who is your faviourite western philosopher from this list?

i'd go with the last one (schop.)

no althusser, no etc

i voted for marx

don't vote for the celebrity!

No Jesus??!?!?!

From my cliffnotes style knowledge of these fellas: Satre.

I like the way he explored how life is contingent and meaningless, (something I've suspected since I was a kid) and how you have to find your own meaning. Well dressed, too.

PS: I am not a goth.

don't vote for the celebrity!

-- Zeno, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 12:39 AM

?

don't put descartes before the horse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i like Schopenhauer, he was sort of a modern combination between plato and Buddha, only western.
Wittgenstein was good too,a true rebel

All these guys influenced me in various ways of course, but for me Marx represents the most important move towards a critical philosophy. Of course I love Hume's hipster dbag sense of humor and Nietzsche's sense of melodrama (amor fati was a big influence on me for a while) to say nothing of Sartre's wry bitterness yada yada

wanna vote for most of em

Since when is Jesus a western philospher????????

For some reason my various phil courses tended to gloss over Schopenhauer. Anything you'd recommend, Zeno?

existentialism is so passe man...

lol unlike, say, Schopenhauer.

"The World as Will and Representation" of course.
i cant say i've read the whole huge thing myself, but i've been reading parts, and a lot of summaries of his work.
Thomas Bernhard was the genius who brought me to investigate on him

and since i know you are into eastern philosophy, you will might find some insights on his work

so i've heard, thanks.

btw, the order of the list is the same as the results were from the poll i've copied it.
(Nietsche won, Schopenhauer was last).

Since when is Jesus a western philospher????????

-- HI DERE, Tuesday, January 29, 2008 7:47 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lol u didn't get my joke moran

funny i find myself going "ok Schopenhauer but no badiou?" before i remember that "hey douchebag, not everybody studied the same guys you did."

including all western philosophers would make it a huge list, this one including, i guess, the most popular one's

spinoza was just so wildly mind-blowing when i finally understood like %5 of his thought. but the other 95% was way over my head (kind of like a lot these guys, and this is coming from someone who has a philosophy degree).

hume is a blast to read (HOOS - nice one with the "hipster d-bag sense of humor), kant is such a serious heavyweight that i was also kind of blown away when reading him, same goes for plato. it's of course kind of redundant to say these guys are heavyweights.

hegel was such a mindfuck, and it made it even worse that i had to present on him during my first phil. class freshman year.

okay i'm seriously running down the list of most of these guys thinking about how much they blew my mind. sorry i can't offer any more developed thought.

though locke is boring, boring asshole. i hated reading him.

Nietzche

the philosophy I most... agree with, or try to adhere to, is Kierkegaard but he is a drag to read. Nietzche is a blast.

Nietzche's writing is pure and relatively easy,sometimes reminding me of Kafka. ad that to the fact that he is an existentialist pioneer of sort, and it's eady to see why he is/was popular.
but i agree, most philosophy writing is a headache.
i think it's better to read prose that is influenced directly from a specific philospher, or even those short essays summaries book about them.
life's too short

(HOOS - nice one with the "hipster d-bag sense of humor)

that's kinda how i always pictured him: mid-20s kid completely demolishing the understood paradigm and (for the most part) making it look easy, peppering in sarcasm and disdain all the way through.

essentially telling all his philosophy teachers "i am so much smarter than you AND you're wrong about everything" is a bold as fuck

kierkegaard. none of these guys are a blast to read except maybe voltaire. fuck nietzsche, I'm nearly thirty. shit, I should have voted voltaire.

Nietzche is hardly the lol college choice here! Probably the keenest of the bunch really.

btw wanko still luv username

nietzsche is TOTALLY the lol college choice and i say that as a dude writing his thesis about nietzsche

im going with kierkegaard

Nietzsche isn't the lol college choice, though? I'd always assumed his fan base was made up of authoritarian Romantics who hadn't actually read him.

lol xp

but yeah Candide is the funnest read of anything by anyone here.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost thx HOOS and u too RD

the philosophy I most... agree with, or try to adhere to, is Kierkegaard but he is a drag to read

Just the opposite for me: I think he's a great writer whose philosophy was full of shit.

and of course "fan base" =/= "fans of" xp to self

where's that knuck if you buck thread

best kierkegaard quote (ive pasted this on a lot of threads but i love it so who cares)

One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?

goddam you motherfuckers don't fault Nietzche for being 'Nietzche' his shit is TIGHT. Sartre is the lol college choice obv.

"Knuckito, ergo buck" (Latin: "I knuck, therefore I buck") is a philosophical statement which occurs in René Descartes' Discourse on Method (1637). It became a foundational element of Western philosophy. It is colloquially referred to as "the knuckito."

Although the idea expressed in "knuckito ergo buck" is widely attributed to Descartes, many predecessors offer similar arguments—particularly St. Augustine of Hippo in De Civitate Dei (books XI, 26), who also anticipates modern refutations of the concept. (See Principles of Philosophy, §7: "Ac proinde haec cognitio, ego knuckito, ergo buck, est omnium prima et certissima etc.").

