Assessing the contribution of dead thinkers.

[Harry Veeder <aa361@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<<The assessments of the contribution of dead thinkers is usually a form
of ancestor worship: in identifying the ancestors we identif yourselves.
This is why it is rather hard to switch ancestors: it amounts to
conversion, and a conversion is both an act of treason and an act of
self-humiliation, of the admission of having belonged to the wrong party.
But we need not take the assessments of the contributions of dead thinkers
to be a form of ancestor worship. We may find it more important to think
clearly than to play such social games. To the extent that this clarity
depends on our clear image of the past, these assessments are made in
order to enable us to think clearly, not in order to enable ghosts to lie
in peace.>>

Joseph Agassi

(from a review of the philosophy of Karl Popper written
just after Popper died in 1994)