Here's a question. Who are your favorite philosophers? I don't necessarily mean those you think the most influential, the most important or any of those "public" senses of best. Rather who are the philosophers you enjoy reading and thinking about? Which have affected your thought? Here's my list of my top 5:
Nietzsche: Some might find it funny that I put Nietzsche since clearly my thought is so different from his in many, many ways. Yet I've often joked that if I weren't religious I'd be pretty Nietzschean in my outlook on most things. Now don't get me wrong, even outside of his issues with theism I think there are some problems in Nietzsche. There's the old debate among Heideggarians over whether Nietzsche's sense of will to power is a kind of metaphysics of presence. I'm not sure Heidegger's right in his reading of Nietzsche and tend to think Derrida scored some significant hits in his critique. I'm also intrigued by his recent resurgence among analytic philosophers who see him much closer to the positivists in approach. I've just not read enough of that perspective to comment much on it. However Leiter's books on Nietzsche are definitely on my "to read" list.
I think what I like most about Nietzsche is his use of aphorisms. That is some of the texts I enjoy best are the least systematic. They are more nuggets for thought rather than outright positions or systematic thinking. I think this is why I always keep a copy of Hollingdale's Nietzsche Reader close to my computer. It's almost more of a quote book with short 1 - 2 paragraph selections, all translated by Hollingdale. I just get a big kick out of Nietzsche's style and even where I disagree with him, he tends to make me think.
Heidegger: I came to Heidegger via Derrida and I fully admit to reading Heidegger in terms of Peirce and Derrida. For better or worse. Heidegger's interesting to me precisely because so many of his readings of other philosophers are so strange and sometimes wrong. Yet his aim isn't really fidelity to what a conversation with the philosopher might illuminate of their texts. Rather his aim are the questions motivating the philosopher. In a sense he reads them in a way that sees them as tools or bricks for new thinking rather than in terms of their own thought. Now I don't think this is the only way one should read thinkers. (And perhaps I ought make a post on that one of these days) But it is an interesting one. What makes it doubly interesting, as I think Derrida shows, is that most of these thinkers can be read in other ways, often in a fashion completely at odds with Heidegger. So one can read Plato as the grand villain of philosophy or one can read him as embracing the very views Heidegger and Derrida are opposing to Plato's thought. Ditto with Nietzsche.
I'll be the first to admit that what I find most interesting in Heidegger isn't his ever questioning of being. Rather I find the practical implications far more of interest. Of course one has to think being in order to move to the questions and implications in other senses. But Heidegger's pragmatism and hermeneutics in particular fascinate me.
Now Heidegger's a difficult and controversial figure. And many of the criticisms made of him are perhaps apt, or at least somewhat justifiable even if they are misleading. But he's really affected how I think about things a great deal. He, more so than any other thinker, moved my thought towards a kind of phenomenology.
Peirce: Of all the philosophers I think Peirce current affects how I think and consider problems. In some ways he gave some terribly important principles for how to think. However many of the difficult questions in philosophy he didn't address or did so only peripherally. It's rather interesting seeing just how influential (albeit often indirectly) he is on philosophy. Yet he never was appreciated in his life time. The intellectual conservativism of universities in late 19th century America meant he didn't have a stable job. And James seems to have garnered most of the accolades for pragmatism. Still the approach to philosophy he takes seems to me to be the most fruitful.
The other thing I enjoy about Peirce, in contrast to Nietzsche, Derrida, Heidegger or many others, is how easy he is to read. I suspect that in part that's because Peirce, like me, was a physicist. So perhaps how we frame issues is similar. I've been told by others that they find him hard to read. Still I find that having a copy of volume 2 of The Essential Peirce always illuminates things for me. (Although of late I've been turning to volume 1 and the essays from between 1865 and 1890 which reflect his middle period)
Derrida: I used to read Derrida a great deal more than I do now. To me I find most of the works of his middle period to be largely demonstrative. That is showing in practice the workings of this thought. I confess to enjoy most his early works where he is working out these ideas (often in a way related to Peirce, albeit with a radically different style). Derrida, probably more so than any other figure, was who got me back into philosophy after college. At that point I'd more or less thrown up my hands against philosophy as being too focused on language or intuition in an unhelpful fashion. It was through Derrida that I was led to Peirce and Heidegger.
