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> And, like in art, the formulation matters, and more often than not the best formulation is the original (because its closer to their source, the thinker who came up with those ideas). This is sometimes true, but I think it depends on who you're reading. The skill of philosophizing, and of carrying on a discourse with other philosophers, is very different from the skill of bringing a novice up to speed. Not everyone who's great at one is great at the other. There's also value in what the grandparent post mentioned about establishing historical and biographical context before jumping into primary sources. It helps you understand what you're reading and what the community thinks is important about it. That said, I definitely agree that primary sources are valuable to read, and to appreciate as works of art in their own right. Yes Wikipedia can give you the big ideas, but it's just not the same. But hitting Wikipedia first can give you context to get more out of the primary. > The concept of "state of the art" exists for engineering not art I don't understand this. Yes philosophy is not a linear progression of ideas, but the iterative process of people building on one another's ideas is definitely present, as it is in music or mathematics or poetry. Philosophy responds to current events, to art, to science, and to itself. To put it another way, it's totally valid to ask "what was up with philosophy in X decade". You can look at the ideas that were floating around, how they interacted with each other, how they built on the past and led to future ideas. As I see it, that's the "state of the art". It's more a question of "what were top minds in the field working on", or maybe "what ideas were most influential", than anything else, but that's true if you ask that question of technology too. > Smartphones or cars change messaging methods and habbits, not philosophy. Philosophy (or philosophers) respond to what's around them. The conversation around whether the brain is a computer, for example, is very different today (and probably more interesting to most people) than it would have been 200 years ago. |