I applaud Mr. York’s spirited assertion that humanity’s quest to know what is true and false should have primacy over the desire to study history, but ultimately his conclusion appears to be based upon the same fallacy he seeks to condemn. While York reveals the foolishness of studying great works in order to satisfy mere historical curiosity, he embraces the same historicism of the last century or so which dictates this diminutive status to the texts in question.
We shouldn’t study thinkers merely because they influenced others: true, although I think York exaggerates the point. We shouldn’t lionize texts and thinkers without good reason, and we should never stop asking questions in this respect: true. We shouldn’t speak of thinkers without understanding their arguments, and if their works don’t help in this respect we should stop reading them: true. We should continue to seek the truth ourselves: true. Yet none of these are arguments necessarily lead one to abandon the works in question.
The heart of the issue is whether or not these writings represent the best exposition of their position, and whether or not these ideas are worth studying.
For instance, “[r]eading Aristotle and Aquinas at the expense of Wittgenstein and Quine conveys the notion that, despite centuries of development, you really can’t improve on the originals.” Are Wittgenstein and Quine a development of Aristotle and Aquinas? This is an assumption sorely in need of proof. In many respects these thinkers are in conflict with each other. Does coming centuries after someone you reference and in some respects disagree with necessitate salutary development? One can believe that we can and do progress in knowledge in philosophy and science and also reject the extreme version of this view: that whatever comes after is always somehow better.
Let’s take another example: “Let’s be frank: no one—no one—thinks we should adopt Plato’s Republic as a model for successful government. But the vast bulk of political theory courses preference the noocratic musings of Socrates to legitimate discussions of the philosophical underpinnings of our own liberal democratic society.” Plato himself didn’t think the Republic was a model for successful government either. But it remains one of the, if not the, best introduction to politics and the question of what is good and just that has ever been written. This has been the judgment of educated people for thousands of years. Practical minded educators seeking to make engineers and chemists might disagree, but this would require a proof that consists in more than simply pointing to our ability to transplant hearts and make nuclear bombs. Plato helps one think through how such tools ought to be used and apportioned.
One reads Plato on democracy and forms of government and discovers principled and poignant arguments that radically challenge the assumptions of our time, helping us think through the most pressing issues we face today. Thrasymachus’ argument that might makes right is used daily around the globe, as it always has been and will be, and is in fact the basis of the thought and action of many in and out of the academy who consider politics to be the mere manipulation of power. I have met few undergrads who can give a coherent, rational argument against this horrendous view even if they are instinctively repulsed by it. Why is this? They are at a loss because they have been miseducated if they aren’t simply ignorant. They have never experienced liberal education, and even if they have most programs are still neck deep in the mire of the same flawed historicism that York insightfully questions. They were taught that we have generally got beyond all those older thinkers, who are rarely studied for what they actually argued in any serious manner. Why bother? After all, behold how many scholarly journals we have written full of articles that few people read! Behold our complicated jargon! Behold our technology! Science! Progress! And all too often a complete lack of actual argument that takes fundamental objections seriously.
Such serious challenges to the unquestioned assumptions of the historicism prevalent in the academy today can be found by reading many of these great works. For their authors are seeking answers to the basic questions that humanity has asked throughout recorded history, and they do not simply assume that human nature progresses from age to age gathering up more and more wisdom. Even those great thinkers who do hold a progressive sort of view will give serious arguments for the position, unlike many a more recent academic or lesser thinker who simply assumes the premise.
Plato is instantly accessible to decently educated undergrads, and he has been so for two thousand years. Pick a scholarly article or book of philosophy today at random and the odds are it is a good deal more difficult to understand, and I would argue these modern works are often much less relevant to the serious questions which philosophy purports to answer. Very often, such modern works that are considered to sit on the “cutting edge” of what must be read, much like clothing fashions, are soon out of style and forgotten. This is why hundreds and thousands of lesser figures who were very well regarded among experts in their day (even a generation ago) are now forgotten, while you can find Plato on the bookshelf of your local bookstore. Even if you often have to go to the History section in order to find him.
