Does any philosopher mostly come up with their own unique ideas in a black box, uninfluenced by and not based upon ideas that preceded them in culture and literature?
This is an actual question, I don't know the answer, but it does seem extremely unlikely to me that this would be the case.
> Does any philosopher mostly come up with their own unique ideas in a black box,
No of course not. Philosophy is a progression of original insights built upon the prior progression of original insights. But the key word here is "original", aka a leap of intuition that reveals something about existence not previously recognized. Not regurgitated, un-credited, pop-philosophy.
yeah, fair enough. On first reading of your comment I missed that the 'cheating' was specifically describing the repetition of prior ideas without credit, as opposed to generally.
This is an actual question, I don't know the answer, but it does seem extremely unlikely to me that this would be the case.