Talk:Philosophy/Dec06definitions

message: Philosophy as a form of analysis is really quite a narrow category to include it under.  Secondly, saying it refers to all knowledge only covers (badly) epsitemology (unless you want to calll ethics knowledge).  Thirdly, we already have an article on Western philosophy and this opening should be general enough to apply to Eastern, African and Western philosophy.
--Lucas
: My purpose in reverting was to get the cleanup tags in place.  I have put them back at the top, where they belong, to warn any unwary reader of what follows.  This applies to the current introduction.  E.g. "The easiest clue to indicate which of these philosophies is being referred to by the word philosophy is to note the language used."  Slack, ungrammatical, no context &c.  Dbuckner 10:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why do you say 'Western philosophy' and 'Eastern philosophy'.  Since the idea of a rational, non-subjective method is essential to 'Western philosophy', and since the very opposite applies to 'Eastern philosophy', how do they comprise 'the subject as a whole'?  I've long fought two battles on this page 1.  To distinguish clearly the discipline of 'academic' or 'western' philosophy from anything else 2.  To have the name 'philosophy' applied to the 'academic' variety.  (You don't have a department of Western philosophy, for example).  Perhaps I should give up on (2) as a lost cause.  In which case, we have an article entitled 'Western philosophy' or 'academic philosophy' or whatever, and delete all reference to Kant, Descartes &c from this page.Dbuckner 10:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent work, User:JJL. Just please Sign your part(s). Unfortunately, I'm distracted by User:Dbuckner's interjections. Your overall generalization is truly EXCELLENT.You have my total support. Unfortunately, your work is being chopped up by these instant & distracting questioning interjections by Use:Dbuckner. Yours truly, Ludvikus 16:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on "Philosophy as Analysis and Investigation"

message: I find this fourth option for an intro, like the editor above, as the worst of the four optins so far.  I will list my reasons for this and it is not merely negative.  First philosophy is not a western subject anymore than it is eastern, geography is not something it concerns itself with much, in any case there is already a page Western Philosophy and unless you suggest a merge of the two pages, this statement is off the mark and dismisses the other editors above, who only seem to agree so far on etymology and not that it is a subject of western intellectuals.
I find the second sentence, "A rough, but brief, sense of what that subject is can be acquired from the etymological and linguistic analysis of the word philosophy.",
to be very awkwardly constructed.  Previously what was there was just that etymological meaning was the least disputed and agreed by all editors as a good place to start.  
References to Goliers 1957 famously inaccurate encyclopedia and to the Americanised one are poor places to go for authentic information, they seem to ignore many philosophers and give a very biased account of the subject.  
They say philosophy was science before Plato!  This is such an odd thing to say, and is contradicted by the second encylopedia.  Many of the pre-socratics weere mystics and the like not scientists, it mixes up centuries.  The second encyclopedia quoted above is clearly biased (unlike history) toward Aristotle, the author perhaps being scientifically minded.
Further trying to track down an origin for philosophy as you do by refering only to Plato and Aristotle in the introduction is a mistaken view of what it means, it loses itself in an etymological discussion which was already been given and that should be brief.
The intro should be as inclusive as possible, that means not ignoring people like Wittgenstein or Russell or Hume, nor Hegel or Heidegger nor Lau-Tzu or Confucius.
Most importantly wiki is not a meta-encyclopedia, we don't just reproduce what the dusty old ones said, there are scholars and experts directly online who know more about it than these archaic compilers. --Lucas
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Lucas, clearly, substitutes his opinions, and philosophical view, in brief, his
own, personal philosophical view and preferences, in place of the Masters, and the recognized authorities. The ad hominum against Golier is absurd. What Golier says is by far suprior to these a-historical diatribes and ramblings in ignorance - I mean this literally - the above clearly demonstrates ignorance of writings on philosophy,or its history in the world!!! Ludvikus 16:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on "Philosophy as a Western intellectual subject, and defined by encyclopedias as X"