“[T]he Republic . . . . remains one of the, if not the, best introduction to politics and the question of what is good and just that has ever been written. This has been the judgment of educated people for thousands of years.”
You appeal to the judgment of history in order to justify the judgment of history. This is exactly what I reject. Just because people have lionized Plato does not mean we should do the same.
The Republic may provide some exceedingly basic questions (“Why shouldn’t I do whatever I want?” “How should we define justice?”), but its answers are unsatisfactory and the questions self-evident to anyone who engages in the least amount of reflection (and even for those who want, they need only read one of these blog posts).
All that remains then is your claim that Plato’s literary merit will get students to consider ideas they wouldn’t otherwise consider. Two problems:
1. A few hundred pages of Plato is a lot to read to just be introduced to the “problems” of political philosophy.
2. The notion that Plato is what people want to read is just false. Not many people just pick up Plato for fun; they’re usually assigned it as part of a course. And those who claim to enjoy it, I contend, are disproportionately victims of the lionization effect I described in my Essay. They pretend to like it to make themselves feel smarter because they “read Plato” and can add a merit badge to their sash. The Joshua Cohen merit badge is just not as flashy.
Finally, you’re right that a lot of modern thought is inaccessible crap. That doesn’t mean all of it is. Anglo-American philosophy can be dry and very small picture, but this is a good thing. The problem with too many historical philosophers is that they made sweeping generalizations about the nature of everything that, while exciting, circumvented necessary steps in reasoning. Maybe it’s a good thing to show undergraduates that if you want to think well and clearly, you have to start small. In this respect, exposure to historical thinkers is directly
The central thrust of my response to you was to question the idea that what is newer is therefore better, which you seem to assume in your essay. You have not responded to that critique yet.
I am glad you chose to highlight the sentence in question about history. I appeal to the judgment of history only in the Chestertonian sense in which history is the “democracy of the dead.” That is, in one sentence of my response I juxtapose a galaxy of individuals throughout the history of western civilization who disagree with your own personal denigration of Plato.
Again, if you aren’t appealing to some unproven premise that what is newer is therefore better, you must give justification for why we ought to kick Plato to the curb. You are right that my appeal to the judgment of others throughout history does not completely solve the problem. I mention it only in order to try to highlight the potential for objections to your opinion of Plato, which consists up till now in a collection of generalized objections (which is fair enough thus far, given the medium).
At the end of the day the only way to settle your argument would be to speak about the content of what Plato actually wrote. Which means he must be read, and seriously. For instance, in order to brush Plato off as you do above, which I find incredibly extreme, since even most of those who disagree with him on the record accord him more respect, you must have spent many years poring over his works, I suppose. Or at least delved deeply into the Platonic corpus and meditated and talked and wrote about Plato for a year or two.
Yet, of course, as you point out, most programs don’t read him very seriously–or well. In yours and the other concurring post I don’t see much evidence of anything other than a first year summary read in a typical historicist modern program, although I could be wrong. In other words, your problem is you have only read Plato in exactly the same way manner that makes you decry reading him at all. Which was the point of my previous post, which you haven’t really responded to yet.
Anyhow, to proceed further in any real fashion would require taking on your objections to the actual substance of Plato, and your pointing to replacements of modern ilk in light of those objections. That hasn’t been done yet, although I and others would certainly be up for it. Pick one aspect of Plato that is usually said to be worthy of consideration and apply your critique to it. Or I could supply yet another list or elaborate on the one I already provided.
Your points 1 and 2 above are not really arguments against reading Plato per se.
1) I don’t think that all Plato does is introduce you to the problems, and even if this was all he did one might think that a few hundred pages was remarkably brief. The number of pages is accidental to any serious argument here. You could, God forbid, spend more time reading those few hundred pages if you thought what was in there was worth reading. Or you could read selections. This isn’t really an argument against reading Plato.
