Starting with the ideas we encountered in the previous talk on “Anaximander”, we will examine just how recent cross-disciplinary studies can revise our understandings of earlier thinkers and their philosophies.
What light can cross-cultural studies (e.g. Greek/Chinese, Greek/Indian) throw upon ancient Greek Philosophy? What effect does studying the written records of ancient philosophical texts in conjunction with recent archaeological and architectural findings have upon our understanding of past philosophy? How does an appreciation of the economic and political influences of their day help us to understand past philosophers? How does rejection of Eurocentric ideas originally promoted in the European colonial era of the 19th Century affect our understanding of the ‘Greek Miracle’ – i.e., the flowering of rational thought in 6th-C-BCE Greece?
These historiographic themes will be followed via a number of other examples through to the present day. We will look at reasons as to why it is important, both for our understanding of our philosophy and of ourselves, to take readings and revisionary re-readings of the history of Western Philosophy seriously.