Many topics within philosophy are introduced through literature of the 17th and 18th century or even what is called the ‘early-modern’ period. Many students may wonder why they should be interested in what happened 200 or 300 years ago.
- These problems became evident there for a good reason – certain things were happening in the world, a scientific world view was largely replacing or at least augmenting a predominantly religious view
- A lot of these problems naturally emerged then and they remain important today but because the problems emerged then a lot of the labels that we use when discussing these problems are inevitably historical e.g. if you don’t know what cartesian dualism is you will be lost in a lot of modern discussions as well as older ones so you need to know something about what Descartes said
- Its not that we are going to take historical arguments as the last word but because the discussions today still reflect the language of the past in some ways
- By studying these philosophers of the past who are undoubtedly great thinkers, there are plenty of insights to be gleaned from them
- Interconnection between topics – if you study topics in isolation, its all too easy to view them just as separate things you can pick and mix but philosophical ideas aren’t normally like that, they have very deep connections e.g. one great figure arguing against another can impact one view onto a different one
- Looking at things with a historical perspective can prevent getting blinkered by the concerns of today