>>24629310
I was mostly referring to current intellectuals not authors of "great works" but honestly even then, if you actually read them they pretty obviously have massive blind spots and just repeat biases of the age and assumptions about works they haven't read. The views they had of the scholastic/medieval and greeks are often hilariously off and it manifestly clear they never had any serious engagement with their work.
It's where you get gaps like in Nietzsche where he assumed all Christianity to essentially be something like the german lutheranism he was raised in and he seemed to have essentially no familiarity with the medieval and patristic traditions which are quite contrary to the Lutheran view and much more in line with his views.
They were much more selective about what they read historically and just in terms of access and discussion you don't have the ability like you do now to instantly see all over the world anyone talking about any book, they would have focused on certain ones and often had huge blind spots that maybe there just wasn't any discussion around at the time (the view of the latin tradition being the most obvious one in protestant cultures, whether you agree with it or not the lack of understanding of it is pretty glaring and also understandable just due to their environment)
As I said for actual current "intellectuals" now broadly speaking including academic philosophers I'd estimate the % who have actually seriously engaged with the historical works (dramatic as well as philosophical) to be sub 1% if even sub .1%
If you focus more historically at authors of "great works" It would be substantially higher but I still do not think it would be complete, they'd focus on certain traditions or schools and have some gaps and some quirks of interpretation due to how things are being discussed at the time.
The idea any one individual can "master" the classics in some absolute way and that everyone who does that should get the same thing is just a fundamental misunderstanding of what people are doing.
Everyone approaches them with certain perspectives, preconceptions, biases, focus on certain traditions and books, emphasize certain things over others, and just have certain gaps. That's fine the idea any one person can actually master everything is just delusional and comes off as the person just being afraid of actually taking a stance and going out on a limb where they could be wrong.