BIG HOOS aka the steendriver on Wednesday, 28 March 2007 02:35 (1 hour ago)

Knuck and Buck (German: Nachgeben und Bocken, 1927) is German philosopher Martin Heidegger's most important work. Although the work was compiled hastily from his lecture notes, and Heidegger did not complete the project outlined in the introduction, the book has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. It is widely considered the most influential 20th century work of Continental philosophy.

BIG HOOS aka the steendriver on Wednesday, 28 March 2007 02:38 (1 hour ago)

sartre is the lol high school choice

eighteen year old boys love Nietzsche. he writes all pretty, i guess.

I'm torn btwn Nietzsche (miserable guy, but great questioner); Socrates (seemed like happy-enough guy, but great questioner); and Kierkegaard (seemingly miserable guy, but great questioner; it'sa shame about what I see as being his eventual cop-out to however unorthodox a brand of Christianity)

I'm more partial to non-Western schools of philosophy. It seems like historically there have been happier, lighter-minded dudes going on over there.

yah i wanna start a who is yr fave eastern philosopher poll but those dudes are not nearly as well known i think

spinoza

xp i'd vote nagarjuna but he's the only one i know of!

That Heidegger, he was a boozy beggar.

"Knuckito, ergo buck" (Latin: "I knuck, therefore I buck")

before you people go @ me for this, can we clarify that i am aware that, strictly speaking, this should be "Buckito, ergo knuck"?

"but yeah Candide is the funnest read of anything by anyone here."

it is great and funny, and although his most popular book, voltaire didnt think it was significant, and he wrote lots of heavy (suppose to be) important stuff beside that (not that i read anything escept "candide", just a fact))

"you people" being an amicable term for you awesome bros that post in the few philosophy threads on ilx

Camus can't do, apparently

"who is yr fave eastern philosopher poll "

buddha will win this of course, so no suspence

"There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." -- Camus

it is a serious question no doubt

xpost

re: Nagarjuna That was the first name that came to mind in that context...but I am just being lazy. What strikes me is that there are a lot of Asian philosophers who are not so-terribly removed from the timeframe of the big Western names that I don't think it's possible to write them off as mythical or something...like, Lao-Tzu or someone could be controversial in that context, but if you start getting into names like Tsongkhapa, they are basically in the same timeframe as medieval European philosophers, so even apart from their extant body of written work, I don't think that they can be easily dismissed.

hah, wanko I am listening at this very moment to "Life is Cheap" by Flipper, so take that as you will...

trying to remember who said that the main reason we keep on living is curiousity

flipper were existentialists masqueradings as nihilists, probably the best philosophy of an group ever. or myabe big black. or new order. or anal cunt.

grammarcheck.exe

lol u didn't get my joke moran

I got it, I just thought it was stupid.

xposts
I tend to agree, but as old a trope as it is, I would replace that with reading it as being idealists/romantics masking their tread-marked/heartbroken ideals with half-hearted stabs at embracing nihilism (at least in the case w/Flipper)

some good ones, some mediocre ones on the list

but damn Plato in such a walk

the greeks always seem a little abstract to me. maybe life was a little more abstracted then? nah.

missing all the dope presocratics

"...or myabe big black. or new order. or anal cunt."

Plato is Gay: Anal Cunt and Philosophy

WITTGENSTEIN

missing all the dope presocratics

-- max, Wednesday, 30 January 2008 02:40

dude we have zeno in this thread what more u want

:D :D

nietzche, but he's not perfect

was teaching Parmenides yesterday and blew minds of numerous undergrads: that shit is bananas

zeno:

i didnt choose that nickname as regard to him

Until reading the comments I assumed Wittgenstein was a shoe-in and I felt a little obvious voting for him.

Euler, did the students get that the Parmenides is, you know, funny?

you wanna talk about mindfucks lets talk about a classroom of undergrads trying to figure out wtf leibniz is talking about

WITTGENSTEIN

-- John Justen, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 2:48 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^ Almost as fun to read as Voltaire.

actually it was just teaching what the dude Parmenides said, just his argument that there is no change. My students don't tend to get philosophy jokes though; we're reading the Symposium in my other class this term and when Aristophanes gets the hiccups it's total laffs but I had to explain that and so...no funnies there.

xpost I work on this shit for a living and I rarely have any idea what Leibniz is talking about

"so we're all...bubbles...experiencing each other subjectively...?"

wittgenstein was the one who put the philosophers in perspective.
he was cool

i do like wittgenstein. the tractus is one of the few primary texts i keep on my bookshelf

"who is yr fave eastern philosopher poll "

buddha will win this of course, so no suspence

-- Zeno, Wednesday, 30 January 2008 13:11 (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Confucius made loads of jokes about men going through airport turnstiles and women doing somersaults without pants, so him.

the tractatus is one of the few primary texts etc

this is sort of a weird group of philosophers, huh

One of my philosophy university instructors regularly attended class wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt and flip-flops, which didn't exactly endear me to the discipline (though it should probably be noted that I probably lacked the math skillz to pursue it as a proper major, at any rate)...

But at least three of the people that I think of most highly in the world, friend-wise, originated from philosophy undergrad backgrounds (and some have gone further than that), so I have tons of respect if only 'cos of that.

