A few years ago, philosopher Hanno Sauer (Utrecht University) shocked many of his colleagues by stating that ‘old’ philosophy is overrated. He wrote in a much-read article: “We can learn surprisingly little about philosophical problems by studying the works of the ‘great’ historical philosophers such as Aristotle, Hegel or Wittgenstein’. When a small Twitter storm arose, he wondered whether he should change his position and in what way. Is the history of philosophy philosophically relevant?
