Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by RGS1811 2934 days ago
Plato's procedural/dialogical approach to learning is also vastly superior to the Kantian/illuminist 'one and done' understanding of proof and discovery. Kant was a funny sort of progressive, who also believed that his work in metaphysics and epistemology laid the absolute foundation for the field.

It's odd but only enlightenment and post-enlightenment thinkers seem to approach their work this way, as if it were an absolute step forward which will never need to be revisited. You don't generally find it in ancient or medieval philosophers, who are much more interested in eking out nuance and exposing difficulties than in laying absolute groundworks and so on. In the enlightenment (at least in philosophy), progressivism and delusional absolutism always go hand in hand.