I'm not convinced there is quite as much original in Derrida's thought as some think. To me often his most valuable texts are those where he disagrees with figures like Heidegger. Although I find the relationship always far more complex than it first appears. I'll be the first to admit he's a difficult philosopher with a style that often repels folks. His is more a zig zag approach rather than a linear argument. But he's really quite valuable to me in terms of shaping how I think about language. Moreso than even Heidegger.
Davidson: My favorite of all the analytic philosophers. There are a few places I think I disagree with him. (i.e. over the range of language - although I think I part company with Heidegger there as well in towards a more general semiotic) But I confess those are still areas of my thought very much in flux. Davidson really gets me thinking. His texts are terse and compact but often remind me of Peirce in various ways. I've come around to thinking that his is the most likely way to think about mind even if so many have rejected his particular approach to property dualism.
I need to return to reading through him carefully. But he (like many of the above) is a philosopher who demands careful reading. And that takes time I've just not had this last year.
My favorite:
1)Kierkagaard
2)Sidhartha Ghatama (the buddha)
3)E.E. Erickson
4)Marcus Aurelius
5)C.S. Lewis
but mostly...Yogi Berra
I can't say that I know enough about philosophy to pick out 5 favorite philosophers. I do like Rene Descartes ("I drink therefore I am"), although his reasoning was somewhat flawed at times he was ahead of his time. I also like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
Perhaps my favorite philosophers are Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted "Theodore" Logan, who said:
"Be Excellent to each other. And party on, dudes."
Also, does Einstein count as a philosopher?
I'm not sure that I could pick out 5 favorites. I'm sure I could pick out 5 least favorites though. Let's try:
Fav's in no particular order:
Hume
Reid
Late Wittgenstein
Dennett
Least Fav's in no particular order:
Descartes
Ayer
Plato
Schopenhauer
Jeff G,
Just out of curiousity, what is it about Descartes that you don't like? I included him as one of my favorites because I see his reliance on reason to construct knowledge and his desire for unshakable knowledge as being well ahead of his time. His contributions to mathematics were also impressive (e.g., Cartesian coordinate system). Again, I realize that some of his arguments were flawed (e.g., his "proof" that God must exist by virtue of his perfection), but his books were banned by the Pope in 1663, so that has to count for something, right?
Plato as a least favorite? Interesting. He's just barely out of my top five favorites. I always find him intriguing and interesting to read - although I prefer the early dialogs. Leibniz would have been my seventh pick.
Least favorites is an interesting question. That's hard since I tend not to read my least favorites... (grin) It seems that to be a least favorite it has to be someone great enough to merit reading but bad enough that you'd just as soon not read them.
I'd say Rorty, Dummett, Hegel, Kant, Sartre.
I better explain. Rorty should be obvious I'd assume. Dummett just manages to conflate different issues in any discussion. Hegel is, well Hegel. Everyone who reads Hegel does so simply to show where he's wrong. If there are any real Hegelians left its hard to take them seriously. Kant's important but is such laborious read that I always hate reading him directly. Sartre is just a mess on so many levels to me.
My favorites, in order:
1.) Nietzsche
2.) Hegel
3.) Kierkegaard (I know, on the surface, this contradicts #2, but I blame Schelling, who poisoned K. to H.)
