Template talk:Ancient Greek schools of philosophy

Some proposals

• First: Change name to to "Hellenistic philosophy", so as to better cover Roman-era philosophers as well as Greek
• Second: Add section a section on concepts (a là Chinese & Indian philosophy templates.
• Third: Add section on major philosophers, separating them from the schools.

Thoughts? Dan Cottrell (talk) 18:29, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Prelimary list: Nous, Doxa, Logos, Arche, Apeiron (cosmology), Henosis, Demiurge, Episteme, Katalepsis, Apatheia, Ataraxia, Adiaphora, Epoché. Additions? Substractions? Dan Cottrell (talk) 18:40, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to add these concepts and a few major philosophers. I would still love input. Dan Cottrell (talk) 20:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Major changes from Carchasm

Carchasm, those are some awfully major changes you've implemented. A discussion seems warranted. Teishin (talk) 00:10, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't see how you can claim that the Peripatetic school is Hellenistic and not Socratic.

Philosophy in this era is usually classified by when it originated, not when particular philosophers in those traditions lived.

We seem to have an established practice of listing all of the philosophers we have articles about. Judging who is most important makes things more difficult. Teishin (talk) 00:17, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

If there is an established practice I'll certainly defer to prior consensus here, but I'd note that the list as it was before is certainly not every philosopher we have an article on - a lot of the presocratic philosophers who have Dielz-Kranz numbers and articles about them are certainly missing, and I'm sure there are others in the other sections. I wouldn't want to infer the established practice though - was this ever discussed by any of the relevant wikiprojects, that you're aware of? Even so, WP:NAVBOX suggests that only philosophers who have a given navbox on their page should be listed in the navbox, which wasn't the case here. While that might justify adding the navbox to those pages, I'd like to state that it's clear that this template hasn't been regularly maintained, which I think justifies taking WP:BOLD action to improve it.

I'd also caution against being overly cautious or change-averse here - it certainly merits discussion if you disagree, but a lot of articles on this topic were imported in via Britannica and have not seen any major revisions since, so if your only objection is that the changes are major I think it's best to revert back to what I had - a maintained list is certainly better than one that's been let adrift. - car chasm (talk) 01:09, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Carchasm I don't have a complaint about engaging in WP:BOLD here. Just now that it's been done I see a number of things that seem to me to be issues.

It's true that in the area of ancient philosophy we have quite a few pages that are little changed from the 1911 Britannica and we just haven't had editors interested in them enough to improve them. I'm just concerned here about subjective evaluations.

It's also true that how to organize this material thematically and chronologically is disputed on several issues. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have organized this the way it had been, but it's also true that there are more-or-less "received" ways to do it, although these tend to have some internal inconsistency. (N.b., I follow some ancient doxographers whose major divisions were Early/Physicists, Classical, and Hellenistic - although not with those terms. And, Democritus is Classical, not Pre-Socratic. Hellenistic and Classical are subdivided between Socratic and Democritean. This is not, however, a generally received view these days due to the influence of Plato's view.)

On Peripatetic, I normally see it classified as Socratic or Classical. OTOH, it is listed among philosophies active during the Hellenistic era, but then that requires all of the other Socratic/Classical philosophies to be listed as well, which is a much different organization than before or proposed.

Re Roman, while for chronological purposes such a designation is useful, Roman era philosophy was simply a continuation, not a classification, except within Stoicism as there were meaningful differences between the Greek and Roman era versions of the philosophy. I not only don't think it is a useful categorization, my observation is that it is seldom used except in chronological narratives.

I suggest replacing Socratic (on the template both before and after changes) with "Classical" linking to Ancient_Greek_philosophy#Classical_Greek_philosophy Teishin (talk) 16:39, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that we need to do subjective evaluations, but I am worried about putting too much weight on ancient doxographers - WP:V is a content policy so we need to make these sorts of decisions based on the consensus of reliable secondary sources, and not try to interpret people like Diogenes Laertius ourselves. Democritus, for example, is a pre-socratic philosohper in every scholarly source since Dielz-Kranz - this isn't really up for negotiation on here unless you can point to reliable academic sources that say differently.

I have to say I'm a little concerned here that you're interpreting ancient sources yourself. Even if you feel that you have the expertise to do so, you should really find academic sources that back up your conclusions. - car chasm (talk) 17:08, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Carchasm, it is you who has engaged in WP:BOLD here, not me. Just because I happen to mention parenthetically, in the context of the various ways that this material is typically organized, that I personally prefer one of the less-used organizations, it should be noted that I have made many edits to this template over the years and at no point have I ever implemented the organization I personally prefer, nor did I present it here as a proposal. I presented it in the context of pointing out that there are several ways this material gets organized, as part of an explanation about distinctions between "Socratic" and "Classical" and "Greek" and "Roman" as a way of outlining key elements of the organizational issues here. So, I am more than "a little concerned" that you should be criticizing me here for "interpreting ancient sources myself" for such a parenthetical comment while simultaneously ignoring the actual issues I raised, particularly so by adding the claim that "every scholarly source since Dielz-Kranz" does it such-and-such way apparently oblivious to the fact that this categorization is controversial, as attested in our very own article on the subject Pre-Socratic_philosophy#Terminology. The IEP says so, too https://iep.utm.edu/presocra/ . So, I suggest you not entrench yourself with claims such as "this isn't really up for negotiation".

