/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10798710

Because the history of philosophy is a series of responses to previous philosophical arguments. You can't understand Cartesian dualism unless you understand it was a response to Thomas Aquinas' psychology and you can't understand him without understanding his opposition to Averroism and the reintroduction of Aristotle to Christendom. People start with the Greeks pretty much because they form the first philosophical arguments (like Paramenides, Anaximander, Anaxagoras,Empedocles, etc.) and the first responses to them (Plato/Socrates, Aristotle, Zeno of Citium,etc.). It's like learning Classical mechanics before learning electrodynamics or thermodynamics or studying arithmetic before you do real analysis or algebra: It gives you a basis to see where all the arguments and all the assertions are coming from.