20 most influential philosophers

[Hippasus]

This is not my list, but just an article that popped up on my homepage. I guess it's World Philosophy Day. Article link below.

1. Socrates (proto-rationalism, individualism, ethics, dialectic)
2. Plato (realism, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of mathematics, aesthetics, dialectic)
3. Aristotle (logic, empirical realism, metaphysics, ethics, science)
4. Confucius (Chinese ethics)
5. Immanuel Kant (transcendental idealism, ethics, aesthetics)
6. Friedrich Nietzsche (anti-theism, existentialism, aesthetics, Romanticism)
7. John Locke (modern political philosophy, empiricism)
8. Rene Descartes (rationalism, modern epistemology, analytic geometry, algebra)
9. David Hume (empiricism, skepticism)
10. Thomas Aquinas (medieval Aristotelianism, Christian philosophy)
11. Karl Marx (socialism, communism, dialectical materialism)
12. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Romanticism, political philosophy)
13. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German idealism, dialectic)
14. John Stuart Mill (empiricism, political philosophy)
15. Simone de Beauvoir (feminism, existentialism, political philosophy)
16. Michel Foucault (structuralism, postmodernism)
17. Soren Kierkegaard (existentialism, Christian philosophy)
18. Martin Heidegger (phenomenology, ontology, existentialism)
19. Hannah Arendt (feminism, political philosophy)
20. Ludwig Wittgenstein (philosophy of language, metaphilosophy)

I attempted to summarize their legacies, or schools of thought for which they are best known, in parentheses.

MSN

Click to read more...

 

[JMCx4]

I read this whole article ... Philosophy Nest: Is Philosophy a Science or an Art? ... and I *STILL* don't believe it's a science.

 

[Hippasus]

For me, from this list: Plato, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Descartes, Heidegger, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Socrates, in order.

Off the top of my head, I would have liked to have seen:

Godel, Cantor (mathematics)
Frege (philosophy, mathematics)
Euclid (mathematics)
Schopenhauer (philosophy)
Hippasus (the real one--mathematics)
Schelling (philosophy)
Camus (existentialism)
Sartre (existentialism)
Russell/Whitehead (philosophy, mathematics)

But then I'm talking about influential for me. Regardless, they are all obviously influential in their own regards.

 

[Hippasus]

I read this whole article ... Philosophy Nest: Is Philosophy a Science or an Art? ... and I *STILL* don't believe it's a science.

I sort of agree, as many of its claims are debatably not falsifiable. Although historically philosophy was the umbrella term under which natural science, e.g. Galileo and Newton, fell. These days, philosophy is maybe between art and science.

 

[JMCx4]

I sort of agree, as many of its claims are debatably not falsifiable. Although historically philosophy was the umbrella term under which natural science, e.g. Galileo and Newton, fell. These days, philosophy is maybe between art and science.

I often waxed philosophical as I walked across campus from my Nude Portraiture class to my Astrophysics lecture. But I usually got over it by stopping at the dining hall for a dipped cone.

 

[VaCaps Fan]

 

[barriers]

 

[JMCx4]

View attachment 934032

Now THAT is the Science of Philosophy.

 

[Hippasus]

Now THAT is the Science of Philosophy.

View attachment 934032

Who said you could take my picture?

You guys! lol Philosophy always gets the short end of the stick. I feel like I've tried to make this point a million times before. If one highly values science and disregards philosophy, guess what? That's a philosophy, albeit a bad one. If all one cares about is business, practical consequences, and gettin' 'er done, again, another tacit philosophy. If one is all about religion x and doesn't care for philosophy or art, again, a poor philosophy. Philosophy is a worldview, that hopefully, somehow, sometime aspires towards justification of the given viewpoint. Not to mention the fascinating history of our world from the beginning of the days of writing to the present. Philosophy helps contextualize our experience and adds an element of richness and reflection to what can often be somber and mechanistic social routines from day-to-day. I contend that philosophy is like super-literature that can fruitfully serve and direct scientific and mathematical inquiry. Nobody said Socrates or whoever invented ethics, but they changed it by dedicating themselves to such areas of inquiry, whether it be the spoken or written word. If there was no philosophy, we would be thoughtless robots, or perhaps merely brutal cavemen.

 

[JMCx4]

None of that supports philosophy being a science.

 

[Hippasus]

I think philosophy can be, and often is, scientific, and that science is de facto philosophical.

 

[JMCx4]

I think philosophy can be, and often is, scientific, and that science is de facto philosophical.

"I think, therefore I am ... posting in the Sciences Forum ..." (with posthumous apologies to René Descartes)

 

[Hippasus]

"I think, therefore I am ... posting in the Sciences Forum ..." (with posthumous apologies to René Descartes)

But look at this description of the science subforum:

"A place to discuss natural, applied & social sciences, along with any other academically-oriented topics of interest to membership."

I don't see the problem here. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Mathematics, falling bridges, philosophy, health, cultural anthropology--all potentially relevant thread topics by my estimation.

 

[JMCx4]

But look at this description of the science subforum:

"A place to discuss natural, applied & social sciences, along with any other academically-oriented topics of interest to membership."

I don't see the problem here. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Mathematics, falling bridges, philosophy, health, cultural anthropology--all potentially relevant thread topics by my estimation.

Point taken & accepted. But thanks for playing along.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I took an intro to philosophy course in high school. The teacher (who had a PhD in philosophy - I don't recall why he was teaching high school) explained that philosophy is important because it's everywhere, and affects all aspects of our lives.

An acquaintance called out - "Can you practice philosophy when you're in a coma?"

My teacher instantly replied - "We're about to find out!"

 

[JMCx4]

I took an intro to philosophy course in high school. The teacher (who had a PhD in philosophy - I don't recall why he was teaching high school) explained that philosophy is important because it's everywhere, and affects all aspects of our lives. ...

He was probably positioning himself to take the Shop Class teaching position, which would soon be vacated due to an unfortunate but existential classroom accident.

 

[Hippasus]

I took an intro to philosophy course in high school. The teacher (who had a PhD in philosophy - I don't recall why he was teaching high school) explained that philosophy is important because it's everywhere, and affects all aspects of our lives.

An acquaintance called out - "Can you practice philosophy when you're in a coma?"

My teacher instantly replied - "We're about to find out!"

From an instructor, a line like that could crush a career. Sometimes it's better just to be quiet. It's actually a good question. I think it goes into the truth values of dreams. They may be honest, and latently philosophical, but probably not refined enough to stand up to scrutiny. Even though dreams can provide kernels of wisdom unable to be found anywhere else.

So, in a dream, one may have philosophical insights, but the hopeful condition of justified true belief is probably lacking unless it is refined in waking life.

That's good though that one can take philosophy in high school. Weierstass and Sartre were both high school teachers in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. Weierstrass has been called one of the greatest analysts of all-time, and Sartre certainly has a reputation as an exemplar of existentialism.

 

[Hippasus]

 

[VaCaps Fan]

W.C Fields…

 

[tarheelhockey]

None of that supports philosophy being a science.

Philosophy is a sweeping category, so it would be accurate to say that some philosophy is a science and some is not.

Serious philosophy, the kind that involves PhDs writing peer reviewed articles in professional journals, used much the same methodology as equivalent writing about mathematics.



Not all philosophical writing explicitly includes a demonstration of symbolic logic, but the structure of the argumentation is usually reducible to symbolic equations. It is in some respect a non-numerical cousin of mathematics.

When you come down to it, other than choice of topic, there’s not much structural difference between Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.