Why there are not great philosophers like Aristotle or Plato anymore?

What do you seek from philosophy, OP? All the wisdom of a philosopher can be gained from spending time around virtuous, hard-working, pious people. Hellenistic metaphysics were always about understanding the nature of morality and arriving at virtue; physics and arithmetic were always secondary. The Bible provides far more robust metaphysics than Plato or Aristotle, because it offers physical, concrete salvation rather than mere intellectual enlightenment; as long as one clings to Christ, he has outgrown the need for secular philosophy.

The greats are still around, OP. St. Joseph the Hesychast, St. Sophrony of Essex, and St. Silouan the Athonite all lived in the 20th century.
 
Byung-Chul Han and Nick Land are the closest to great philosophers today that I know of, if you're interested you can pick up their work. Han is more accessible than Land, but I consider the latter far more interesting.

However, just like how 99% of people clicking on this thread would never have heard of these men, you can assume that most contemporary Greeks knew very little about their great philosophers too. The ones that did achieve fame in their time were extraordinary characters like Socrates, who made a name for himself in the Peloponnesian War and then in Athenian society through his actions. Most great philosophers throughout history who did not do this were only really considered by other scholars and if they were lucky to be born in an intellectual society, by interested royals. This is pretty much the case today as well. Maybe a few centuries later, if their work survived, another society may find more meaning in their work and make it popular in their colleges, like the Romans did with Aristotle.

Even disregarding all that, there are very few periods and places in history where all the conditions are right for an environment where there can be this kind of free thought, debate (as in writing books against other books, not IBS), and captive audiences all at once, and though they obviously correspond with prosperity and military success, it also requires a disregard of politics, financial interests, and a preexisting history of literature and at least oral education that create the necessary conditions for intellectual honesty, interest in philosophy and science, and most importantly a fascination for ideas for their own sake. Sumer, Athens, Taxila, London, Weimar, Chicago, these are the few places throughout history that come to mind at the moment.

A pre-existing theology or literary output is also ideal, since it forms a basis for philosophers to argue against and expand upon.

Currently, I can't think of any similar place where all these conditions exist for great philosophers to be recognized and appreciated, and as such, the best you can do is go down rabbit holes until you find the few that have managed to still find success or at least have got their work out regardless. Sometimes even in periods like these great minds are born, only to be forgotten until someone discovers them out of nowhere, like Giambattista Vico until The New Science was made popular by James Joyce and other scholars decades later.
 
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There are but we don't appreciate their wisdom and instead call them retards, only the history which is written by the right side will validate their greatness, probably decades after they die.
 
Really smart people (150+ IQ) are usually discovered by the feds in grade school and are siphoned into their indoctrination pipeline as soon as possible. Free college, taught all about that diversity, equity, and inclusion. and then given a cushy job in the feds, tech, science, wherever they are best fit.
 
Really smart people (150+ IQ) are usually discovered by the feds in grade school and are siphoned into their indoctrination pipeline as soon as possible. Free college, taught all about that diversity, equity, and inclusion. and then given a cushy job in the feds, tech, science, wherever they are best fit.
And if they don't comply...well...you see how Terry Davis turned out.
 
Nigga have you not heard of Rene Girard? Maybe log off of Facebook and Kiwifarms. You’re not gonna find them there.







Bitch ass fag.
 
If you’re looking for someone who had a huge influence on science, culture, and government, it’s unfortunately people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk that probably qualify.
 
They were neither the first nor considered the greatest at their time, and most dissent and commentaries on them are lost to time. Plato got dunked on by Diogenes. Think of any modern and post-modern philosopher, see how wacky and crazy they are, and realize that sophistry has existed from the beginning of time. I consider Jordan Peterson a modern Socrates, complete with incomprehensible rambling and drugs, except he’ll be way less influential in the very near future.
 
I consider Jordan Peterson a modern Socrates, complete with incomprehensible rambling and drugs, except he’ll be way less influential in the very near future
He is far too concillatory to be a modern socrates, and he also doesn't really offer any new ideas, like the other contemporaries that have been named in this thread. I don't know why people put them on the same level as the giants whose shoulders we are standing on.

These ancient examples had a number of bad ideas between them, but they had a good number of original ideas, or at least, first recorded under their name.

I struggle to name even one idea pioneered by someone like Jordan Peterson. He is more like neil degrasse tyson, someone who brings some academia to the people outside the ivory tower. Although perhaps that is too hogh praise of NDT.
 
