Comment by samdoesnothing
5 days ago
Oh I don't mean to imply reading some classical lit prepares you for a career producing novel works in philosophy, simply that if one wants to understand themselves, others, and the world better they don't need to go to university to do it. They can just read.
I think you are understating how difficult this is to do. I suspect there are a handful of super-geniuses who can read the philosophical canon and understand it, without some formal guidance. Plato and Dostoevsky might be possible (Socrates would be a bit difficult), but getting to Hegel and these newer more complex authors is almost impossible to navigate unless you are a savant.
I suspect a lot of the rationalists have gotten stuck here, and rather than seek out guidance or slowing down, changed tack entirely and decided to engage with the philosophers du jour, which unfortunately is a lot of slop running downstream from Thiel.