Sam Bankman-Fried, cultural critic and public intellectual better known for other work wrote: I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare and the constitution and Stradivarius violins, and at the bottom of this post I do*, but really I shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning. About half of the people born since 1600 have been born in the past 100 years, but it gets much worse than that. When Shakespeare wrote almost all of Europeans were busy farming, and very few people attended university; few people were even literate--probably as low as about ten million people. By contrast there are now upwards of a billion literate people in the Western sphere. What are the odds that the greatest writer would have been born in 1564? The Bayesian priors aren't very favorable.
It seems important that Shakespeare was and is highly regarded by writers and poets outside the English tradition. His genius is pretty universally recognized.
With Shakespeare, our idea of what makes literature great is kind of based on the special things he does so well: characters w psychological complexity, word choice that lends itself to close reading, ambiguity, playing with social and literary conventions. It doesn’t make sense to say he’s not great. If he wasn’t the smartest or the best, that doesn’t matter. He’s what western literature has formed itself around.
what if I said Joyce? Or Faulkner? I don't disagree with what you are saying, but there might be a caveat. In philosophy there was a time when there was a great "drift" away from theological-philosophy and so even the religious like Berkeley were no longer discussing religion through a godlyl lens but through a humanly lens. So yes many stand above the crowd. Marlowe, I've heard was more popular in his own time and maybe a few others might have been. If Shakespeare did not write in his own works, well it wasn't Marlowe. Marlowe to Shakespeare is Gorgias to Plato. But there is some truth to the era theory, but if Shakespeare really was not considered the best of his era, well I've read others say that, I don't know, but if he wasn't, then perhaps he has lasted not because he had less competition, maybe he really just was the best of his time and really don't much about the rest.
Maybe it's about tiers. We're never going to get another Darwin, but we can and should keep getting Goulds and Triverses. Likewise, I discovered Nozick late, I feel. There could be an issue with discovery in philosophy, whereas in previous times, a breakout philosopher would be a "sensation" that crossed into other domains, affecting the arts, etc., like Derrida or Sartre. That seems impossible in the current environment.
I think solving a handful of your 54 ideas would get someone to at least Nozick-level, but it may take a while for people to appreciate them.
It seems important that Shakespeare was and is highly regarded by writers and poets outside the English tradition. His genius is pretty universally recognized.
I agree. He was a genius, and the fact his context gave him permission to be a genius is a big part of that.
With Shakespeare, our idea of what makes literature great is kind of based on the special things he does so well: characters w psychological complexity, word choice that lends itself to close reading, ambiguity, playing with social and literary conventions. It doesn’t make sense to say he’s not great. If he wasn’t the smartest or the best, that doesn’t matter. He’s what western literature has formed itself around.
Yeah, 100% this as well.
what if I said Joyce? Or Faulkner? I don't disagree with what you are saying, but there might be a caveat. In philosophy there was a time when there was a great "drift" away from theological-philosophy and so even the religious like Berkeley were no longer discussing religion through a godlyl lens but through a humanly lens. So yes many stand above the crowd. Marlowe, I've heard was more popular in his own time and maybe a few others might have been. If Shakespeare did not write in his own works, well it wasn't Marlowe. Marlowe to Shakespeare is Gorgias to Plato. But there is some truth to the era theory, but if Shakespeare really was not considered the best of his era, well I've read others say that, I don't know, but if he wasn't, then perhaps he has lasted not because he had less competition, maybe he really just was the best of his time and really don't much about the rest.
Maybe it's about tiers. We're never going to get another Darwin, but we can and should keep getting Goulds and Triverses. Likewise, I discovered Nozick late, I feel. There could be an issue with discovery in philosophy, whereas in previous times, a breakout philosopher would be a "sensation" that crossed into other domains, affecting the arts, etc., like Derrida or Sartre. That seems impossible in the current environment.
I think solving a handful of your 54 ideas would get someone to at least Nozick-level, but it may take a while for people to appreciate them.
> The low-hanging fruit has been plucked.
One fruit remains: epistemology - the one thing people with (almost) any ideology fear.