End Of Philosophical Historiography - Hanno Sauer

One of the best papers I have ever read in my life, period. Sauer's piece now has a special place in my heart.

Ironically, serendipitously over time in my adulthood I have followed this paper at this point in my life. When Max came into my life, he shook my world and brought an eternal pleasant breeze to me. I got into serious reading to get answers for this wonderful change in my life. Inevitably, I read old philosophy but thankfully, I read new philosophy too. 

Hanno Sauer unpacks a moral argument for reading contemporary philosophy for one simple reason - they rectify all the errors in old philosophy by sheer acclamation of knowledge from the past centuries.  

This is the purpose of philosophy - the quest for understanding and knowledge and not just dwelling on thoughts of a person who lived a few millenniums ago. 

I highly recommend to read the whole paper, its enlightening: 

Physics is not taught or practiced by reading and interpreting Newton’s Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis, Geometry is not done by studying Euclid’s Elements, and so on. There may be some sort of fundamental difference between philosophy and physics or chemistry that accounts for this fact. The point is that historicists of philosophy owe us an explanation of what that difference is and why, in philosophy, things should stand so differently

To be perfectly clear: my claim is not that we should not be doing history of philosophy. There are all kinds of reasons why reading and talking about the Critique of Pure Reason or the Republic are worthwhile: studying these seminal texts is an inherently interesting intellectual pursuit; reading them is often tremendously enjoyable; and familiarity with these texts can be very valuable to intellectual historians for the insights into culture, knowledge and morality they may contain. There are thus many excellent reasons to engage with the history of philosophy. Gaining traction on the aforementioned philosophical problems, however, is not one of them. This means that I am not arguing against historians of philosophy and what they do, but against what could be called philosophical historicists, that is, those who seem to think that at least one good method of thinking about knowledge or justice is to study what historical authors have written about knowledge and justice a long time ago.

This, I argue, is a mistake.

[---]

Suppose, first, that philosophical competence is innate. In that case, we would assume that it is distributed more or less randomly, perhaps according to a natural lottery. If this were so, then the overwhelming majority of competent philosophers should be alive today. Statistically speaking, there should be ten individuals in present day Kaliningrad that are equally competent philosophers as Kant was. Let me emphasize that this is indeed what my argument entails. Likewise, Princeton or Zürich University now employ numerous physicists that are as good or better than Einstein was. This is not to say, of course, that Kant and Einstein weren’t philosophical or scientific geniuses of the highest rank that are only found very rarely in a generation, but merely that the state of the art of their disciplines, in no small part thanks to their own work, has undergone drastic improvements since their respective times. 

Now suppose that philosophical ability is acquired through training. If philosophical competence is learned, then the historically biased distribution is even more mysterious. Nowadays there are many, many more philosophers than 200 or 2000 years ago, and those philosophers encounter much, much better environments in which to hone their philosophical abilities.

What philosophical historicists are ultimately committed to is the idea that extremely small and underdeveloped societies with highly exclusive privileges of access to the relevant resources have produced much better philosophers than extremely large, globally interconnected and much more inclusive societies. This seems highly improbable. 

But if I am right, and the distribution of philosophical quality should, statistically speaking, be much more even-handed, then where are all the philosophical geniuses hiding? Where are the present day Ibn Rushds, the current Plotins and Feuerbachs, the contemporary Anselms, Brentanos and Schellings, the living, breathing Moores and Montaignes? There aren’t any, and this is probably a good thing. The existence of towering geniuses is almost always a sign that a discipline is still in the early stages of development and hasn’t reached a stage of maturity yet. Mature disciplines are characterized by a state of the art in their debates that simply cannot be overseen or dominated by any single mind. The absence of philosophical prodigies, rather than being evidence of decline, actually means that we’ve made it. 

A discipline that frequently produces singular geniuses hasn’t left its earlier phase of relative inchoateness yet. Serendipity may occasionally wrestle another Gauss or Einstein from the claws of nonexistence. But in general, modern scientific disciplines are so far developed to be beyond individual mastery. The list containing the most influential philosophers could be a simple statement of fact: Plato was de facto much more influential than any living person ever had the chance of becoming, since he had much more ample time to acquire such influence. This is indisputably true, but it doesn’t amount to a defense of philosophical historiography. If anything, it shows the opposite, namely that the attention historical authors receive today is unlikely to be due to epistemically relevant considerations, and rather due to the grace of an earlier birth. Perhaps the above list need not reflect unwarranted historicist prejudices as much as survivorship bias. 

[---]

The claim that historical philosophers have little of value to contribute to contemporary philosophy may seem disrespectful or even ungrateful to some. But I think the opposite is the case. That the historiography of philosophy – its historia rerum gestarum – is especially philosophically significant amounts to the thesis that the history of philosophy – its res gestae – was philosophically insignificant. To say that the great philosophers of the past remain relevant today is tantamount to saying that they have accomplished nothing of lasting value; that, in effect, there are no giants on whose shoulders we can stand. Physicists do not keep studying Newton’s Principia precisely because of what he has accomplished. The best way of respecting Newton is to ignore him – or, more precisely, to ignore his own writings in favor of the lasting results he produced, the substance of which can be paraphrased and taught – because the progress engendered by his work allows us to. The cure I am recommending is a healthy dose of historical amnesia to counterbalance the burden imposed by the weight of history. 

This cure was famously prescribed a long time ago by Nietzsche, one of history’s greatest philosophers, in his 1874 Untimely Meditations – which is ironic.

To be clear, Hanno Sauer is not recommending the current fad and stupidity of “cancel culture''.  This paper reminds us that we have finite time and we need to be prudent and wise not to spend too much time on outdated materials. 

There are a number of ways old books can still help us and future generations. For example:

• Even a rudimentary analysis of older texts could improve our "scale of gratitude" by proportions - how much knowledge we gained.
• It could help teach how time exposes the ludicrousness of "know-it-all" arrogance (Aristotle)
• It could help teach how time will vindicate humility and curiosity of "what do I know?" (Montaigne)

I came up with just a few of them in less than 2 mins. If we think hard, there could be a lot of good messages these old texts can bring. That would beneficial for society as a whole instead of passive nationalistic and cultural reading of old philosophers just because one's roots are from the West or Indian or Chinese.

My favorite lines from the paper have now become a great heuristic to gauge a discipline.

The existence of towering geniuses is almost always a sign that a discipline is still in the early stages of development and hasn’t reached a stage of maturity yet. Mature disciplines are characterized by a state of the art in their debates that simply cannot be overseen or dominated by any single mind.