He is far too concillatory to be a modern socrates, and he also doesn't really offer any new ideas, like the other contemporaries that have been named in this thread. I don't know why people put them on the same level as the giants whose shoulders we are standing on.

These ancient examples had a number of bad ideas between them, but they had a good number of original ideas, or at least, first recorded under their name.

I struggle to name even one idea pioneered by someone like Jordan Peterson. He is more like neil degrasse tyson, someone who brings some academia to the people outside the ivory tower. Although perhaps that is too hogh praise of NDT.
I keep it fixed in my head that any great philosopher is essentially Jordan Peterson and I find it grounds them enough in reality not to be swept away by their ideas. To paraphrase an often misattributed quote “an educated man can entertain a thought without making it his own”.
 
I struggle to name even one idea pioneered by someone like Jordan Peterson. He is more like neil degrasse tyson, someone who brings some academia to the people outside the ivory tower. Although perhaps that is too hogh praise of NDT.
To be fair, Peterson did do some original work in psychology (Maps of Meaning), expanding on Jung. He's just not a philosopher though, more just an academic who had finished his best work, and abandoned teaching to do motivational speaking and writing, and political activism. He's more like Tony Robbins or Eckhart Tolle, with a personal interest in philosophy and catholic theology.
 
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To be fair, Peterson did do some original work in psychology (Maps of Meaning), expanding on Jung. He's just not a philosopher though, more just an academic who had finished his best work, and abandoned teaching to do motivational speaking and writing, and political activism. He's more like Tony Robbins or Eckhart Tolle, with a personal interest in philosophy and catholic theology.
Maps of meaning gave me nothing useful to improve my thinking. To be fair, neither did Plato, but most of the philosophers of old gave me plenty to chew on that also improved my heuristics. Even a couple of pages of Aristotle already allowed me to resolve conundrums that I couldn't previously resolve.

The reason I posted it because I was hoping someone could point to something they had learned from Peterson that was useful and also new, rather than just popularized by him.
 
Maps of meaning gave me nothing useful to improve my thinking. To be fair, neither did Plato, but most of the philosophers of old gave me plenty to chew on that also improved my heuristics. Even a couple of pages of Aristotle already allowed me to resolve conundrums that I couldn't previously resolve.

The reason I posted it because I was hoping someone could point to something they had learned from Peterson that was useful and also new, rather than just popularized by him.
I suppose I wasn't clear in my previous post, I meant to seperate Maps of Meaning from his motivational career, because I consider a work on psychology and Jungian theory rather than philosophy, you're not really meant to fix your life or understand the world better with it, it's ultimately just Peterson's theories on dream analysis and other subjects. And yes, his motivational work is really all just age-old advice. The only things I found valuable even as a teenager reading 12 rules was his personal life stories lol
 
Maps of meaning gave me nothing useful to improve my thinking. To be fair, neither did Plato, but most of the philosophers of old gave me plenty to chew on that also improved my heuristics. Even a couple of pages of Aristotle already allowed me to resolve conundrums that I couldn't previously resolve.

The reason I posted it because I was hoping someone could point to something they had learned from Peterson that was useful and also new, rather than just popularized by him.
Honestly Peterson was important in my journy, i can't explain in words how useful he was but watching him is pretty important for me as he managed to make my life less sufferable in general.

 
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Honestly Peterson was important in my journy
So was my doctor, or I might not have been able to speak again.

If you can't articulate which ideas he helped with, he probably didn't help with ideas. If he didn't help with ideas, he doesn't fit in this thread about philosophers.
 
So was my doctor, or I might not have been able to speak again.

If you can't articulate which ideas he helped with, he probably didn't help with ideas. If he didn't help with ideas, he doesn't fit in this thread about philosophers.
He gave me some incomprehensible meaning about life in general and some good thoughts of his interpretations of the bible and some Good information about God and the list is big
 
He gave me some incomprehensible meaning about life in general and some good thoughts of his interpretations of the bible and some Good information about God and the list is big
It sounds more like you found meaning than ideas. Because ideas, by their nature, only have value if they are understood. If they're understood, they can be described. If it's incomprehensible, it's more akin to religion. I am religious, I'm not intending this as downtalking to you. But it's not really part of philosophy, a love of knowledge, not even really theology, because that too is an endeavor of understanding,

In other words, I'm glad you found meaning man, but what does this have to do with philosophy?
 
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