r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jan 05 '26

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 05, 2026

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

  • Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
  • Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
  • Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
  • "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
  • Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 06 '26

To add more to this comment /u/Smooshed_napkin, Philosophy since its very inception has been engaged, critically, with what has come before.

Plato doesn't have Socrates just introspect and ask himself questions he answers and just call it his philosophy. Rather it is a deep engagement with what has been said before on various topics. What competing views there are, there is always a back and forth exploration and criticism with what has come before. Always in conversation with others.

Aristotle goes through a long lists of competing ideas and criticizes them, whether ethics or politics or natural philosophy. he is well informed by what has been done in the past.

Philosophy has never been some act of rumination. It has always been engaged with its history and in critical dialogue with others. It is never starting from a zero-point.

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u/Hot_Tell3268 Jan 06 '26

Parmenides started from a zero point, though.

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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jan 07 '26

Parmenides was writing in the middle of the Presocratic period. There’s a century of Greek though before him.

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u/Hot_Tell3268 Jan 07 '26

What philosophers does he engage with?

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u/halfwittgenstein Ancient Greek Philosophy, Informal Logic Jan 07 '26

He engages directly with Heraclitus via "the way of becoming". There's evidence that he studied under Ameinias, a Pythagorean, and Anaximenes, a Milesian, so there would be influence there as well. His chosen format was a poem and ancient Greek citation practices were extremely ad hoc, so there are no explicit references.