Favorite Philosopher

[evolvedForm]

Who is your favorite philosopher and why?

[Green Kool Aid]

Adam Smith, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." I found many of his social observations to make a lot of sense, and hold VERY true even today. I never thought about how almost everything we do is based on societal pressures and influence.

[bunny]

Augustine is extraordinarily easy to read given he wrote around 400 AD (perhaps he's just extraordinarily well translated). I like philosophy that uses everyday language and avoids adding jargon unless absolutely necessary.

[Copernicus]

Sharkey, because he lays such a clear foundation for his philosophy and then logically builds on it.



/images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Phil153]

David Sklansky

[KKbluff]

[ QUOTE ]
Adam Smith, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." I found many of his social observations to make a lot of sense, and hold VERY true even today. I never thought about how almost everything we do is based on societal pressures and influence.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very true. I like his work as well. He is celebrated in the book Freakonomics(which I think is well deserved)

[cambraceres]

Rand, she's modern and objectivism is prettier on the surface.

[chezlaw]

Russell for his analytical genius and his ethics.

chez

[cambraceres]

Wonderful choice in Russell, I just checked abook out at the library which had a 10 page excerpt from Russell telling about his own intellectual development. This book was old and a math text. It also contained a handwritten copy of Le Geometrie' from Descartes. The portion about Russell's fight with himself over the First Cause argument was enlightening.

Cambraceres

[moorobot]

Myself because I'm an arrogant clown who is always right.

The correct answer is that it is a tie between John Rawls and Immanuel Kant. They need each other. Rawls could not have created his ethcial system/political theory, which is a great example of following one of Marx's few good ideas:

Philosophers up to this point have tried to interpret the world. The point, however, is to change it.

without Kant's ideas to draw on and Kant's ethical/political theory was open to too many difficult objections from socialists, utilitarians and hegelians before Rawls drew heavily on it's core ideas to come up with something better.

[Sharkey]

There’s this guy downtown in a tweed jacket who parks himself on a bench everyday and shouts phrases at passersby, sometimes it even rhymes. Maybe him or Copernicus the ad hominem artist.

[hmkpoker]

NotReady.

[madnak]

Nietzsche because he's one of the most powerful and insightful philosophers, and is also artful and poetic. Hume for his epistemology and metaphysics.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
There’s this guy downtown in a tweed jacket who parks himself on a bench everyday and shouts phrases at passersby, sometimes it even rhymes. Maybe him or Copernicus the ad hominem artist.

[/ QUOTE ]

You need to review your definition of ad hominen.

[evolvedForm]

[ QUOTE ]
Nietzsche



[/ QUOTE ]

You are correct, sir.

[evolvedForm]

[ QUOTE ]

Philosophers up to this point have tried to interpret the world. The point, however, is to change it



[/ QUOTE ]

Then Marx was wrong if he thought that philosophers didn't change the world by their interpretations of it.

[evolvedForm]

Mine are Nietzsche, Camus, and Foucault in that order. Nietzsche because his thoughts reversed the tide of philosophy and set us on (I think) the right track. Camus because his brilliantly written prose speak directly to the most important human questions, like how to live and why not to commit suicide. Thirdly, Foucault's genealogy (actually a method borrowed from Nietzsche) has helped us see new explanations for things we previously thought we understood.

[Jshuttlesworth]

Ayn Rand, AINEC.

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

[Jshuttlesworth]

[ QUOTE ]
The correct answer is that it is a tie between John Rawls and Immanuel Kant.

[/ QUOTE ]

Next time, before you give such a blatantly brutal answer, please give a ***BRAIN DAMAGE*** spoiler and make your post in white. Thanks

[Green Kool Aid]

[ QUOTE ]
Ayn Rand, AINEC.

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

[/ QUOTE ]

JShuttlesworth,

do you honestly consider someone who considers his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life a heroic being? do you not find that in any way contradictory? if not, plz enlighten me.

[Jshuttlesworth]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ayn Rand, AINEC.

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

[/ QUOTE ]

JShuttlesworth,

do you honestly consider someone who considers his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life a heroic being? do you not find that in any way contradictory? if not, plz enlighten me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and no. I'm not sure why you find that contradictory, so I can't go about "enlightening" you (yet).

[Green Kool Aid]

I just think the definition of "hero" contradicts with your statement.

"A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war."

With this information give, would you now care to expand?

[Jshuttlesworth]

[ QUOTE ]
"A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no more noble purpose than pursuing that which makes you happy. If you do not pursue what makes you happy, you are a coward, and therfore not a hero.

I don't think we are going to persuade each other here.

[Green Kool Aid]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no more noble purpose than pursuing that which makes you happy. If you do not pursue what makes you happy, you are a coward, and therfore not a hero.

I don't think we are going to persuade each other here.