"his argument that there is no change"

tell that to buddahists and they will bit the shit out of you, if only their philosphy would allowd it

I mean Leibniz had one killer idea which was to build a machine that would be able to decide which argument, between two contesting parties, was better. The idea was to put courts out of business. I hope google's working on this.

xxpost on Wittgenstein: he's one of these guys that philosophers take pride in not understanding (note: I think this is stupid and get a lot out of him, esp. the later stuff). I think he has a higher reputation outside of philosophy than inside it...actually that's probably true for a lot of the guys on this list

I suspect I'll be the one person who chose John Locke.

Buddhists would say that in order to realise there is no change you have experienced a change between this state of mind and the previous state of mind, before punching the air and getting beer.

yeah it's a weird list, out phil majors only read maybe 6 of those guys anywhere in class during the major (Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Descartes, Locke, Hume) ; in my intro classes I teach Nietzsche sometimes also

er our phil majors

i read nietzsche, plato, aristotle, locke and spinoza in english classes

nietzsche, heidegger and marx in religion classes

kant, descartes and hume in the only philosophy class ive ever taken

"his argument that there is no change"

tell that to buddahists and they will bit the shit out of you, if only their philosphy would allowd it

-- Zeno, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 3:13 AM (4

i thought the "no change" was referring to parmenides?

None of my big bruv political philosophy guys were on there (Locke's OK and all, but he's no Mill) so it was Wittgenstein or Russell. I went with Russell. I don't know, some lingering thing for Principia.

the only guys the phil dept at my school teaches after kant are hegel and wittgenstein. they pretend that continental philosophy just doesnt exist.

"One of my philosophy university instructors regularly attended class wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt"

maybe he was reading this:

http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/prod_lrg_images/134/30701134.jpg

i read nietzsche, plato, aristotle, locke and spinoza in english classes

wow dude i want your english classes you can have my chaucer

the only guys the phil dept at my school teaches after kant are hegel and wittgenstein. they pretend that continental philosophy just doesnt exist.

-- max, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 3:20 AM

yeah ut austin has one dude who does continental work vs the rest of the dept that works the way yrs does. i think that's pretty common in the us though?

yeah we mostly teach guys after Kant in my department (just 2 history courses), but it's a pretty mainstream research dept so we're all publishing new philosophy (which sadly is totally specialized and not the kind of thing likely to ever make a philo poll in 100 years, though who knows) and want to teach stuff like what we do.

yeah, we have no continental philosophy and the dept where I got my ph.d. had two guys out of like 50 who do it. In our department's freezer there's a copy of a book by Derrida; that's how much respect he gets around here.

;_;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU

"shoe in"

I like Nietzsche except for the sexism

big xpost: a good place to start with Schopenhauer if you aren't up for the Will as World and Idea would be "Parerga and Paralipomena" aka Essays and Aphorisms. Bitter like a quintuple espresso.

I voted for Plato but Wittgenstein was super close.

Read in high school: Russell, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche
Read in philosophy classes (undergrad): Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein (who drove me to abandon philosophy because I decided I agreed with the Investigations position and should study language instead, hence grad school in English Dept.)
Read in grad school: Descartes, Plato, Heidegger, Hegel, Marx
Reading on my own now: Spinoza, Aristotle, more Descartes

blah blah blah

lol i just remembered being 15 in some "apologetics class" @ church and asking the pastor about some anti-god thing nietzsche had said, and pastor goes "yeah, well nietzsche also lost his mahhhnd and went crAYzeh when he got older, so what does THAT tell ya?"

decided I agreed with the Investigations position and should study language instead, hence grad school in English Dept.

I think this is pretty common!

agree, i hear a lot of people say witt made em go do other stuff

well years later I realized I had fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
When a philosopher says that they have effectively resolved all the problems and you can go home now you should be very skeptical. But I, er, wasn't.

Oh, and I should have added Sextus Empiricus to that list up there.

I read everyone on the list during Philo undergrad, spent about half of one class purely on Wittgenstein. The only ultra-despised/never taught one on the list was pretty much Sartre.

yeah not even continental philosophers will own up to sartre. poor guy!

buddhists, from my weak understanding can be in part boiled down to "nouns", lol

i prefer "referents"

yeah, good choice. or "reified concepts"...freezing reality, etc.

well i would quibble with you on "freezing," i might suggest the core of buddhist thought is precisely the opposite: the various movements and flows of reality.

Spinoza, based on the paragraph or so summaries that are all I really know about any of these guys.

No William of Occam, no credibility.
I voted Spinoza.

but what do i know xxp

That's what I mean: "freezing" reality goes hand-in-hand with the mistake of reification, which, when taken too far ignores the fact that everything's a changing. 'Cept, there aren't even any "things" to be seen as changing...it's all best looked at as verbs when languaging

heh, languaging

lol

Buddhism feels a lot like stuff that's bleedin' obvious, rather than just philosophy. Witness the notion of not fretting about the past or panicking about the future. And yeah, flux.

how could you NOT vote for kant? just LOOK @ him!

http://www.island-of-freedom.com/KANT.GIF

Buddhism feels a lot like stuff that's bleedin' obvious, rather than just philosophy.

Things you were always too scared to say for $100 Alex

it's the only philospophy that suggest also practice as meditation.also because it's also a religion.