2) This argument would be much better applied to most works of modern philosophy. Maybe when Joshua Cohen has been in print for over two millennia and influenced entire civilizations in myriad ways and times we can talk about who is read because they are enjoyed and found to be a salutary aid to the life of the mind versus who is read because they are assigned in class.
No one can really refute your opinion that the only reason most people like Plato is because they are trying to be cool or fit in because they know they “should” enjoy it. That’s quite an assertion. I find it especially odd in light of the fact that in the vast majority of prominent schools in this country students don’t seem to be all that ashamed of their ignorance of Plato. In fact, they make fashionable arguments either very similar or much more extreme than yours against him, because this is what they have been taught. They certainly haven’t been taught Plato except in the unsatisfactory historicist manner you were complaining about earlier. Reading Plato in order to come to truth: you think this is in fashion and makes people look smart today? Heh. Not my experience.
But again, considered in itself this objection isn’t even an argument against reading Plato or ancient/classical authors. Hell, it could be an argument against having any assigned readings.
And since when has student enjoyment been the basis of selecting a curriculum anyhow? And if student enjoyment was the basis philosophy curricula, I have a feeling a lot of modern philosophy wouldn’t be read at all.
So yet again, the main question is whether or not Plato is worth reading. And the main argument in this debate will have to be a substantial explanation of why or why not.
Lastly, as to your “starting small” bit, I absolutely agree there is a lot of truth to that.
“Do not try to plunge immediately into the ocean of learning,” St. Thomas advised a student Brother, “but go by way of little streams; for difficult things are more easily mastered once you have overcome the easier ones.”
http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/about/catholic_ta.htm
And, again, we are agreed that there was a lot of truth to your previous warnings about great books education gone wrong.
For example, agree or disagree, here is one article that finds Plato directly “relevant” for students today:
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1406&theme=home&loc=b
“The Apology is addressed to our souls, not to our polity. It practically calls us by name. On reading it, each of us does instinctively condemn the jury that convicted Socrates, just as he said we would. Yet if we are honest, we suspect that, had we been there, we too would have been among those who voted to kill the philosopher. This defense is more contemporary and pertinent than anything in the daily Le Monde or New York Times. It is also truer. It asks us, as these do not, to examine our souls, daily, if we want to pursue lives that are worthwhile. On further thought, many of us do not so want to reflect, even though we hate to admit it. We might have to change our ways.
It is, I say, ever a new text.”
What I see as the main problem with Mr. York’s argument is related to the “democracy of the dead” point Mr. Petersen raises. Like it or not, in deciding how to proceed in our education, we have to rely on the collective judgment of other people. Which other people? That’s the question. And here we can see that Mr. York tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, he wants to dispense with reading the classics as part of an education in philosophy or political theory – which suggests that he is choosing only the contemporary practitioners of the disciplines as his guides. But on the other hand, the contemporary practitioners of the disciplines do not all agree with him – otherwise he wouldn’t have a complaint at all. It is the judgment of many (I would say most) people who are acknowledged as experts in these disciplines that education in the discipline is aided by reading classics of the discipline – and many would say that reading those classics is not just helpful but necessary.
That said, Mr. York’s complaint seems to me, as one living in that dread land called Academe, as remarkably removed from the actual situation in the academic discipline of philosophy. There are, in fact, a substantial number (though not a majority) of philosophers who do not think it necessary to come into philosophy by way of Plato et al. (See Rutgers, University of – a top-five department in the field by reputation.) While many introductory courses in Philosophy will feature some Plato and perhaps Descartes’ Meditations, there is a familiar and common alternative approach, which is topic-based and relatively ahistorical.
