. Wikipedia, though, might have a different policy, in which case that should probably be followed. I don't think it will bother readers either way.
Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:45, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
I tried to circumvent the numeral problem by reformulating the expressions so we follow general style guidelines and have consistency. The new text on Hegel is helpful. Do you have page numbers for Beiser 1987 (source for the text on Kant) and Houlgate 2005 (source for the text on Hegel)? On a short look, the criticism of Kant's dualism should be covered by the pages 8-15 in Beiser and the role of freedom in Hegel is found on page 181 in Houlgate. But I'm not sure about the other claims. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:19, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
The Hegel source is the whole book. Houlgate does an admirable job of showing how the concepts of freedom, truth, and history (which make up his subtitle) provide the unifying through-line of Hegel's thought, which he explicates in a linear fashion at an advanced introductory level over the course of the book.
The Beiser citation is not quite so clear cut because the history is so much more confusing (too many people, too frequently revising their own positions). I can add another monograph, however, that foregrounds these issues even more than Beiser. A more specific citation, though, would have to be something like p.x and passim, which is frankly useless. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:04, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
I would like to nominate the article for GA once all the main work is done. I don't think the reviewer will be particularly pleased if I tell them that they have to read 332 page book to verify those 3 sentences on Hegel. I'll go on a little reference hunting to see what I can find. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:02, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
I found passages to support most of the claims. But we may have to change the phrase philosophy, the aim of which, he claimed, is a self-transparent knowing of what knowledge is unless we can determine what supports this. According to Illetterati & Miolli 2021, maybe we could use something like the following: philosophy, the aim of which, he claimed, is a form of self-knowledge characterized by the identity of subject and object. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:06, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
I just remembered one more point: should we spell out centuries (first century, twentieth century) or use the short form (1st century, 20th century)? The articles History and History of science use the short form. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:22, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

a shorter lead

women in philosophy

Main studies of thought

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


This review is transcluded from Talk:History of philosophy/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: SilverTiger12 (talk · contribs) 00:00, 1 March 2024 (UTC)


Heyla! I'll take this one. SilverTiger12 (talk) 00:00, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello SilverTiger12 and thanks for doing this review! Phlsph7 (talk) 09:31, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@SilverTiger12, are you returning to this review soon? Generally, comments from the reviewer should be wrapped up in about a week. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:16, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I've been busy in real life and it sucks. SilverTiger12 (talk) 21:03, 21 March 2024 (UTC)


Sorry for the wait, real life happens. Beginning with the lede:

  • The lede is good, and the lede image is an excellent selection of influential philosophers from around the world.
  • The first section, Definition and related disciplines, is a bit of a wall of text but I can't really see a way to make it less so.
  • My first big question is why is this article split into sections based on traditions and not purely chronological?
    There are different ways to organize the topics and I don't think there is only one "right" way. An important reason for organizing the article into traditions is that the main traditions developed mostly independently of each other and a substantial interaction between them is a very recent phenomenon. One possible exception may be the relation between Western and Arabic–Persian philosophy. This approach is also followed by several reliable sources, such as the series A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps and Grayling 2019. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
    Well, if that's what the sources prefer. SilverTiger12 (talk) 03:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
    @SilverTiger12, do you have further comments and feedback for the nominator? If you no longer have time to review the article, that's not a problem, but this review should be closed and the nomination should go back in the pool to be picked up. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:06, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
    The scope of the article might justify taking longer than the 7-day recommendation but it has been almost a month now. I would feel bad about closing the review if SilverTiger12 has already written the major part of the review offline and just needs to add their comments here. But otherwise, it might be best to close the review, increment the page number of the GA talk page template by one, and send the article back to the pool. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:25, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
    Sorry. I've been reading this article off and on when I can-this month has been hell for me in other ways, which is why I suddenly vanished from Wikipedia. Ultimately, I can't find any major issues I have with this article though, and I am genuinely sorry it took the entire month to reach this point where I am comfortable passing this article. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 05:35, 1 April 2024 (UTC)


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