4.) Montaigne
5.) Satre (tie)
5.) Merleau-Ponty (tie)
7.) Emerson
8.) Heidegger
9.) Leibniz
10.) William James
These are not necessarily the people whom I consider the best philosophers (I left out Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, who are probably the three greatest philosophers in the "western tradition," in my eyes, though Hegel is close), but the people who've had the most impact on my thinking both philosophically and in everyday life. I put Nietzsche at #1 not only because reading Nietzsche (I took a course on him with Dan Brezeale long ago) changed the way I view myself and the world, but because Nietzsche is the reason I came to love philosophy. Running close would be Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Schelling (early), and Levinas, whom I've just started rereading, and see in a new light.
I have such a distaste for Descartes for a couple of reasons:
1) I have had to read way too much of him over the past 6 months.
2) He was an arrogant prick.
3) While I certainly appreciate his overthrow of Aristotle, I simply see way too many philosophers attempting to give good answers to Descartes' bad questions. I see his influence in epistemology, phil. of mind, metaphysics, freewill and so just intolerable. This winter break I plan on reading Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature which I expect to be thoroughly anti-Cartesian.
As for Plato, I just have a strong distaste for his methods as well as his conclusions.
I guess in having those two philosophers on my bad list it shows how much a product of the analytic traditions I am. I see the metaphysics-first and mind-first approaches of Plato and Descartes, respectively, as just being bad.
1) Kant - If you don't know Kant then you can't know what is going on in philosophy in the modern period.
2) Plato - If you don't know Plato then you can't know what is going on in philosophy.
3) Locke - All Americans are Lockeans whether they like it or not.
4) Nietzsche - Philosphy with a sense of humor.
5) Wittgenstein - Philosophy with humility.
I also have to mention that I was very close to putting Kant and Hegel on my list of baddin's as well.
I must confess that I simply do not know enough about Rorty (yet) know why you dislike him so much. Given your Piercian inclinations I thought neo-Pragmatism would be your cup of tea.
Getting back to my dislike for Descartes, I see his insistence upon certainty as being quaint at best. I despise his mind/body distinction. His Archimedian point "I think therefore I am" is flawed right off the bat. His view of the mind as transparent is completely wrong. His argument for God's existence is terrible. That these three are supposed to ground everything he says? C'mon. While I certainly admire his contributions in math and science, these do not compensate for his philosophical failings.
Jeff G,
Fair enough. I guess I just cut old Rene some slack because of his time period and his contributions to math and science. That and the fact that I haven't read any Descartes since my philosophy 111(?) class as a freshman.
By the way, it has been incredibly difficult for me to refrain from adding a line from Monty Python's Drunken Philosophers song after the name of of each philosopher discussed. How do you guys do it?
Jeff G,
While I certainly admire his contributions in math and science, these do not compensate for his philosophical failings.
I guess being the "Father of Modern Philosophy" isn't enough to compensate for philosophical failings. If you don't like philosophical failings, then you should probably just stop reading all philosophy, since that is what 99.9% of all philosophy is. If you want to read philosophy to talk to the best minds about the deepest questions keep reading. However, if you read it that way, Descartes has many good things to say.
The same goes for Plato, who you also despise
Clark,
The post I just submitted looks messed up. I checked what I submitted and it was well-formed xml (provided one adds a document root) and looked fine to me. What did I do wrong?
David
Rush Rhees -- Student of Wittgenstein. Little published but his impassioned, honest/fair and personal way of wrestling with issues really strikes me.
Kierkegaard, of course.
John Caputo -- Clear, insightful, and funny.
Karl Barth -- Theologian, not philosopher, but his stuff is magnificent.
Joseph Pieper -- Catholic theologian/philosopher.
Honorable mentions: Heidegger, Buber, Levinas, H. Richard Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, Wittgenstein.
Currently, John Frame (theologian/philosopher)
Nietzsche is interesting.
Jeff, there are huge differences between Peircean pragmatism and so-called neo-pragmatism. (The neo-pragmatists are as apt to bad mouth Peirce as they are to praise him - they definitely have a love/hate relationship)
BTW - if you see Plato as putting metaphysics and mind first I think you're misreading Plato.
Chris, I'm actually shocked Hegel placed so high. Do you consider yourself a Hegelian?
