Talk:Italian school (philosophy)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Ancient philosophy

This article has been marked as needing immediate attention.

Italy

	Italy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Italy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Italy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ItalyWikipedia:WikiProject ItalyTemplate:WikiProject ItalyItaly articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

false subdivision

I'm pretty sure this categorization of thinkers is archaic - do we have sources from the past few decades that discuss the existence of an "Italian school" rather than just a loose grouping? Generally since the 1840s the trends in scholarship have swung against trusting everything Diogenes Laertius said uncritically, and this division is entirely due to him as far as I can tell. - car chasm (talk) 04:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

to clarify, my concern here is that this article doesn't really add anything to what should be covered in pre-Socratic philosophy - the fact that all of these were "italian school" philosophers doesn't appear to mean anything that we can write a distinct article on - car chasm (talk) 04:23, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It does seem to be archaic but relevant, in my opinion, for the very idea of pre-socrates is archaic, perhaps like phlogiston or some other obsolete but longstanding category. It seems some mean simply "Pythagoreans" while others mean to imply all the Italian philosophers were influenced by Pythagoras, while others mean the more neutral, geographical sense of "philosophizing in what is now called Italy". The latter still seems to have some use, but being colored by the former seems your (well-founded) concern. Further it seems to me "Non-Ionian" philosophers seems a useful category and seems to be called Italian. Cake (talk) 00:46, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the problem with taking "Italian" as "non-ionian" is that that includes plenty of philosophers who weren't from what we call Italy - the Atomists were from Abdera, Xenophanes himself, who you've grouped here, was from Ionia and is typically grouped as such in more modern sources, all of the philosophers from Athens were in Attica, etc. - car chasm (talk) 04:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not disputing that and your trolling is poor and doesn't address the sources Cake (talk) 04:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not trolling you? Many early Greek philosophers are from neither Ionia or Italy, so Italian is a misleading term, and it's fallen out of use in modern academic use. The Loeb classical library refers to the non-ionians as "western" but it's a very heterogeneous "miscellaneous" group, and it's not clear that it warrants a standalone article. - car chasm (talk) 21:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]