How do you guys try to rationalise the fact that if Nietzche

>>9024868
Why do you care? Nobody here likes Dickens anyway

>>9024868
This is just how this field works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There is probably a lot of gold philosophy/literature buried deep in the sands of time since literary success is really random

>>9024868
There could not be a fucking Plato in 2017, dummy.
'If Plato was alive today' is an absurd statement. Try and read the words you are typing for once and dwell on what you are actually saying.
How can you even come to think that you can separate a thinker from his historical context? Plato/Socrates for example makes no sense outside of the context of Athens after the peloponessian war, and Nietzsche makes no sense separated from late 19th century modernity.
And how would western thinking even look without these thinkers (assimilate they did not write in their actually time, but are instead alive today)? Our entire tradition is conditioned by these thinkers so your hypothetical scenario is actually completely unable to be thought out, since our whole perspective by the force of its shifted historicity would be totally and utterly different and unthinkable.

With that said, neither Socrates or Nietzsche were revered in their lifetimes; neither was Kafka for that matter. What constitutes a 'classic' is not only its intrinsic artistic merit (when speaking of literary works) or the absolute validity of its claims (when speaking of philosophy), neither its critical acclaim in its own time; rather, 'classic' pieces are held in this light because they have had an impact either on or even transcending their respective areas and thus in part constitute the and condition the historical time where we find ourselves today; and moreover, studying thinking that was written under vastly different historical circumstances than our own helps us grasp the very fragile contingency of our own times and how everything could look vastly different.

>>9024980
Here's a less triggering version:
'I think the academic figureheads of our time are on the fringe of our focus today but they'll be revered in the future, just like plato etc. I propose that we seek out the works that are not promoted by today's companies and academics so that we may judge them solely on their merit.' I don't think OP meant to time-travel plato into our society.

With that being said, it is an empty notion because most of us think we are not easily swayed by popular opinion and that if we'd be able to recognize the diamonds amids the roughs if we ever came across them.

>>9024868
Firstly, you're asking this question in the plural. Despite how it might look, not everyone here holds the same opinions about everything. So there's that. Secondly, 4chan is a watering hole for many of the internet's contrarians. To galvanize a sense of identity, most people denounce popular opinion, only to substitute it with the loosely generalized opinion of a specific board. So it would only make sense that any given anon's skepticism regarding a successful public figure directly correlates to that figure's mainstream popularity. It's just how it is.

>>9025019
It is also assuming that the worth of a piece of writing lies in something like its 'intrinsic artistic merit' as a quality in-itself. My point was largely also that what constitutes what things are 'worth reading' is not necessarily its truth validity or intrinsic artistic value as an inherent quality separated on its own as something in-itself and not conditioned by the tradition of Western culture. Even the concept of a piece of literature or writing being able to stand solely on its own is absurd. Its genesis is conditioned by its time and its reception is further conditioned (and will contingentally fluctuate) through its very historicity.

>>9025061
But literature does have intrinsic value. Yes, every work of literature has an identity attached to it that contributes to its value and if that identity were to be removed the work itself would be less for it and yes, all ideas are products if their contexts. However, if you were given two different texts stripped from context like authors and periods of origin you could judge on to be better than the other based on one factor or another. There are certain aspects we expect to find in literature and we value each text based on how well they fulfill those expectations, context is there to shift our expectations but that doesn't mean we can't judge a text without it I think.

>>9025104
But those very expectations you speak of, through which we judge a text, are historically contingent and conditioned by our cultural tradition.

>>9025116
That just means those expectations will shift over time, we can still use them to determine merit for today's works right?