You misunderstand; I did not want Meditations to do that. I think it's actually possible philosophy has gone backward in the last 2000 years. Or possibly jumped in front of a bus.
It has certainly changed considerably, at least. For the Greeks and Romans, philosophy was expected to guide one in how to live one's daily life. That role is mostly expected to be filled by religion nowadays, not by philosophy.it's actually possible philosophy has gone backward in the last 2000 years
Hadot agrees with you. I don't think I do. We've gained precision, and the cost of that is that we know when we're waving our hands. It turns out when you're talking about big things like how people in general ought to live, you invariably wave your hands a lot. It makes attempts to talk about them look ridiculous, and trying to talk about them feel ridiculous. But the ancients were waving their hands too, they just didn't know it.
The greatest hand-waver of them all was dear Bertrand, though. I always secretly pretended he was Bertie Wooster's namesake. In all seriousness, I tried to articulate what I disagree with here and I can't, really. Just that I've read a lot of post-Renaissance philosophy and a lot of classical philosophy and a bare handful in between and I know which era I'd pick if I was on a desert island. If that's the best rationalization I can mount, though, I clearly don't belong with Descartes anyway.