All that is to say that there is controversy within philosophy about how it should relate to its history, and so Mr. York’s description of the state of affairs seems extreme, simplistic, and inaccurate – all the more so as the incentives of research and career favor novelty, at least from those who aspire to be major figures in the field. (More mediocre talents will double down by producing footnotes to the work of the former.) The idea that academic philosophers don’t want to say something new and game-changing does not stand up to any familiarity with the state of the discipline. (See “experimental philosophy” – Joshua Knobe, Steven Stich et al.) Even so, there is consensus among the preponderance of academic philosophers that studying classics in the history of philosophy is at least a helpful way of starting to do philosophy, and is perhaps essential. The position that the field could fruitfully abandon study of those classics is very far from being a consensus view. Which brings us back to the original problem – if we are to acknowledge the superiority of current practitioners and take our search for truth as a thoroughly contemporary enterprise, doesn’t our approach founder on the fact that most of those contemporary practitioners don’t agree with that approach?
A follow-up:
Mr. York’s argument depends on a comparison between the disciplines of philosophy and political theory and the experimental sciences. He observes that the latter do not require a survey of historically important figures in the field as part of an education in the sciences. He then asks why things should be any different in philosophy and political theory? One might very turn the question on its head, however. Given that education occurs in the context of conversations, taken broadly, and not as a solitary enterprise, and given that we have to decide with which people we are going to converse in our education, it seems on the face of it that we would want the broadest set of conversations that is feasible to tackle. In that case, we need some reason to think that we can just ignore those who studied our discipline in the past.
Notice that this way of framing the question points us towards a fuller exploration of the comparison with the experimental sciences. Why is it that one can get an education in physics without studying Newton himself, let alone Aristotle? Mr. York sets up the question so that he does not have to answer this question; he simply takes it as obvious and asks why any discipline should be different in this respect. But there is a reason why the experimental sciences do not relate to their history in the same way, even if the reason is hard to pin down – and it is. Thomas Kuhn gave, if not a definitive answer, a very helpful beginning of such an answer: the experimental sciences progress by assuming a paradigm, which then sets the agenda, defines the problems to be solved, and determines what kind of things count as data. Suppose he’s right for the moment. In that case it’s obvious why a contemporary physicist has no need, qua physicist, for reading Aristotle on the void – the questions Aristotle is raising are for the most part unintelligible in the conceptual framework (i.e., the paradigm) of contemporary physics. It simply is not part of the same enterprise, at least insofar as the enterprise of contemporary physics is something that produces consensus and progress.
What this suggests is that there is something peculiar about the experimental sciences, whereby they undergo revolutions so radical that scientists post-revolution do not need to study pre-revolutionary science in order to be educated and expert in their field. I submit that this is a remarkable thing, and that it is more illuminating to explore this peculiarity than to assume it as a fait accompli and demand that it be extended, by fiat, to other disciplines.
A more general comment:
Philosophy, as conceived by most who pursue it, aspires to tackle questions that dog humanity in every time and place. That is, it purports to deal with questions arising from the most general and universal features of our language, experience, and grasp of the world. The experimental sciences conspicuously do not purport to do this, powerful as their consequences may be for such general questions. In fact the story of the Scientific Revolution is largely the story of natural philosophers learning how to bracket, as much as possible, the biggest questions, so that they might make progress on more delimited and defined questions. This is of course related to what Kuhn tried to get at with the notion of a paradigm. It may seem paradoxical that the sciences that produce the most consensus are dealing with more narrow questions, but that is the case. Physicists, in their research, simply are not asking the same questions as Aristotle was asking about motion and the void, for example – except perhaps at the most general and abstracted level, where theoretical physics intersects with philosophy of physics and the metaphysics of material things – but that is precisely the part of physics that cannot afford to neglect its history, and that is precisely where historically informed thinkers make a significant contribution. Einstein is a good example here – certainly one doesn’t have to have read Descartes or Mach to understand the Lorenz transformations, but in order to figure out how to rejigger our concepts of time and space, Einstein was, by his own admission, helped by an approach to the historical development of physics that he took from Mach, who was a historian of science as well as theoretical physicist.