So, let's talk about the Peripatetics. Classifying them as "Hellenistic" seems idiosyncratic for a template where the other choice is "Socratic." Would you care to justify that? Teishin (talk) 12:39, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Teishin: - I agree with what you proposed on the peripatetics - I checked in A.A. Long's Hellenistic philosophy and it notes that by 272 BC, the peripatetic school was essentially defunct - so they excluded it from that volume. Renaming "socratic" to "classical" seems to be the best way to prevent confusion: I haven't encountered a source that calls Aristotle "socratic" (though there probably are some) but we agree he is "classical" and I have no doubt we can support that with citations of there's disagreement. But I'm making this decision based on what reliable sources say. The IEP - as you cited, also does concede that democritus is considered pre-Socratic, and that detail about him only being born about a year before socrates is a thing that should probably be on his page if it's not already. The Loeb classical library even categorizes socrates himself as an "early greek philosopher" along with all the pre-socratics, but I think that "pre-socratic" is going to win any debate based on WP:COMMONNAME there. I followed Loeb in my organization of those, which I think i put in my edit summary.

But in general, I'd say I'm going to insist on citation of sources for everything discussed here. Most of the information on pre-socratic philosophy was copied from 1911 Britannica or other sources. As someone with a copy of the Loeb, as well as the oxford and cambridge companions, I can assure you that WP:BOLD is the right general approach here - basically everything wikipedia has on this whole field of study is terribly out of date, misleading, wrong, immoral, fattening, etc. If you don't have any non-open access sources, I agree IEP and SEP are (usually) fine for validation of facts as well, and usually written by the people who wrote the secondary sources. I do rarely encounter articles there that appear the author had a bone to pick with the subject, but that can be handled as it happens.

The idea of splitting Classical into "Socratic" and "democritean" though seems to be fairly original - I don't think there's much room at all for "following ancient doxographers" unless that's what the "received" view is. You're certainly entitled to your own opinion and interpretation on anything, I just don't think that belongs on a discussion about wikipedia content: it distracts from the main point which is that we should reflect the verifiable academic consensus from published, reliable secondary sources. This is the reason for my initial stubbornness here - if you're willing to drop your own personal interpretations at least for the purposes of discussion I'm much more willing to negotiate based on what the actual academic consensus is.

I can find more sources on Roman vs Hellenistic but I think there's more division there based on practicality in the sources I've seen - Hellenistic vs. Roman or Hellenistic vs. Late Antique. It's not like pre-Socratic where the sources do it the same way even if they grumble over the name "pre-socratic" - car chasm (talk) 17:18, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

What I'm trying to point out is that major elements of whatever classification scheme used here are contested. The idea that one can find some "reliable source" that's going to settle this matter is a fool's errand.

I don't get why you are so attached to critiquing my parenthetical comment about an alternative way "Classical" has been subdivided. It may strike you as original because you don't concern yourself much with Democritean philosophy, but we have ancient sources that follow this classification and we have modern discussions on the treatment of Democritean thought that point this issue out. I just brought up the point to underscore that all possible classification schemes are contentious. I further take issue to being chastised for simply pointing this matter out by way of example. Quoting you: "I just don't think that belongs on a discussion about wikipedia content: it distracts from the main point which is that we should reflect the verifiable academic consensus from published, reliable secondary sources."

As for the Peripatetics, while it's true that the Peripatetic school became defunct at one point, it was later revived. Dealing with this matter is one of the problems of organizing chronologically versus thematically.

Sorry, but having seen your WP:BOLD here and elsewhere appear all of a sudden, I don't find your assurances that "that WP:BOLD is the right general approach here - basically everything wikipedia has on this whole field of study is terribly out of date, misleading, wrong, immoral, fattening, etc." Quite frankly, I'm concerned, as it implies that everyone else who has been editing here is wildly incompetent. Teishin (talk) 18:21, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Teishin: You are certainly free to come to your own conclusions on competence - but most of the information I encounter appears to be unchanged from 1911 Britannica. I wouldn't consider anyone incompetent for assuming that things were correct then, but as I have access to more recent scholarship, I can observe that it is in fact, not correct and should be updated. In general any article that isn't GA or FA or at least headed there does tend to be rather inaccurate, on all of Wikipedia. I see you've been here a while - so maybe you need to refresh yourself on how the core content policies are stated? I'm sure I'm not making controversial statements here when I say that we should follow the academic consensus. For classification schemes, there certainly is academic consensus - and it mostly tends towards considering every philosopher separately within an era, and splitting the philosophers into specific groups based on era and location. These are all well supported by academic sources. Your assumption that because classification is difficult, that there is no verifiable consensus that can be cited, is inaccurate. If you want to contribute to wikipedia you should add information based on comparison of reliable sources. This is not a "fool's errand" - non-original research from reliable academic sources is exactly what editing wikipedia is about. - car chasm (talk) 18:32, 5 April 2022 (UTC)