system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How relevant are the classic philosophical texts to answering philosophical queries today?

Philosophy, like many other disciplines, has a rich history of influential thinkers writing important works. Philosophy has Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein, Popper, to name a tiny fraction of what I consider the biggest name Western philosophers. Physics has Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein etc. Mathematics has Euclid, Leibniz, Newton etc. All of this is to be expected.

But also like other disciplines, in the age of modern academia philosophy research has become vast, with academic papers becoming the main way research is initially published. And as with other disciplines, textbooks (on and offline) summarise historical ideas and debates.

But unlike with other disciplines, students are often encouraged to go back and read the original classic texts. And these texts are sometimes seen as a necessary point of engagement for many questions, and subsequently are often referenced directly. 

My question is: In general, how important is it for philosophers today to read and engage with the classic texts to produce good research? Is it ever/often sufficient to understand their ideas from textbooks, and then focus one's engagement with contemporary philosophical papers? Or another way to put it would be: for an essay on topic X, is it more valuable to read the classic books on X, or to read the same number of pages of textbook entries summarising the classic books and contemporary papers on X?

Time is money after all, especially in an academic's life.
gpt
It would vary from text to text, of course, but at the very least the historical philosophers would probably shine some light on contemporary questions. That being said, since the historical philosopher's insights might have been incorporated into the body of knowledge that contemporary philosophers bring to bear on a question, there might be nothing gained from reading the historical philosopher -- even though, technically, he or she does illuminate the question. But you can see why it would very from text to text, then, because in some cases, contemporary philosophers might not be fully appreciating the insights of historical philosophers.