(btw "referents" was a slight joke reference: lots of buddhist masters/priests/dudes, when confronted with more esoteric questions of buddhist philosophy, have been known to bring your attention back to "THIS! just THIS!")

(xp) I still don't get that. Buddhism at its core is almost an anti-religion.

http://www.et20.com/photos/images/photo/05.jpg

xpost to eisbar

yeah i'm just gonna vote for the best looking one
xposts

i mean.you can think Nietsche's way of living is your way, but how can it practicly done.in buddhism it can.respect.

buddhism is religion mainly because it requires belief and practice.

Yeah in my Sangha we've got types who look at it very religiously and other types who'll rankle & decry anytime anything starts sounding "too religious."

They'll prefer one translation of Dogen over another because it sounds less mystical, for example.

I still don't get that. Buddhism at its core is almost an anti-religion.

well, i think when it comes down to it, many or most people professing to be into buddhism would say, "well, it's just a description of how things are, when all of the distortions made by our minds are seen through"...

i think a lot of the "religious" aspects of different traditions (buddhism has a bunch of them) are ultimately seen as being "skillful means"...in other words, "if i engage with these certain methods, which to outsiders may look like conventional religious practices, they're really just ways of helping me to see what is the true nature of reality/myself"

which line maybe a lot of other religious traditions may cop to, so i dunno...

True.

dell otm!

heidegger

Also, the only philos class I have taken on this tour of undergrad was a class on the Philosophical Investigations, taught by a Platonist (which all the professors at my school seem to be), who really tried to make W into a Platonist. Really, really struggled with this, and said a few times, "W says X but he can't really mean that, he must mean T which sort of looks like X if you tilt your head and squint."

Most of the class got very confused by this, and thought W made no sense whatsoever.

lol aim convo from 3 years ago

TropicalIceyIcey: i love wittgenstein with my heart
TropicalIceyIcey: but i know he'll only hurt me in the end

xpost, maybe they were confused that you kept repeating it

blog entry from early 06 on leibniz:

Any philosophical discussion that begins with the following must be good:

"Let's say I'm hallucinating and you're God watching me hallucinate..."

This is why ppl hate philosophy students.

kierkegaard and marx are the best on the list, but i voted for locke just cos i kind of feel sorry for him cos no one'll vote for him

u_u xp

<3

The professor that spouted that "you're God watching me hallucinate" line had hair down to his waist, always wore shorts & sandals, and conducted class with his feet up on the desk. Insisted we call him "Matthew." He was 50.

Buddhism feels a lot like stuff that's bleedin' obvious, rather than just philosophy. Witness the notion of not fretting about the past or panicking about the future. And yeah, flux.

-- Autumn Almanac,

Yeah, Flux would be a good name for a band with a buzz playing at SxSW. For me, on the grounds of simple readability and clarity, Nietzsche. Kant I find quite fusty and impenetrable, like a pedantic, demented super-librarian.

Hegel >>>> Marx

answer is obv plato though

this is why people hate philosophy students:

"Hooker’s Criticism of the Argument from Doubt
13. I can doubt that Clark Kent has ever flown.
14. So Clark Kent has the property of being possibly doubted by me to have
ever flown.
15. I cannot doubt that Superman has ever flown.
16. So Clark Kent does not have the property of being possibly doubted by me
to have ever flown.
17. So, Clark Kent has a property not had by Superman.
18. So, Clark Kent is not Superman."

Hegel >>>> Marx

plz do tell

HOOS, that is o_O

Yes, and I think the deduction offered in 14. is highly questionable. In vitue of what does a belief I have equate to a property in the object of my belief? It is not only counter-intuitive, it leads to some very bizarre conclusions.

For example, if I doubt that a twenty story high space monkey can open a can of VB with its false teeth, does that mean that there IS a twenty story high space monkey which has the poperty of being doubted by me to have the ability to open cans of VB with its false teeth? If so, thought is truly the mother of invention.

Going one step further, if I doubt that a vacuum has any properties, does that mean that every vacuum has the property of being doubted by me to have any properties? Moreover, if I cange my mind about that, and no longer doubt it, do all vacuum spaces everywhere oblige me by changing their property structure to accommodate my new belief? Crazy.

Bertrand Russell then.

I am not going to argue about this. Not even on the internet.

Well, Casuistry, I seriously doubt your ability to refrain from arguing about it. SO TAKE THAT PROPERTY INTO YOUR VERY BEING!!!

haha

My faves:

Hume
Frege
Quine
Putnam

Continentalist philosophy sucks.

u would

(say that, i mean)

(it's all <3 tho, bro)

At least Nietzsche had style. But Heidegger? Sartre? Those guys were makin' shit up about imaginary shit and a buncha college dorks who didn't have the balls to call the emperor naked swooned and dropped trou and the rest is history.

huh.

Which ain't to say that power bankers pore over Hume on their lunch hrs. (xp)

everybody who actually votes in this poll should all have a special dranks session in, like, hamburg or copenhagen at some point

TWIT FAP
2010

actually fuck that. they have a goethe bar in the middle of the frankfurt airport. we'll meet up there, so we don't have to get hotel rooms

If you really want, moley: Surely the properties are inherent in you, the way you're interpreting the world. But surely the bigger problem is that it is trivially and painfully obvious that Clark Kent is not Superman, for we have two wildly different associations with those two names, but when we say "Clark Kent is Superman" we mean something other than that they are entirely substitutable for one another?