I submit that Mr. York’s suggestion does not sit well with this bit of history of science and philosophy. If philosophy were to follow, by stipulation, the example of the experimental sciences in this respect, it would either have to give up on tackling the universal questions it has most often taken itself to be tackling, or it would simply be drawing an arbitrary temporal line, with contemporary philosophers on one side – relevant by stipulation – and earlier philosophers on the other – irrelevant by stipulation.
To be fair, Mr. York is not alone in desiring philosophy to be “set on the secure path of a science” (Kant, B-preface to the Critique of Pure Reason). There have been philosophers, and there still are some, who largely agree with him, but they have some reasoned case for dividing the timeline into the relevant and the irrelevant for philosophical education – e.g., logic made such a breakthrough with Frege that philosophy before Frege is simply irrelevant to what we do now; linguistic analysis made such a breakthrough with Wittgenstein that philosophy before W. is simply irrelevant; our understanding of semantics made such a breakthrough with Kant that pre-Kantian metaphysics is hopeless, etc. etc. Those are fine arguments in principle – it’s just that they always seem to fail on their merits. For some time many were convinced that nothing in the philosophy of logic pre-Frege could be interesting, but then somebody studies the medievals really hard and shows that that’s not true; many were convinced that metaphysics after Kant, Comte, etc. was in the dustbin of history – but powerful arguments were brought forth that reopened more traditional metaphysics (e.g., Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity); many thought that normative ethics was no longer part of the task of philosophy – John Rawls, G.E.M. Anscombe and others blew holes in that idea. But let all that be; Mr. York does offer an argument of this form at all. He offers no argument, that is, that would justify a divide between an irrelevant past and a relevant present (or near-present). Instead, he aligns the distinction between truth-seeking and history-telling enterprises with the distinction between contemporary and historical texts – this is simply unjustified. (I take it this is what Mr. Petersen is objecting to when he accuses York of employing historicism even as he rails against it.)
My apologies for misspelling your name, Peterson!
Correction:
In my 12:59 comment, the sentence should read:
“But let all that be; Mr. York does NOT offer an argument of this form at all.”
Joe, you raise some interesting questions about the norms that uniquely govern science compared to other truth-seeking disciplines. One might question, though, whether the Kuhnian paradigm approach might be applied to other disciplines like philosophy. In that sense, we have a dominant paradigm (analytic philosophy, say) in which most scholars work out the contours while every now and again some major player(s) take(s) things in a new direction. If that’s the case, it seems like there may be good reason to explicitly ignore philosophers approaching matters from a different paradigm.
Obviously, things aren’t as clean-cut in philosophy as the difference between, say, Aristotelian and Newtonian mechanics. So maybe as an empirical matter, these paradigms don’t exist in philosophy. But it’s unclear to me why Kuhn’s theory can’t be generalized to other fields (though it’s been a while since I’ve read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).
Finally, as for Rutgers and a number of other programs, I think their approach to philosophy is the correct one. Disproportionately, the top programs focus on the problems of philosophy as people now understand them, while the bulk of programs across the country (albeit lower-ranked) have more of this history of philosophy approach to philosophy.
Matt, I think you misinterpret a number of my positions. First, I am not saying that we should categorically refuse to read anything written before some arbitrary date. There are parts of Hume’s Treatise that I think are sufficiently well-written and well-argued to merit inclusion on a modern syllabus. Perhaps the same goes for Kant’s Groundwork, but for the horrible writing it exhibits. This suggests that, even when we want to introduce the original idea, perhaps it’s worth using a different vehicle than the original text–quality and clarity do not always go together.
I also don’t mean to disdain the intellectual contributions of historical thinkers. Plato pushed philosophy forward in unparalleled ways and is surely a greater overall influence than, say, a Joshua Cohen. The same could be said, though, about Aristotle’s influence on Physics versus the work of some modern day physicist. But the modern day physics professor knows more about physics than Aristotle did, and when trying to learn the subject, we look to the modern figure. This isn’t intended to impugn Aristotle’s influence, but we do need to be practical about these things.
