Episode 38 - Getting Angry Over Important Ideas Not Being Taught

Today I had an interesting conversation that in many respects was a repeat of a number of other conversations I've had in the past where there's a theme that comes up over and over again having to do with philosophy, but not just philosophy in the abstract. Particularly philosophy, we could say in its great thinkers, the ones who form a sort of canon in Western philosophy.

And that canon actually needs to be rather deep and broad and diverse. Otherwise, it's not really a canon. It's just kind of a little bit of a club that people like to hang out in. It would include people that come to mind like Plato and Aristotle and David Hume and Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant. But it should also include a whole host of thinkers from ancient, medieval, early modern, late modern philosophy. Probably it should be so extensive that any one given person would look at the list and say, oh wow, here's somebody on here who I haven't actually read, but maybe they're worth checking out.

Now coming back to the conversation, the thematic involved is that somebody says, wow, I didn't know that this kind of thought with its particular useful application was actually out there, or I didn't know that these thinkers who I've heard about actually had these really cool and interesting and potentially useful things to say.