Russel (who i am no fan of) is a bit out of place on this list. Why no other analytic philosophers? Quine, Davidson..etc?

and it also leaves out the Americans! no Peirce or James?

You could argue that the list is confined solely to the continental "system" makers, but that doesn't explain Kierkegaard (though late Nietzsche is arguably systematic, according to Heidegger anyway).

i think i would rank schopenhauer as second only to Plato in terms of literary ability.

re superman/clark kent--depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is

On a 3-second scan this thread is so chocka with asinine that I'm gonna gently tiptoe back out the door now.

wot 163 posts and not a single mention of simone de beauvoir

and then you had to spoil things AA, oh well "it is a curious but indisputable fact that every philosophical baby that is born alive is either a little positivist or a little Hegelian".

xpost mind locking yourself out on your way noodle?

Never studyed philosophy at any great level but Libcrypt knows where its at, also poor misunderstood Popper deserves a more charitible read than many seem to give him!

I voted for Hume. Not really a surprise given that I studied Philosophy at Edinburgh University.
I have a lot of time for Wittgenstein and Kant. I got very sick of Plato after a while - it was a mistake to sign up for Ancient Philosophy I guess.
I also have to give kudos to Bertrand Russell since it was his "A History of Western Philosophy" that got me interested in the first place.
I was a bit surprised to not see any utilitarians in the poll. Surely Mill would have been a worthy inclusion?

Wittgenstein never persuaded me away from my metaphysical tendencies but PI still gets mad props (Tractatus on the other hand... dude are you a robot?)

you wanna talk about mindfucks lets talk about a classroom of undergrads trying to figure out wtf leibniz is talking about

^^lol, this brings back memories from my modern phil course. leibniz was by far the biggest mindfuck in that syllabus.

bertrand russell probably won't get many votes but he is one of the best writers up there. nietzsche is probably the lol college choice - come on guys! but whoever said he is the lol high school choice is right too. sartre is definitely another lol college choice.

the phrase "continentalist philosophy sucks" is kinda dumb. never mind that you have "analytic" philosophers doing lots of work on so-called "continentalist" philosophers. but let's not get into that whole thing. that said i thought the little bits of heidegger that i read were kinda dumb.

i'll probably vote spinoza, with plato a close second. voltaire is fun but i kind of feel he's outclassed by a lot of these guys.

schopenhauer is the only guy on that list that i didn't read as an undergrad, but i've heard he's pretty fun.

wow i'm totally incapable of offering any deeper philosophical analysis other than "pretty fun" or "kinda dumb." sorry.

I like Spinoza.

I think the Schopenhauer love is apt from a message board whose antecedents are in talking about music. As much as I love Voltaire, I'm not sure I would really classify him as a philosopher in the same category of most of the rest of these guys, Sartre, perhaps excepted - their philosophies are largely cut and paste jobs and definitely inferior to their literature. The one who is of the most use to me on a day to day basis is Kant, so I voted for him.

I agreed with Wittgenstein at the end of the tractatus when he says to give up philosophy and go live in the countryside.

I agreed with Wittgenstein at the end of the tractatus when he says to give up philosophy and go live in the countryside.

'Il faut cultiver son jardin' - 'Candide'

wittgenstein!

anyone else read the biography by monk? he was such a troubled guy.

i used to have a hipster d-bag friend who was obsessed with hume, but as for shit i've actually read then i guess i'll go with kant.

"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness."

Ludwig Wittgenstein

i think wittgenstein helped me clarify my problems w/plato and descartes and philosophy students

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/605/emotwords0bo.gif

I agreed with Wittgenstein at the end of the tractatus when he says to give up philosophy and go live in the countryside.

Sadly, he wasn't smart enough to take his own advice.

yes he was. he quit philosophy several times.

he was an elementary teacher, designed a house, worked as some sort of medic during ww2. even when he was doing and/or teaching philosophy he was never really an academic.

Marx. Wittgenstein a close second for being funny.

he also had a shack in norway he went off to a few times (xpost)

LW is perhaps the most overrated philosopher I've ever read.

love me some hume

By who, exactly? xpost

message board dilettantes

lol

Overrated by whoever it is that's convincing college kids to put the Tractatus on their bookshelves so that they can pull it down once a year and ponder one of its inscrutable "verses".

Oh c'mon, you can totally scrute Ludwig's verses.

u mad doggie

i suspect people who would vote for him are more into philosophical investigations and on certainty

for me hes much easier to read than kant or hegel for example

The PI is a lot better than the Tractatus, but that's offset by the reams of philosophical garbage published after his death that should have stayed in the vaults. Hence, "overrated".

My guess is that the dilettante-love is more about the PI than the Tractatus. It is for me anyway, and I'm certainly a dilletante.

x-p

i'd allow that wittgenstein is much more useful to a dilettante than quine, for example

lol roxy

i tried to vote for Spinoza, don't know if it was counted. Voltaire is enjoyable and a close second, but if he's on the list why can't Rousseau be? is no one going to vote for poor Descartes?