With the exception of Sartre who just rubs me the wrong way (even though probably a lot of his thought I agree with) the rest of your list I actually all like. Although I'm more wishy-washy on Kierkegaard.
My Top 5 Philosophers:
1) Meinong
2) Wittgenstein
3) Lukasiewicz
4) Anscombe
5) Anselm
If you ask me in a few days/weeks, the list might change only slightly. I'll provide some reasons for the top 5 on my blog, and, yes, I'll provide a "HT".
In order:
1. Kant
2. Aristotle
3. Aquinas
4. Charles Hartshorne
5. Plato
6. Buber
7. Kierkegaard
8. William James
9. Luis de Molina
10. Levinas
Mostly I read summaries - throw your books away and just read the SEP. Given that (not in order):
Enjoy reading:
Rorty
Searle
Chalmers
Baudrillard
Popper
Influence:
Nietzsche
Derrida
Rorty
Davidson
Kim
Quine
Dennett
Block
This was an attempt to answer the question as posed.."favorite" in some way or another, not most important in the history of philosophy.
Wow, you like Baudrillard? Out of curiosity, what do you like about him? I'm curious about Rorty as well.
Alright, I'm done with finals so I can blog again.
David Clark,
I don't despise Descartes or Plato. I think that they were both brilliant. However, I DO despise the exaggerated influence which their ideas have had upon Western thought. I guess I got a bit carried away in my ranting.
Clark,
I do see Plato as putting metaphysics at the forefront of his thought. (The mind-centered approach to philosophy I attributed to Descartes.) I don't see any other way of reading Plato.
What is justice, meaning, etc.? Plato's answer: They are exist in another realm which is more real than this one. If that isn't metaphysics first, I don't know what is.
What about most under-rated philosophers? People who don't tend to be read but are worth reading?
I think the philosophers who've had the greatest influence on me so far are Quine, Wittgenstein, and Kant. I would add Derrida, but it's more the *idea* of Derrida that has influenced me than anything I've actually read by him.
And where are the women?
I definitely think that the most underrated modern philosopher is Thomas Reid.
Why?
I guess its because he came up with some pretty good responses to Hume which were pretty much ignored by everybody until relatively recently. I especially like his rejection of the empiricist notion of perceiving ideas vs. perceiving objects in themselves.
Jeff, OK, I'll agree with you there regarding Plato. Plato as received and the Plato of the texts seem very different. Regarding the "mind centered approach" of Plato, I'm not sure I agree. At least not of the early dialogs. Admittedly the middle texts become more problematic.
I'd say we ought all start doing some readings of Plato here. But I know I don't have time so I'll not suggest it.
I'm not sure Reid is discounted. Like many founders of movements he tended to be ignored in contrast to the "received wisdom." I think that's part and parcel of analytic philosophy's tendency to not be interesting in philosophy as history, much as science does at times. (Even though I confess to loving reading history of science) Reid really introduces epistemology as what we think of as epistemology in my view. I know Descartes gets most of the credit (or blame) but I think Reid lies much stronger in many ways. So Reid's thought is constantly engaged with it's just that Reid the figure isn't discussed. He's not typically read in the undergraduate tracts of figures to read - those are usually Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, and Leibniz. But that unfortunately excludes a lot of important figures. For instance most philosophers never encounter the Stoics despite their giving a lot what we now think of as logic.
Having said all that I think one reason Reid was ignored is because direct realism of the sort he embraced is terribly problematic. One can adopt a similar position by adding in strong fallibilism (Peirce) or veiling/unveiling of objects (Heidegger). So that kind of externalism is helpful, but there's good reasons why I think traditional internalism maintained its hold - albeit typically through a Kantian approach.
Top 5:
1. Peirce
2. Bakhtin (dovetails nicely with 1.)
3. Wittgenstein
4. Quine
5. Rorty (edging out a number of others, depends on the day)
Bottom: I have an aversion to philosophers whose names begin with 'H'.
