Often we are inspired by great thinkers of another time.  Do you wonder who they were, how they lived, or how they came to be referenced generations and centuries later?  To help others come to reasonable conclusions regarding how to live well, meanwhile living well oneself, is a worthwhile endeavor of any time.  Those great and called upon writers of times long past were just humans who took time to think, write, and reach people.  It matters less that they are revered than they are worth revering.