Why don't we study philosophers that are actually relevant to today's problems

Think - what was the motivation behind the Theory of Forms; why did Plato posit it? Plato inherited from Heraclitus a stark awareness of the changeability of things - everything is constantly in flux. But since the object of philosophy is truth, something solid, which is always true and never changes, then the object of philosophy must not be something as silly as what changes from day to day. The object of philosophy must be the eternal.

Philosophers throughout the ages, from Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, to the modern age and the present day - what has been there science? "What is it to be?" "What is justice?" "Does God exist?" These are eternal questions, concerned with universal truth, what is true always and everywhere. What changes from day to day - leave that to the historians, the political scientists, the journalists! (Not that I mean to disparage these professions, but simply to say that they are concerned with temporal facts.) The philosopher discusses what was important two thousand years ago, what is important today, and what will be important two thousand years from now.

What are the questions of today, then? "What is freedom?" "What is the place of religion?" "What form of society is most just?" Are these things that were never important before, belonging only to the contemporary age? Far from it! Is it impossible to find some answers to these questions in the thoughts of the ancients? Not at all! Indeed, just a glance at the Republic of Plato will show you discussions about the centralization of wealth, the growing class of the disenfranchised, the revolt of that mass and the establishment of a state of the masses - has this become any less important today? In the Meditations of Descartes, what questions are considered? "Does God exist?" "What does it mean to be human?" Have these problems become irrelevant with the passage of four centuries?

No, indeed, the philosophies of the ancients and moderns are relevant today, because they is able to transcend the "today" - both ours and their own - able to transcend a tunnel-visioned concern with the events of the day, and discuss what is true in every day, including our own.