I confess I know nothing of Bakhtin. Can you tell me more about him?
Mikhail Bakhtin, one reasonable gloss:
While claimed by litcritters, his semiotics are similar to Peirce's (though not as mathematical), and he considered himself a philosopher first and foremost (cf. Caryl Emerson). (An interest in literary matters is why, for me, Rorty edges other moderns [and his modernity why he edges others].) His influence only began to be felt in the late '70s. Best primary text is The Dialogic Imagination; Holquist and Clark for biography.
The mind-centered approach comments are all about Descartes, not Plato.
Thanks. I actually recall now someone suggesting I check out Bakhtin. I remember now looking him up on Amazon. The connection to Cassier is interesting as well.
Jeff, that makes more sense. I really ought do a reading of some of the classic Platonic texts. I'd actually bought the complete works a year and a half meaning to do that and just never did. If I do a reading of Blake's book I might do Plato do provide some nice non-religious balance to things.
"Wow, you like Baudrillard? Out of curiosity, what do you like about him? I'm curious about Rorty as well."
Because he's so over the top it's almost enjoyable to read. I also like the mood of his writing. Notice I separated my categories, I wouldn't say he's influenced me - er, at all.
You have to understand I hate reading philosophy, generally. I have to force myself. Rorty's writing is probably the best in the business. It's worth reading for the humor alone. As far as how he's influenced me, how can I say it other than he's the master of one liners and they get stuck in my head and really make me think.
Interesting. After seeing the Matrix (which references Baudrillard in one place) I read about three of his books while visiting a bookstore in Berkeley. They were short books and, compared to Derrida who I was heavily reading at the time, fairly easy to read. I really came away disappointed. Pretty fluffy in my opinion. Lots of others have written about virtual worlds as well. Indeed the whole issue of the relation of the real to the virtual is a very interesting one, but Baudrillard definitely isn't the guy I'd go to read about it from. Heck, Peirce wrote about the virtual almost 150 years earlier and did a better job.
I just stumbled on this discussion (I keep aloof, for the most part, from the bloggernacle). But my favorites:
1 (without question): Jean-Luc Marion (the world makes sense when I read Marion)
2: Hegel (I feel like I get what's happened in the last two hundred years when I read Hegel)
3: Levinas (the Bible subtly interwoven with a radical ethics... too much fun)
4: Jean-Louis Chretien (just plain enjoyable thought)
5: Plato (when read in terms of aesthetics and ancient religion)
Just thought I'd throw my own thoughts into the mix (mostly because no one had mentioned Marion!).
A vague reference from the Matrix. Have you seen the Cronenberg movies Existenz or Crash? Those movies are closer to what baudrillard sees in a virtual world I think. The naive articulation of "which one is the real world??" question is self-parodied in Existenz. As far as the quality of Baudrillard's work goes, I think it has to be first understood that he's attacking modernism a la Marxism. Just like those who havn't studied topics like structuralism won't get much out of Derrida, without understanding western Marxism a bit there is little chance one is going to be enthralled with Baudrillard (unless one is enthralled with anything fashionably controversial).
I saw Existenz, although I didn't think it was that good. I had no desire to see Crash. (People getting off from car accidents?) I recognize what Baudrillard is saying. I just don't think he's that great a writer nor saying much profound. It's sort of cheap warmed over Berkeley in some ways without the foundationalism.
Of course the issue of "which one is the real world" is really just a kind of traditional anti-foundationalism. That is how do we deal with representationalism and the problem of the inter-personal.
BTW - given Baudrillard I thought the Matrix trilogy was going to go ala Existenz. Which I was hoping they wouldn't. Of course they found an idea to go for that at first was interesting (sort of a Levinasian theme of love and the Other reworking the Cartesian soul) but then they did it in such an incompetent ham-fisted approach that I almost wish they had stuck closer to Baudrillard.
I totally forgot about this thread! And the discussion has been really interesting, dangit.
