It isn’t my goal, if anything I believe in some kind of balance, but I’m still at the beginning of working these things out.
I think your criteria is good for some philosophically inspired ideology, but bad as a foundation for philosophy itself. Philosophy ought not be restricted to the things you mentioned, nor anything else for that matter. Philosophy ought to be given free reign over all topics. I’d like to think of philosophy as an amorphous force.
That leaves a lot to be desired. So you think my 3 criteria are too restricting. But what criteria should be laid down then? If we give philosophy completely free reign, then anything would pass as ‘good’ philosophy. David Ike’s theory of the Illuminati would be good philosophy.
You don’t have to agree with my criteria, but do you have any of your own?
My conception of philosophy differs from yours, gib - it’s a different paradigm. Strictly speaking , there is, for me, no philosophy, but only philosophers. Each philosopher eliminates the bad ideas - bad for him. And retains the good ones. There are only so many issues - God or no god, metaphysics or no metaphysics, morality as manmade or as a given - and some more. And maybe a lot of details.
I would paraphrase you:
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Doesn’t conflict with my own direct experience
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Internally consistent
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Good for me
A good philosophy takes into and has a good account of much of the criticism. It is straightforwards and to the point. It is consequential to some aspect of society. And it’s essentially about the foundations, on top of which, scientific and theological are based. Talk of ideologies are fine, as long as the main focus remains on the foundations on top of which the foundation stands. That’s pretty good as I see it.
A ‘good’ philosophy is representative of a ‘good’ philosopher and a ‘good’ man.
A ‘good’ man changes everything and that is what makes him ‘good’.
I’ve actually pondered over whether philosophy is the perpetual practice of rehashing age-old ideas and presenting them anew as though they had never been thought before.
Is this what you think?
But then I think to myself that surely some famous philosophers have proven themselves creative enough to come up with genuinely new material. Wasn’t Aristotle the first to come up with the idea of ‘substance’? Wasn’t pythagora the first to propose numbers as the true - and metaphysical - form of reality? Wasn’t Descartes the first to propose only two mutually exclusive substances constituting the universe? Wasn’t Newton the first to model a completely materialistic and mechanical universe capable of sustaining itself from its own internal devices? Wasn’t Wittgenstein the first to offer a theory of language that was able to banished metaphysics on the grounds that it was meaningless (as opposed to just false)?
Or were these all things that everyone was thinking all along and they were the first to say it? Were their philosophies just patchworks of older, more elementary ideas, that were just recombined and reconceptualized with new and more fancy terminology?
I would think philosophical issues, at least the popular ones, stem from social issues. Who would have ever thought a thousand, or even a hundred, years ago that we would be philosophizing about racism or gender issues. Was ‘racism’ even a term a thousand years ago? Or how about the philosophy of language? Or capitalism versus marxism? These are relatively recent, and didn’t exist in philosophy a thousand years ago. Or did they - just under different names/concepts?
Give me a few examples of philosophies that are foundations and the ideologies that stem from them? That’ll help me understand your position a bit more clearly.
Marx changed everything for Russia and the Soviet Union. Many would say his impact was tragically negative. Is he still ‘good’ in your books?
Sure, gib. Those guys did (i guess) make that stuff up. Excepting Newton, who wasn’t really a philosopher, it’s all useless crap. I was talking about good philosophy.
Philosophy finds it source in society, yes. I don’t mean that there are no new ideas, but that by the time we are old enough to philosophise, we have already heard them.
Philosophy doesn’t exist except within philosophers.
I could state this more clearly. I choose not to.
It is quite a “coincidence” how the philosophies of our (American/Western) enemies are “tragically negative”.
He is ‘good’ in my books, because his name is eternally engraved in history and it means something. Hitler was also ‘good’ as a philosopher, for better or worse. It is difficult to maneuver around social propaganda though. Americans (me) are raised to believe that such men are “good” while such other men are “evil”, but neither of these superficial terms specify what actually transpired and why. Marx, even Hitler, changed the World for the better, in the long run.
Isn’t that ‘goodness’?
First, it has to be decided what a philosophical question is and what it is not. It is not a question answerable by empirical investigation. Thus, whether brains exist in stones is not a philosophical matter, since all we have to do is look.
Once that is settled, the most convincing argument wins the day - or the one that side-steps/overcomes the greatest number of objections.
Because of the nature of the subject - essentially, reasoned argument - certainty cannot be obtained.
Remember that many years ago, what we now call scientific questions fell within the province of philosophy (science was called ‘natural philosophy’) and, as they became answered for sure, they were subsumed under a different subject - chemistry, physics and biology, for instance.
