Agnes Callard on why there is progress in philosophy

Here is her take, here is one excerpt:

Instead of gauging progress by asking what “we” philosophers agree about, one should ask whether someone who wants to do philosophy is in a better position to do so today than she would’ve been 10 or 100 or 1000 years ago?  The answer is: certainly.

And:

But if philosophical thinking is getting better and better—more precise, truthful, articulate, deep—why should we still read Aristotle or Maimonides?   The reason we need to do the history of philosophy is precisely that philosophy has made massive amounts of progress in Tyler’s sense of the word: it has filtered into, shaped and organized commonsense, ordinary thought.  Indeed, it constitutes much of that thought.

And:

So you are pretty much constantly thinking thoughts that, in one way or another, you inherited from philosophers. You don’t see it, because philosophical exports are the kinds of thing that, once you internalize them, just seem like the way things are. So the reason to read Aristotle isn’t (just) that he’s a great philosopher, but that he’s colonized large parts of your mind.

Finally:

It is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy, to ‘solve’ the deep questions so that people can stop thinking about them.  It is the point of people to think about these questions, and the job of philosophers to rub their faces in that fact.  Of all of philosophy’s achievements, perhaps the greatest one is just sticking around in the face of the fact that, from day one, anyone who has plumbed the depths of our ambitions has either joined us or … tried to silence, stop or kill us.  This is an “old debate” indeed.

There is much more at the link.  And here is my original post on the topic.  Here is my earlier Conversation with Agnes Callard.

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