You challenge that I haven’t demonstrated that Plato’s Republic is wrong. Fair. Though, after all, it was a blog post, not a dissertation. Just to drop a couple objections, his recommendations on sexual engineering are disturbing, and his “philosopher king” ideas simply do not comport with common (reasonable)notions of individual autonomy or the basic equal value of persons.
I will finish with a question: would you assign Darwin in Biology classes or Das Kapital in Economics classes? If so, I think you’re nuts, but you’re at least consistent. If you would not, I need a good explanation of why they don’t make the cut but antiquated works by Plato or Aristotle do.
Joe,
You’re right that I don’t give a clear dividing line such as pre- or post-Frege logic, nor do I mean to. There is certainly a great deal of grey area out there concerning relevance, and I think some level of diversification across syllabi is okay. But, to rehammer an example, to read The Republic or Utopia but leave no time for A Theory of Justice or Anarchy, State and Utopia is a mistake.
Sometimes, as you suggest, returning to an idea originally articulated in an old work can yield fruitful results. Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue largely drew on Aristotle to reintroduce the viability of virtue ethics into modern thought (though I must admit, I’m not convinced). And, if people had infinite time on their hands, I would recommend they read every influential work ever written. But we don’t have infinite time, and so some tough choices have to be made. (Note: Tenured professors may have near-infinite time, so the calculus shifts for them).
This is particularly the case for undergraduate courses, where students may only have one class to expose them to the problems of political philosophy. In such circumstances, I believe their time would be better spent on questioning whether true equality involves a redistributive welfare state or not than that they spend time arguing about the divine right of kings. But sadly, it’s in the introductory and undergraduate courses where historicism is MOST prevalent. That seems backwards to me.
Thanks for your response, Felix. I run the risk of repeating myself, but notice that your final question to Matt can be turned around, and I have advanced some general reasons why the onus of proof lies on you. What’s more, I’ve suggested one way to go about distinguishing biology and economics, on the one hand, from philosophy, as regards the disciplines relationship to their respective histories. The short version of the answer is that in philosophy we still tackle the questions that Aristotle and Plato raised, and (this is slightly more controversial, but I’ll get to that) we find by contemporary experience – I emphasize that point – that it is philosophically fruitful and stimulating to study their answers.
As an empirical matter, your suggestion that the top departments don’t have a historical approach is just wrong, I think. Rutgers is an example in your favor, but Oxford is not – NYU has Don Garrett and Beatrice Longuenesse; Michigan has Louis Loeb, Ed Curley and now Tad Schmaltz (trending towards history of philosophy rather than away from it); Princeton has plenty of people in history; at Harvard even people in contemporary ethics like Korsgaard are very interested in studying Kant and Aristotle. Turning to texts, one of the more important contemporary books in its field is Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, which is chock-full of discussions of the history of philosophy and philosophical implications drawn out in part by framing questions in a historical way. There’s lots of work right now on contemporary philosophy and mind and Spinoza, as another example.
I don’t intend to name-drop for name-dropping’s sake here, but it is crucial to realize that lots of contemporary philosophers think that philosophy is not just a conversation among contemporaries. Notice that your claim is stronger than saying that philosophy can be done in a purely contemporary idiom with no reference to classic texts – even that would be rejected by lots of people at top departments, as long as we’re talking about top departments – but you’re saying that using classic texts is really a waste of time, at best an inefficient way to do something that can always be done in isolation from those texts. That’s an extreme view, as judged by the preponderance of contemporary academic philosophers – even in the Anglophone world. On the Continent it would would be far more promptly rejected.
Again, I bring this up not to argue by authority, but to point out the problem in your case: in effect you want to defer to the expertise of the contemporary state of the field, but your conclusion is not shared by a consensus of contemporary practitioners in the field, so the view falls apart.
