Template talk:Ancient Greek schools of philosophy

Some proposals

• First: Change name to to "Hellenistic philosophy", so as to better cover Roman-era philosophers as well as Greek
• Second: Add section a section on concepts (a là Chinese & Indian philosophy templates.
• Third: Add section on major philosophers, separating them from the schools.

Thoughts? Dan Cottrell (talk) 18:29, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Prelimary list: Nous, Doxa, Logos, Arche, Apeiron (cosmology), Henosis, Demiurge, Episteme, Katalepsis, Apatheia, Ataraxia, Adiaphora, Epoché. Additions? Substractions? Dan Cottrell (talk) 18:40, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to add these concepts and a few major philosophers. I would still love input. Dan Cottrell (talk) 20:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Major changes from Carchasm

Carchasm, those are some awfully major changes you've implemented. A discussion seems warranted. Teishin (talk) 00:10, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't see how you can claim that the Peripatetic school is Hellenistic and not Socratic.

Philosophy in this era is usually classified by when it originated, not when particular philosophers in those traditions lived.

We seem to have an established practice of listing all of the philosophers we have articles about. Judging who is most important makes things more difficult. Teishin (talk) 00:17, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

If there is an established practice I'll certainly defer to prior consensus here, but I'd note that the list as it was before is certainly not every philosopher we have an article on - a lot of the presocratic philosophers who have Dielz-Kranz numbers and articles about them are certainly missing, and I'm sure there are others in the other sections. I wouldn't want to infer the established practice though - was this ever discussed by any of the relevant wikiprojects, that you're aware of? Even so, WP:NAVBOX suggests that only philosophers who have a given navbox on their page should be listed in the navbox, which wasn't the case here. While that might justify adding the navbox to those pages, I'd like to state that it's clear that this template hasn't been regularly maintained, which I think justifies taking WP:BOLD action to improve it.

I'd also caution against being overly cautious or change-averse here - it certainly merits discussion if you disagree, but a lot of articles on this topic were imported in via Britannica and have not seen any major revisions since, so if your only objection is that the changes are major I think it's best to revert back to what I had - a maintained list is certainly better than one that's been let adrift. - car chasm (talk) 01:09, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Carchasm I don't have a complaint about engaging in WP:BOLD here. Just now that it's been done I see a number of things that seem to me to be issues.

It's true that in the area of ancient philosophy we have quite a few pages that are little changed from the 1911 Britannica and we just haven't had editors interested in them enough to improve them. I'm just concerned here about subjective evaluations.

It's also true that how to organize this material thematically and chronologically is disputed on several issues. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have organized this the way it had been, but it's also true that there are more-or-less "received" ways to do it, although these tend to have some internal inconsistency. (N.b., I follow some ancient doxographers whose major divisions were Early/Physicists, Classical, and Hellenistic - although not with those terms. And, Democritus is Classical, not Pre-Socratic. Hellenistic and Classical are subdivided between Socratic and Democritean. This is not, however, a generally received view these days due to the influence of Plato's view.)

On Peripatetic, I normally see it classified as Socratic or Classical. OTOH, it is listed among philosophies active during the Hellenistic era, but then that requires all of the other Socratic/Classical philosophies to be listed as well, which is a much different organization than before or proposed.

Re Roman, while for chronological purposes such a designation is useful, Roman era philosophy was simply a continuation, not a classification, except within Stoicism as there were meaningful differences between the Greek and Roman era versions of the philosophy. I not only don't think it is a useful categorization, my observation is that it is seldom used except in chronological narratives.

I suggest replacing Socratic (on the template both before and after changes) with "Classical" linking to Ancient_Greek_philosophy#Classical_Greek_philosophy Teishin (talk) 16:39, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that we need to do subjective evaluations, but I am worried about putting too much weight on ancient doxographers - WP:V is a content policy so we need to make these sorts of decisions based on the consensus of reliable secondary sources, and not try to interpret people like Diogenes Laertius ourselves. Democritus, for example, is a pre-socratic philosohper in every scholarly source since Dielz-Kranz - this isn't really up for negotiation on here unless you can point to reliable academic sources that say differently.

I have to say I'm a little concerned here that you're interpreting ancient sources yourself. Even if you feel that you have the expertise to do so, you should really find academic sources that back up your conclusions. - car chasm (talk) 17:08, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Carchasm, it is you who has engaged in WP:BOLD here, not me. Just because I happen to mention parenthetically, in the context of the various ways that this material is typically organized, that I personally prefer one of the less-used organizations, it should be noted that I have made many edits to this template over the years and at no point have I ever implemented the organization I personally prefer, nor did I present it here as a proposal. I presented it in the context of pointing out that there are several ways this material gets organized, as part of an explanation about distinctions between "Socratic" and "Classical" and "Greek" and "Roman" as a way of outlining key elements of the organizational issues here. So, I am more than "a little concerned" that you should be criticizing me here for "interpreting ancient sources myself" for such a parenthetical comment while simultaneously ignoring the actual issues I raised, particularly so by adding the claim that "every scholarly source since Dielz-Kranz" does it such-and-such way apparently oblivious to the fact that this categorization is controversial, as attested in our very own article on the subject Pre-Socratic_philosophy#Terminology. The IEP says so, too https://iep.utm.edu/presocra/ . So, I suggest you not entrench yourself with claims such as "this isn't really up for negotiation".

So, let's talk about the Peripatetics. Classifying them as "Hellenistic" seems idiosyncratic for a template where the other choice is "Socratic." Would you care to justify that? Teishin (talk) 12:39, 5 April 2022 (UTC)