‘Good’ philosophy, in my view, comprises valid or sound, reasoned argument. It might not always convince, either, but be well argued.
That’s it, IMO.
Regards,
R
It’s sounds like you’re saying new ideas are rarely ever ‘good’ right out of the pen - that they have to go through a sort of ‘refinement’ process whereby they are scrutinized, judged, overhauled, refurbished, and perhaps recombined with pieces of other philosophies before they can be accepted as ‘good’. Would this be the task of the older, more experienced, philosophers then?
So then the impact is what matters. Whether we like the philosophy or its consequences is too relativistic to figure into any assessment of its ‘goodness’ or not.
But I see a hint of something more - when you say Hitler changed the world for the better in the long run, do you mean that he showed the world the darker side of man so that we could be more wary of it in the future and prepared to deal with it properly? If that’s so, then a ‘good’ philosophy is one that not only has a significant impact but whose consequences we can learn from in the long run as well. Is this right?
Sorry, I mistook some parts of your first post.
So, I’m retracting the part I said your question was useless.
I see.
Honestly, I don’t know. Or I don’t care.
Why should it be “philosophy”? And even a good one?
I do what I want, and I happened to like to think.
Possibly, It’s not philosophy, at all. 
I hate that classic example. i mean it does depict importance of premises to some extent, but not enough for my taste.
Also, these statement sounds like absolute declaration, to me.
For example, “All men are mortal” has no condition, at all.
I’d probably agree if it was written “The heart of human will stop one day under normal situation”.
The physical human heart wouldn’t go on and on and on like energize bunny, and we’ve excluded special situation like medical treatments.
We tend to be too careless about making statements, implying absolute certainty here and there, without being aware.
And it leads to many fallacies we see (and sometime we suffer from).
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I said “If philosophy is to seek something absolute”. I mean I wasn’t saying we can attain absolute.
On the contrary, I was saying we can’t attain anything absolute with positive assertions.
Logic isn’t about the truth or falsehood of premises or statements, it’s about whether the conclusions follow from the premises. If all men are mortal, and if Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. Whether the premises are true or not is a matter of science (or opinion).
Wrong premises yield wrong ( or at least unreliable) conclusion. GIGO
If you are concerned about the reliability of the conclusion, you should think about the quality/validity of premises.
All men are ketchup. Socrates is a man (who loved men and women). Socrates is a ketchup (who loved ketchup and ketchapute). 
Isn’t it obvious? Yet, there are so many thoughts/talks based of faulty (or unreliable) premises.
Some of us can be happy playing on the ground of unreliable premises. Hypothetical talks. Dreams in the fantasy world.
It can be useful, too.
But without examining the premises, we are caged inside the virtual world with limitations and (lack of ) reliability that goes with it…
So, I guess I should say that good quality thinking requires the examination of premises.
And even in case of the hypothetical simulation, it’s important to choose premises to obtain useful results, or to obtain results, easily.
That I can agree with.
I wouldn’t say that for a conclusion. I suppose Everything and Nothing matters for the ‘good’ philosopher.
Everybody else works on the details. That’s not his job.
That is true. Likeness, based on emotion & feeling, is too relativistic – and especially feminine. The Truth does not care whether you like it or not. It remains the Truth regardless. It will kill you regardless. It does not care regardless. If you have a relationship with truth, as I believe a philosopher must, then he is ‘good’ insofar as he is close to the Truth of Things.
The practical definition of “good” goes out the window. The difference is between a ‘good’ boy and a ‘good’ man. What is it?
That is accurate, very impressive!
It is the collective ‘we’ that learns and deals with the Spirit of Man. I would not label Hitler or Marx in common terms of “good” or “bad”. The concept of ‘good’ is necessarily much more profound.
Well, as I stated, it is not so much about the impact. In fact, a ‘good’ philosophy/philosopher may have no (apparent) impact at all.
What was more powerful to Hitler and Marx, their ideas or their actions? What is the difference?
I’m not sure about whether this is “right”.
What I do know is that the collective-We does seek to learn from the Spirit of Man. Maybe therein lies the answers?
Hmmm, what makes ‘good’ philosophy?
I’m just gonna go off the reservation for a moment, so stop me if I’ve gone too far with this one. Here we go.
Um, I believe ‘good’ philosophers make ‘good’ philosophy. But there’s more. More, you say? Yes! more.
Not only do ‘good’ philosophers make ‘good’ philosophy, one still has to contend with those who deem it ‘good.’
It’s a working relationship. It has to work, otherwise how can we ever know. Know what I mean? No?
Why do I have a feeling Faust beat me to this?
I guess I better read the thread before I say more. I’m not sure just giving an answer after a cursory glance at the title is gonna do. Then again…