I take the remark that tenured professors may have near-infinite time on their hands as further evidence of your removal from the actual state of affairs in academic philosophy – of course being tenured is a plumb situation, but near-infinite time is emphatically not one of the perks. Academia is bureaucratic if it is anything, and bureaucracy is a timesuck. It is, in general, a point in your favor that you are not in direct contact with the world of academic philosophy – but in this particular scenario your argument depends on empirical questions about the state of that discipline.
1. The “near-infinite time” crack was a joke, though the point is still relevant. With the safety of tenure and a strong acquaintance with the overall field, you are in a better position to explore hidden wisdom in the classics than some fresh-out-of-high-school undergrad trying to get some initial exposure to what philosophy is all about. In practice, though, it seems the opposite is often the case.
2. I didn’t go to Rutgers, so I’m not sure how far they take their anti-historicism. What I meant by my comment is that the better programs place *less* emphasis on historical works than the lower-quality ones; i.e. only one or two history requirements and only minor coverage of historical material in the other required classes. I know someone (anecdote alert) who did his undergrad at Princeton and is now obtaining his philosophy PhD at MIT. He has yet to take a single history of philosophy class. Obviously, that’s unusual for a philosophy undergrad, but it’s at least possible. Contrast that with a weaker program where around half the required classes (and all of the introductory ones) are history of philosophy courses, and where much of the material taught in the non-history classes is still mostly historical in nature.
As to 1), I think that’s basically right, but that there are two very different ways to get philosophical insight out of studying a classic text. Here’s an example of the first: a scholarly argument that so-and-so’s position, suitably understood, not only holds water and competes with contemporary accounts, but clears up persistent difficulties in the recent discussion, avoids pitfalls of the best contemporary accounts, etc. Here’s an example of the second: to get acquainted with a particular kind of approach to the world, through studying some important figure who developed that approach with great acuity. The tenured professor is well-equipped to do the former, as is the grad student who opts to go into history of philosophy. But the latter is suited to one’s initial education in philosophy, I maintain.
Your anecdote about the guy at Princeton and MIT appalls me, though sadly it does not surprise me too much. I don’t think you’re justified, however, in assuming that weaker-stronger correlates with more-less emphasis on the history of philosophy. It might be true that weaker-stronger correlates with less-more freedom to choose one’s specialized course of graduate study. From my experience that seems much more likely – there is intense pressure to have graduates be really polished in their area of specialization, whether that’s ahistorical discussion of the metaphysics of space-time points or Spinoza’s political philosophy. If the graduate faculty at a place with few or no required history courses includes a strong contingent of philosophers whose work is historically informed, then it’s a stretch to say that the program is anti-historical, even if one can get through the PhD program with few historical classes.
Those examples notwithstanding, there are still top 15 graduate programs that require a more thorough grounding in the history of philosophy. I hope they’re not a dying breed. But in any case nothing about that establishes what you claimed at the outset: that philosophy 101 should have works from Plato in the syllabus exactly as often as the Biology 101 syllabus has Aristotle in it.
Given that you don’t intend to be drawing a bright line, I wonder how you think your view can avoid having liberal education entirely dependent on the intellectual fads of the moment. I presume that you acknowledge that there are fads like that? Granted, not everyone who reads Aristotle is going to be able to propose a rehabilitation of his ethics like MacIntyre did, but notice that people who were studying Aristotle all along weren’t subject to the tunnel vision of the early-twentieth century OxBridge tunnel vision on ethics. So even though they weren’t as erudite or perhaps as leisured as MacIntyre, they avoided having an intellectual fad rob them of reading a most important author. Even the fact that this happens sometimes is a big difference from the sciences. Do you think it’s a live possibility that someone might tomorrow revise the impact laws such that physics students will have to go back to Descartes’ Principles? I take it you don’t. But returns to the past for philosophical (rather than antiquarian) reasons is a recurring pattern in philosophical study. Given that, it seems foolish to take the risk of being too blinded by what the field thinks is hot at the moment. (That, incidentally, is why I hope that grad programs with history of philosophy requirements are not a dying breed.)