Kierkegaard was such an emo in real life and Hume was too ugly be a hipster...but that just invites the question rrrobyn addressed, of who was the best-looking

not sure who the best looking was (prob. Aristotle) but certainly the most drunkest was Hegel

http://philohist.files.wordpress.com/2006/11/hegel.jpg

kierkegaard was kind of a stud:
http://dpulling.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/kierkegaard.jpg

(it's the only philospophy that suggest also practice as meditation.also because it's also a religion.

-- Zeno, Tuesday, January 29, 2008 8:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

psst - Vasishta, Vyas and Patanjali were theoretically around a lot earlier before anything called "Buddhism" :) or at least the txts that bear their names)

Hegel looks soooooo MEAN

i have a feeling kierkegaard painting is overly exaggerated re: studliness b/c the other paintings of him are kind of scary

really all of these guys are pretty scary looking and while i respect their work i mostly cannot deal with it and yet for some reason heidegger has been the only one i've been able to feel truly inspired by tho it is hard to articulate why that is/was, at least not right now while i am being a worker but not a marxist worker tho kind of a marxist in a sense sometimes

i like foucault mostly

"theorists" vs philosophers

http://www.thebestlinks.com/images/thumb/2/22/180px-DavidHume.jpg

Hume

http://www.forumuniversitaire.com/images/Nietzsche-Big.jpg

Friedrich 'Freddy' Nietzsche

hot

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTefVV4KBHfnwBN1CjzbkF/SIG=12je60pq4/EXP=1201811925/**http%3A//www.kirfkonsole.de/media/bilder/liste_3/schopenhauer.jpg

Arthur Schopenhauer

http://www.heideggeriana.com.ar/imagenes/heidegger_7.jpg

Martin 'Marty' Heidegger

http://biografieonline.it/img/bio/j/John_Locke.jpg

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTefTh4aBHbIkADkqjzbkF/SIG=12idbmj0e/EXP=1201812321/**http%3A//www.vulture-bookz.de/marx/archive/galerie/Marx_1861.jpg

Karl 'Chas' Marx

Since Freddy was probably ingesting tiny bits of hair every time he wanted to talk, his meltdown makes perfect sense

Heidegger - hot.

he's got nice little hitler 'stache going on

*a

more than a hitler STACHE i think

Btw, the withered old lady up there is John Locke.

a little known fact is that john locke was actually whistler's mother

I'm trying to find a good link for 'Manny' but I Kant.

http://www.artdubonheur.com/images/citations/spinoza.jpg

Baruch Spinoza

A more flattering angle for Kant:

http://kurdwebb.com/files/data/upimages/subfolders/Niviskar/kant_zetkik.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/105/285969080_f66d519630.jpg?v=0

Ludwig 'Louie, Louie' Wittgenstein

Max Stirner = http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Max_stirner.jpg (no photographs extant).

Doodled by Engels.

Canting him to the bottom right of that image doesn't do his hairline any favors, though, roxy.

xxpost

NORMAN VINCENT PEALE YOU BITCHES

http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Albion/Annotations/Albion4/billandted.jpg
socrates on the far left

I don't know, his hairline is the least of his worries.

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTefTI5aBHoI0AvzejzbkF/SIG=12gok7v2f/EXP=1201813320/**http%3A//www.thebestlinks.com/images/2/2d/BertrandRussell1.jpg

Bertrand Russell

Socrates was notoriously ugly acc. to Plato, but the guys couldn't get enough of him anyway.

http://pedagogie.ac-toulouse.fr/allemand/bloc-notes/Elysee-Vertrag/cursus%20franco-allemands/voltaire.jpg

François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire

Euh, 'pardonnez-moi'.

that one pic makes kant's brain look huge.

i love pictures of the elder bertrand russell:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/russell.gif
http://private.jayro.net/files/images/Bertrandrussell.jpg
http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3422682.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=D278A15CF533E62CEA0E35EF7F1FF06AA55A1E4F32AD3138

FREDDY MOUSTACHE = YOGA FLAME

Russell was such a hip old man and suave young man that I kinda regret not voting for him now, even though I've read very little. But my vote went to Spinoza for rearranging my mind the most, although Deleuze would be #1 if he was there.

I'm reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus now and not particularly enjoying it, although I guess I'm finding it hard to invest myself in it since it ends with a "BTW, JK" of sorts. But even without that I think I'm a metaphysician at heart, as nice as the occasional W remark can be.

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTefil7qBH_bMA2i6jzbkF/SIG=15btf1cqi/EXP=1201815589/**http%3A//nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinacoteca/nb_pinacoteca_painting/nb_pinacoteca_unknown_flemish_or_french_xvii-xviii_after_hals_rene_descartes_louvre.jpg

http://www.encyclopedie-enligne.com/Images/d/descartes.jpg

René Descartes

a lot of these guys were ugly but some of them got serious play--heidegger banged like all of his students

Wittgenstein = hawt

since it ends with a "BTW, JK" of sorts.
It's more than that! It's like a "BTW, this was all bollocks, seriously".

max otm

a lot of these guys were ugly but some of them got serious play--heidegger banged like all of his students

Student: "I love you for your mind."

