Big reader of Bernard Lewis. No confusion here.
- Quick note from Derek's iPod
On Oct 14, 2011, at 12:30, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Derek,
> Good post.
> I'm concerned there has been a bit of a tradition of assuming the West got
> the Greek legacy directly.
> It seems helpful to acknowledge that the Greek legacy was passed to the West
> only after a long incubation by Arab and Persian scholars and scientists who
> also contributed to it strongly.
> See, for example, Stanford
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-greek/ and
> http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/publications/Thinker
> sPdf/farabie.pdf
> Warm regards,
> Terry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> <snip>
> Sticking with the Greeks for a second (and please do read "The Legacy of
> Greek Philosophy" by Bernard Williams, which began like this: "The legacy of
> Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy"), Aristotle's On
> Rhetoric was about how to make arguments. Not those that the sophists made,
> but good ones. Ones that had virtue and therefore could help lead the
> assembly to virtuous conduct.
>
> Our doctoral students today, across the spectrum of disciplines (all of
> which are under 200 years old), will be called on in professional life, and
> expected through public expectation, to be able to make better arguments.
> Better claims about the veracity of other claims. Be able to reflect on
> practice and provide insight into its conduct. Whether this is a Ph.D. in
> literature, or art history, or political science or physics, I strongly
> suggest that this statement remains the same.
|