🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug30.042629.19346@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
>In article <7390@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>
>> Part of the reason is that there's often something in the original
>> that was distorted in earlier attempts to extract the concepts themselves.  
>
>If the concept is so particular that its defined as what is present
>in the priginal work, I doubt there is any concept there at all. Simply
>vagues ideas that only had meaning within the authors own way of thinking of  
>it.

You have perhaps confused what I said with something in another message
to which you replied along similar lines.

I did not say the concept was "particular" or "defined as what is
present in the original work".  Nor do I think it should be
so-defined, or even that the original is always best.  Indeed,
the original version of an idea is often worse.  (Similar remarks
apply to "early versions", because the original isn't always 
what's still interesting.)

However, there are often things in the work of earlier phisosophers
that were neglected or misunderstood by later philosophers.  Perhaps
those "later philosophers" had different interests and preconceptions
than we have.  Perhaps they were just careless or lazy.  It varies.

-- jd