Philosopher: Thinks, 'Yeah? Well I like you for your tits. Hey, that's pretty smart!'

i think he's the most generally good looking, like his features have more general appeal
also he was prob all like 'baby, let's just, yknow, BE'
xpost!

Mit sexich Osterreich exxent, too!

heidegger + arendt is hot from an intellectual standpoint but i dont think ill ever pop a boner thinking about them getting it on

a lot of these guys got no play, though: Nietzsche seems to have been disgusted by the concept, Kant probably never even got a boner or talked to a woman besides his mother, as far as we know Spinoza and Locke and Schopenhauer were celibate...Descartes at least had a kid so we know about him. Hegel was a sloppy drunk so he probably got action, and Russell certainly got around.

nietzsche tried to do lou salome AND LOOK HOW THAT WORKED OUT FOR HIM

i read somewhere that descartes made a robot and named it after his daughter and went on adventures with it

From what I've read, Nietzsche didn't try very hard to do Lou.

I'm pretty sure SK's only sexual experience was with a prostitute when he was young. u_u

Did he get syphilis too, just like Nietzsche?

The inescapable conclusion: venereal disease leads to (proto-)existentialism.

I wonder if they weren't a little like this.

nietzsche didnt get syphilis

Is that the general consensus, now?

ok I'm getting a little trainspottery here (but wtf I'm a philosopher so eat it) but I think Nietzsche's having had syphilis is just one of the myths about him promulgated by Walter Kaufmann. Recent scholarship suggests that he was a lifelong virgin.

xpost right

So what do scholars nowadays generally attribute his seeming mental breakdown, with all of its attendant grandiosity, etc. to?

Recent scholarship suggests that he was a lifelong virgin.

heh

This list needs pascal too!

Were ANY of these guys married? I love them all really. Philosophy is awesome (says the PhD student)

Apparently the first Doktors who saw him in Basel and Jena after the '89 breakdown in Turin diagnosed him as syphilitic.

The causes of existentialism are polymorphous and perverse.

Socrates, Aristotle, Heidegger, Marx, Hegel, and Russell all married. Sartre was with de Beauvoir for a long time, though never married. Kierkegaard got close. Wittgenstein and Voltaire got action. The rest were pretty sexless as far as we can tell.

if you want stories about sex check out the new-ish bio of Tarski; dude pretty much went to conferences to nail graduate students.

1. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
2. Soren Kierkegaard (he felt so deeply)
3. Jean-Paul Sartre (one foot in the abyss, and one firmly in the real world)
4. Bertrand Russell (wiser older brother/father figure)
5. Friedrich Nietzche (all smarts, but where's the heart? although his love of music is a plus)

I voted Kierkegaard

Nietzsche's the one I mistrust the most 'cause much of his latter work was edited by his sister. He's always seemed a very sympathetic dude to me and I detect a certain sardonic humor in his writings.

So what do scholars nowadays generally attribute his seeming mental breakdown, with all of its attendant grandiosity, etc. to?

hereditary mental illness, i think. his father died when he was young of some kind of craziness. those who buy wholeheartedly into the romantic nietzsche myth (both his fans and detractors) will tell you it was the weight of the eternal return. the letters he wrote to cosima wagner after he lost it are pretty funny.

Turin, ca. January 4, 1889: Letter to Umberto I, King of Italy

http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/umbert.gif

To my beloved son Umberto

My peace be with you! Tuesday I shall be in Rome. I should like to see you, along with His Holiness the Pope.

The Crucified

i read somewhere that descartes made a robot and named it after his daughter and went on adventures with it

-- max, Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:15

i would watch this movie

Russell was a player and probably the most useless philosopher on that list; correlation or CAUSATION?

Hegel and Aristotle deserve infinite respect for being epic juggernaughts with huge scope & an infectious interest who both stepped outside themselves and put what they were doing in a gloriously self-designed context. Along with Wittgenstein probably the best in terms of sheer focussed problem solving. Really surprised there's been no love for GWF, he's very much seen as the man amongst my philosophising mates.

I love Nietzsche for the delicacy&agility with which he handles his subjects that lets him see them so well. He's not heartless at all, reading him you can feel him tear himself up over his contradictory intuitions about the things he cares most (Socrates, Germany, seriousness vs heavyness, determinism vs will etc.) and see how aggressively, self-destructively honest a guy he was.

Every time I think about it I love all the Greeks more.

What I read&hear about Schopenhaurs trengthens the idea I have that there's no worthwhile room for his miserablism between GWF and Nietzsche, but I'll look out for that "Parerga and Paralipomena" Drew Daniel recommends upthread. I've had a similar sneaking suspicion when reading Marx that I'd be better off trying to read Hegel.

enjoy schopenhauer for his genius for metaphor more than his metaphysics (which are still more interesting than their usual easy dismissal would indicate.)

Nietzsche is all heart, some might say that is the point of Nietzsche!

Fichte is another good one left off.
many of the romantics.
Jacobi solely for his letter to fichte.

I'm not usually tempted by ideas of philosophical importance or progress but outside of the Greeks Kant is the big dog here in that respect.

Descartes was some kind of crazy genius. He had a delightful imagination. The meditations is like a tour of every weird thing he could imagine!

