[peter12]

That is a highly relative statement. This was part of a point that I was attempting to make in another thread, when I asked you to consider the effect that riding a bicycle or eating a pint of ice-cream might have had on Socrates' contemplations. It appears to be a silly question, but precisely the point is that one cannot pull literature and ideas from their social and cultural contexts. The modern world has shaped much more than just the way that we think and do; it has had tremendous effects on what we think and do.

Of course, it goes the other way. What would the effect of the Socratic way of life have upon our own contemplations? This is the arrogance of the modern position, that there is no way but back. That somehow inevitably we have moved on and that the wisdom and perspective of the past cannot be applied to our own times.

One can pull literature from its context and apply it to our own. We never do this. To fall back on a position of social conditioning and relativity is weak if you don't take it to its full point.

Furthermore, how much can you trust your own perception of the literature of the past? Does it provide a completely "accurate" picture of the past, or has it been socially conditioned, and how do you know? How much of the ancient representation of their own world has been idealized? I am skeptical with regards to how much we think we can come to "know" simply through an appraisal of literature, without the contributions of other disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology etc.

I really don't know what this means, to be honest. I think it's a crutch of the critic, to be honest, that struggles to gain a universalist perspective which doesn't really exist and fails to grasp the empirical kinship that we can feel when we read literature, poetry and philosophy from the past. Do you disregard nature or reason? I don't think so. Clearly, we have similar experiences according to all humanity to a certain extent. That's why we still enjoy and understand "old books."

I disagree. "Progress" is merely a term used to distinguish the past from the present. The denial of progress is in practical terms much the same as endorsing it, in the sense that both positions are staking an evaluative claim to either the past or the present. As for linear thinking, whether it is "silly" or not, it is practically unavoidable. The mind has become hard-wired to view life and existence narratologically: "History" is no more than providing a narrative shape; developing a story of the past that subscribes a preset of methods and ideas. Whether you like it or not, we all do it.

Progress is so loaded. How can something like history be linear when the future is totally unpredictable and the lessons learned from quantum physics clearly show us that the observation of a certain context changes based on perception. We cannot know that we live in a better time based solely on an observation of our own times. How do we judge everything else by their times and not our own? We have applied a very simple technological narrative to our times. Like somehow microwaves and cell phones have made everyone better off.

In all seriousness, the only sign of our progress, to me, is the spread of literacy and the opening up of philosophical and cultural experiences to all. Yet, the proliferation of "Harry Potter," "Twilight" and other youth/adult crap seems to me that we are wasting our new-found intellectual freedom. Viewing the nihilist and materialist wasteland of our current times, this is not a surprise.