Does ancient Philosophy still speak to us today

Quoting Ross Campbell

The ancient philosophers didn't know about the existence of the unconscious which was discovered only by modern psychology.

Or did they? They certainly knew about emotion being able to override one's ingrained beliefs enough to propose a new concept. Other tricks as well. Mind games are as old as the mind itself. You wouldn't need to "name" something you can already influence as if it were not a thing to begin with would you? Besides. The emperor doesn't like being told he has no clothes. So imagine the average bloke. Perhaps there was a bit of element of surprise there as well.

Quoting Ross Campbell

In the light of this do the ancient Stoics speak to us now, why should we turn to them for guidance instead of modern thought.

In the light of that? As in simply as a result of it and for no other reason? No. Modern thought and earlier thought vary wildly in and of each themselves. You have people who just want to essentially pleasure themselves through varying means and those who think perhaps there's more to what can be had here and applying oneself to said pursuit will help manifest it. The same is true in this age as well as the earliest days of civilization.

What specific philosophies are you asking about?

I'm asking about the ancient Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius who seem to have become very popular in recent decades judging by the number of books and videos about them. They, like most Greek philosophers had too much faith in the power of human reason to direct our lives, whereas Freud showed that in fact we are driven largely by our irrational unconscious drives , not reason at all. This explains why intelligent reasonable people can behave in irrational ways sometimes.

Reply to Ross Campbell

I guess. Meanwhile thanks to unadulterated desire we have genocide, overpopulation, starvation, strife, wrath, I could go on. Naturally these things were always present but... in a world of humans without human reason what else is there? Chaos.

Quoting Ross Campbell

They, like most Greek philosophers had too much faith in the power of human reason to direct our lives, whereas Freud showed that in fact we are driven largely by our irrational unconscious drives , not reason at all.

I think Marcus Aurelius’ reputation nowadays is probably better than Freud’s. Many of Freud’s theories have been subsequently deprecated, if not dismissed, as being pseudo-scientific.

Furthermore myths and fables, like the Greek myths, for example, often embody or express many of the ideas that are associated with the unconscious, although that kind of analysis is far more associated with Freud’s breakaway student, Carl Gustav Jung.

Reply to Ross Campbell

The obvious observation to make is that their scientific understanding of the world was not nearly as sophisticated as our current scientific understanding. So a lot of what they said, is probably invalidated simply because they lacked that understanding. That doesn't mean that looking at ancient philosophy can't have any value at all though, just that one needs to keep in mind that a lot of it is dated.

One way in which it might be of value is as a source of ideas. Sometimes it's hard to be able to look at things in a radically new way, because we are always to some extend embedded in and determined by the cultural climate of our day. And so because they are so distant and different, some of their ideas might inspire us to entertain different perspectives outside of our cultural biases that we might otherwise take for granted.

An example that maybe could be relevant today is free will, and how that idea still underpins a lot of our current ideas in political philosophy and moral philosophy. Because it is an idea that only took hold afterwards, their tradition isn't 'tainted' by it... and so some of the ways they thought about morality and the social and political in the absence of that idea, might give us some insight in how to go about philosophizing about these issues now, free from that particular idea.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think Marcus Aurelius’ reputation nowadays is probably better than Freud’s. Many of Freud’s theories have been subsequently deprecated, if not dismissed, as being pseudo-scientific.

Freud did a lot of detailed and painstaking work to arrive at his theories. Later, even more detailed an painstaking work showed them to be wrong and so they are, quite rightly discarded. The solution to this problem is to read the even more detailed and painstaking work that supplanted him, not return to some guy who just 'had a bit of a think about it'. The reason why Freud has been supplanted is exactly the same reason why Marcus Aurelius should be supplanted - lack of careful research.

Reply to Isaac As a matter of interest, what were the two paradigmatic theories that Karl Popper referred to, when he first framed his arguments about falsifiability?

Reply to Wayfarer

Again, the fact that Popper highlighted falsification issues with psychoanalysis (I presume that's what you're referring to here, I find 'tests' condescending), is a reason to make psychology more rigorous - which is exactly what was done. It's not a reason to discard the whole thing and resort to whatever one 'reckons' from their armchair.

Your analysis of the issues with the sciences is absolutely on point. Your solutions are irrational.

Reply to Isaac And what, pray tell, would a ‘stoic research program’ comprise?

Incidentally

The demise of Freudianism can be summed up in a single word: lithium. In 1949 an Australian psychiatrist, John Cade, gave five days of lithium therapy—for entirely the wrong reasons—to a fifty–one–year–old mental patient who was so manic–depressive, so hyperactive, unintelligible, and uncontrollable, he had been kept locked up in asylums for twenty years. By the sixth day, thanks to the lithium buildup in his blood, he was a normal human being. Three months later he was released and lived happily ever after in his own home. This was a man who had been locked up and subjected to two decades of Freudian logorrhea to no avail whatsoever. Over the next twenty years antidepressant and tranquilizing drugs completely replaced Freudian talk–talk as treatment for serious mental disturbances. By the mid–1980s, neuroscientists looked upon Freudian psychiatry as a quaint relic based largely upon superstition (such as dream analysis — dream analysis!), like phrenology or mesmerism. In fact, among neuroscientists, phrenology now has a higher reputation than Freudian psychiatry, since phrenology was in a certain crude way a precursor of electroencephalography. Freudian psychiatrists are now regarded as old crocks with sham medical degrees, as ears with wire hairs sprouting out of them that people with more money than sense can hire to talk into.

Tom Wolfe Sorry, but your soul just died

Anyway, on the question ‘does ancient philosophy still speak to us today?’ - there must be something about it that does, else it doesn’t really rate as ‘philosophy’. Granted, we clearly understand physical facts about the universe the ancients could never have known - no argument against that is possible. But at the same time many if not all of of the questions raised by Socrates, for example, about the nature of justice, of knowledge, of truth and beauty, are not that greatly affected by our discoveries.

I’ve always felt that in some important sense ‘philosophy requires no apparatus’. We are born into this world and then live out our lives and die, and whether we travel by ox cart or jet airplane, there are some fundamental questions that will be the same regardless. I take issue with the tendency to believe that there was nothing the ancients could have known which us moderns cannot know better. And I would like to think that those worthy ancients whose names we still remember - Marcus Aurelius being one - would look upon what we have been able to learn with wonder, while still holding to the fundamental attributes that made their names immortal

What I wrote reminds me of just the kind of thing Jim Hacker would say (Land of Hope and Glory plays in the background.)

I would disagree that Freud " has been supplanted" . The fact is that he is regarded as an intellectual giant of the 20th century and has had an enormous influence not only in psychology but in literature, Philosophy, sociology and so on. Jung who has arguably become more fashionable nowadays judging from the number of videos about him on YouTube was actually heavily influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis although not as popular as CBT nowadays still is very influential in modern culture. In my opinion the weakness in ancient Greek philosophy including the Stoics is their hierarchical view of reason versus the emotions placing reason as somehow in a superior rank to the emotions. This is a big mistake. Eastern Philosophy is very different. It has much less emphasis on reason. And modern psychology bears this out , namely the equal importance of emotions and reason. In my opinion the Greek thinkers worship of reason had detrimental consequences for the history of western thought. The Church for centuries up until the 19th century used Aristotles and Plato's Philosophy to back up their dogma and their conservative repressive thinking which was only overcome when modern radical thinkers overthrew the enormous influence of Aristotle and Plato's thought in the west

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