Hegel was a sloppy drunk so he probably got action

I'm failing to follow this logic.

it's Hegelian logic

http://hegel-system.de/de/gif/tri/d11.gif

I'm pretty sure "Sein" is German for "tail"

And the other three are types of beer?

wow..what happend to this thread since ive been gone?alot apperantly.
didnt realise there are so many philosophy intrest on ile

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

heidegger

what would socrates make of interweb zings i wonder?

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil >:o

-- socrates, Monday, 27 June -402 11:19 (2 centuries ago) Bookmark Link

Who is the ILX Socrates?

Just 2 centuries, eh?

Bugger.

lol

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I did not see that coming!

!

the inscrutable lurker

Socrates sonned in a philosopher beef. Who'd'a thunk?

Who is the ILX Socrates?

-- wanko ergo sum

She used to be Aja.

Spinoza and Kant!? That was unexpected. I wonder if ILX favourite E.M. Cioran would've garnered any votes, had his name been on the list?

ilx socrates surely nabisco

Wait, no. I mean, big hearts to Nabisco, but I don't think his M.O. is asking a bunch of questions and claiming to not have any opinions or knowledge on the subject.

Man, i guess Descartes' habit of vivisecting dogs has really hurt him in the hearts of the people.

sø whø else vøted før søren?

me!

er, møi

also, socrates was an ug-bug, and nabisco is cuet

kant was my second choice. even though i hated him while i read him, i slowly came to the painful realization as i read more philosophy that he was brilliant, but was just a terrible terrible writer.

Kant's brilliant, but not a lot of fun. I can see why brilliant would be enough to vote someone your favorite philosopher, but you can have brilliant AND fun too if you go with Plato.

lol at campaigning for philosophers

gonna read me some more Wittgenstein.

poor Descartes and Socrates. The godfathers of philosophy modern and ancient, and what do they have to show for it? NUTHIN. Well at least Spinoza pulled off the shocker, after centuries of oppression!

they are like 50's rock acts - they invented the thing, and we respect them for that, but the one's who were created later,took the formula and made it much more intersting to listen to.

You mean Socrates = Elvis, Kierkegaard = Radiohead?

Who Put The Brain (In The Vat, Vat, Vat)

Kierkegaard = Carl Perkins

i thought more of chuck berry : : the stones, but yeah, it's the same thing..

Oh I dunno, it's always hard to say with Socrates, since we only have second-hand reports, but I suspect he was pretty great. I probably would have put him far higher on the list. But it feels like cheating.

Descartes, on the other hand, should have stuck to graph paper.

Who was that man
I think therefore I am
And started the mind-body
Duality

Spinoza = first punk rocka

Decartes hella did not start the mind-body duality.

Maybe not, but he had the hit on it.

Those hellas fellas were old hat at the time.

http://www.sohoblues.com/RockandRollRevue/previewpages/preview22.jpg
Philosophy!
Philosophy!

Kierkegaard is an emo God-botherer. If he was alive today he'd been in Pedro the Lion or something.

lol quite plausible

nah dude kierkegaard was so emo he went around the bend and basically became a hardman.

sort of like rivers cuomo, i guess

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"what?" is like the death rattle of ilx.
-- fiddo centington (dubplatestyle), Monday, 29 December 2003 16:38 (4 years ago) Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How so?
-- Aja (aja), Monday, 29 December 2003 16:39 (4 years ago) Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

socrates, junior
-- Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 29 December 2003 16:40 (4 years ago) Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Me?
-- Aja (aja), Monday, 29 December 2003 16:41 (4 years ago) Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who?
-- Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Monday, 29 December 2003 16:42 (4 years ago) Link

socrates, junior
It's a hemlock chain in LA.

spinoza where 2 start plz

nah dude kierkegaard was so emo he went around the bend and basically became a hardman.

-- max, Thursday, February 7, 2008 3:41 AM

this actually sounds more like nietzsche to me

hurting i like ethics

Yay! Go Spinoza!

http://aya.shii.org/2011/09/17/european-philosophers-become-magical-anime-girls/

[Diogenes] criticized Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates, and sabotaged his lectures, sometimes distracting listeners by bringing food and eating during the discussions.

guy seems like a right pain in the ass, tbh

I agree plato was a dick, should have followed his leader

Yay! Go Spinoza!

― jel --, Thursday, February 7, 2008 5:46 PM (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I’m ok with the top 2 but deleuze is more fun than any of these guys except maybe fred on occasion

king shit https://t.co/shsupmyd2C pic.twitter.com/FRpurAQSEL

— hannah gais (@hannahgais) April 30, 2024

Cool top pick. Disappointing to see a nerd like Hume that high. Kierkegaard should have got Hume and Sartre’s votes.

It would’ve been Plato or Russell for me.

Russell also a nerdy dorky nerd sorry

Would have ummed and ahhed over kierkegaard or heidegger. Religion, aesthetics, hermeneutics and ontology. What more is there to think about?

Sorry that was rude Raymond

Kant turned the big 3-0-0 last week.

Hume for permanently divorcing facts & values, a still woefully underappreciated discovery.

Kant, Wittgenstein, and Schop are my faves. Aristotle being that low down is craziness.

If I was gonna have a pop at Hume, nerdy is not the first word I'd think of