Clark, I do consider myself a Hegelian, to some extent. My own views are consistent with the historicism of the Phenomenology. I actually came to Hegel through Robert Solomon's book, as an undergrad, and so my picture of Hegel is heavily colored by Solomon's (i.e., a lot less ontological excess, a lot of historicism). And I honestly feel like the Phenomenology is one of the most amazing books I've ever read.
1. Spinoza
2. Aurobindo
3. Vardhamana
4. Origen
5. Dogen
Chris, was that book In the Spirit of Hegel: A Study of G. W. F. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit"? If so I might put it on my list for a second try. I think I'm biased against Hegel mostly because of Peirce. In some ways they were doing similar things - critiquing Kant by adopting a more thorough-going historicism, developing categories of three, and so forth. Yet Hegel seemed to place representationalism above real action and real feeling. Among other problems.
Chris, was that book In the Spirit of Hegel: A Study of G. W. F. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit"? If so I might put it on my list for a second try. I think I'm biased against Hegel mostly because of Peirce. In some ways they were doing similar things - critiquing Kant by adopting a more thorough-going historicism, developing categories of three, and so forth. Yet Hegel seemed to place representationalism above real action and real feeling. Among other problems.
I'm not really well-read enough to have a favorite, but I'd like to second the plug for Bakhtin who is indirectly responsible for my interest in philosophy--my initial exposure to modern philosophy left me quite disinterested, but the the heavy (post-modern) philosophical underpinnings of Russian lit. really caught my interest and has motivated me to study philosophy much more carefully (and the theological/hermeneutical turn of French philosophy has stoked that fire...). Anyway, here's a blurb comparing Bakhtin and Derrida that I thought might whet others' appetite for Bakhtin (taken from here):
Bakhtin, however, shares with Derrida and other poststructuralist intellectuals the conviction that the meaning of a text is neither specified with the intention of the author nor with any specific force outside or inside the text. He agrees with their anticanonical aims, but uses a different set of strategies. Derrida deconstructs any possible center of power in the text (in the broad sense of the text); Bakhtin novelizes and carnivalizes these centers of power. The only way to fight against any authoritarian center, in Bakhtin's strategy, is to pluralize it. He praises the novel as an 'anticanonical genre'. The novel, for Bakhtin, is privileged because it works against any totalitarian system, whether social or literary. It is the genre that decanonizes all the ideas that are present in the society and re-presents them in a new form, so that no discourse, no ideology can find any superiority over the others. Novel and most especially Dostoevskian, polyphonic novel is that unique form in which the author and his discourse cannot be the totalitarian of the text. He or she is neither excluded from the text, nor is the dominating voice of the text; rather, the author is present in the dialogues of the text, questioning and under question.
Clark, that's the book. And in it, Solomon argues that the interpretation of Hegel you describe is misguided, at least for the Hegel of the Phenomenology (he doesn't talk much about later Hegel).
The last post shown here is from 21 Dec. '06, so I wonder if anyone will ever even READ this!
I also haven't read very much written by the "recent," modern and "post-modern" philosophers; mostly because I find their arcane and convoluted reasoning and complex, arcane and multisylabic verbage to be uninformative, uninstructive, and basically absurd.
I do believe Plato's idea, that we never actually perceive reality, but only some shadow of it, to be valid though. And who was it, Hegal perhaps, who wrote of that sequental proposition; thesus -antithesus- synthesis? I think there is some truth and validity there.
Most of my FAVORITE philosophers though, are from ages long past, and all would be labeled by most, to be mere religionists. In order of significance, proceeding from the greatest to the least, my top five would include:
1. Yeshua, of Nazareth, Israel,
2. Kung Futsu, of China,
3. Guru Nanak, of Punjab, India,
4. Sidartha Gautama, of India,
5. Lao Tsu, of ancient China.
I could add another five, including those mentioned in my comments above, and some "modern" religionists, but that was not requested.
I'm just trying to get to the "Main Page!"
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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