[turdnagel]

Had a very similar experience in philosophy classes. The good thing about critiquing seminal works is that there's often a rich body of criticism already available. I found the only way to do well in those classes, since I lacked the mental horsepower to produce my own seminal critiques, was to parrot the literature that was out there already.

[jerf]

I think in philosophy it's a bit more valid. Still not maybe the best case, since these are still the papers that stood the test of time, critiquing some marginal paper would probably be a better practice of "critiquing", but philosophy always has a critique. The form may be impeccable, the writing may be spectacular, etc., but the philosophy itself always has room for rumination, discussion, etc.

For a science paper, if it's something people are still reading 30-50 years later, it was apparently good enough. I can always critique the paper for failing to solve String Theory and then draw out from String Theory a mathematical demonstration of how their solution for getting robots to navigate around boxes is very good, but that's more a reflection of me than the paper.