[/ QUOTE ]

i will buy your view if you change "noble" to "important." otherwise, im still saying you contradict yourself.

[Jshuttlesworth]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no more noble purpose than pursuing that which makes you happy. If you do not pursue what makes you happy, you are a coward, and therfore not a hero.

I don't think we are going to persuade each other here.

[/ QUOTE ]

i will buy your view if you change "noble" to "important." otherwise, im still saying you contradict yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is not within my power to redifine the word "courage," so no, I will not change "noble" to "important."

[Green Kool Aid]

do you have any problems with paraphrasing what she said using more up to date language?

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a selfish being, therefore making his own happiness the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his favorite activity, and reason as his only absolute."


the words she uses contradict themselves based upon definiton, not personal belief, and that cannot be argued.


EDIT: JS, I am sorry for being a total nit about this, but Ayn Rand's wording was horrible and I couldnt get past it.

[Jshuttlesworth]

[ QUOTE ]
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a selfish being, therefore making his own happiness the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his favorite activity, and reason as his only absolute."


[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with that statement, although I wouldn't attribute it to AR, and I disagree that her words contradict each other. You've just been raised in an environment where the ppl you view as the smartest and most well-respected have hammered it into your head that "life is meaningless without giving back to others."

[Green Kool Aid]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a selfish being, therefore making his own happiness the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his favorite activity, and reason as his only absolute."


[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with that statement, although I wouldn't attribute it to AR, and I disagree that her words contradict each other. You've just been raised in an environment where the ppl you view as the smartest and most well-respected have hammered it into your head that "life is meaningless without giving back to others."

[/ QUOTE ]

first of all, her words do contradict each other. i really dont think this is not opinionated on my part.

secondly, giving back to others isnt even close to the focus, although its a small part of it. it's about my belief in the ideas of someone such as smith that we truly can be sympathetic to the plight of others.

also, this is completely unrelated to my point of her statement being flawed, but do you think its a coincedence that the smartest and most well-respected people i know also have brainwashed me with the horrible ideas of helping others?

[HLMencken]

Nietzsche. The greatest combination of insight, prose, sarcasm, elegance, thoughtfulness, understanding of human nature, etc., all rolled into one neurotic figure.

"I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful, of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man. I am dynamite."

[Bigdaddydvo]

Camus can do, but Satre is smarter!

[purnell]

[ QUOTE ]
Who is your favorite philosopher and why?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's between Hume and Sartre (and I believe in God /images/graemlins/laugh.gif), because they assume nothing.

[evolvedForm]

Ha, took me forever to get that, considering you have to mispronounce 'sartre' for it to rhyme.

[bearly]

philosophers have led me to see things (as have others), but i am the one who sees them. i live w/ them and work w/ them. i fight the fight, and feel the sense of wonder and delight when something mysteriously "fits in". no other philosopher does that---in my life................b

[NobodysFreak]

Right now, Nietzsche and its not close. Wittgenstein would have to be second and I'd have to give a lot of credit to Plato/Socrates because for the last 2500 years we've all been foot noting them.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
Right now, Nietzsche and its not close. Wittgenstein would have to be second and I'd have to give a lot of credit to Plato/Socrates because for the last 2500 years we've all been foot noting them.

[/ QUOTE ]
So many mention Nietzsche and in the UK you can do a philosphy degree without ever coming across him. At Birkbeck which is very well respected for Philosophy, Nietzsche is a small part of an realtively obscure optional unit.

chez

[madnak]

So what?

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
So what?

[/ QUOTE ]
I dunno, being from the uk I've never read him.

You tell me.

chez

[NobodysFreak]

Part of the problem is that before Walter Kaufmann translated Nietzsche's works to English in the 1960s, there weren't many reliable pieces of his work. Since then, his work has become more prevalent in English speaking philosophy departments although its unlikely many of your professors who would have been getting their PhDs in the 60s and 70s would have learned much about him.

[Bork]

Many western philosophy departments focus on analytic philosophy. Nietzsche,while a great writer, is a far cry from this rigorous style.

The lack of courses devoted to him is not because they have not been exposed to him. His work simply doesn't fit in their view of the correct way to do philosophy. In fact, I know many professors who say his work isn't philosophy in the sense they use to describe their work. They think it belongs in literature type courses.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
Part of the problem is that before Walter Kaufmann translated Nietzsche's works to English in the 1960s, there weren't many reliable pieces of his work. Since then, his work has become more prevalent in English speaking philosophy departments although its unlikely many of your professors who would have been getting their PhDs in the 60s and 70s would have learned much about him.

[/ QUOTE ]
That makes sense. No-one ever accused the English academic world of being fast moving.

Thanks

chez

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
Many western philosophy departments focus on analytic philosophy. Nietzsche,while a great writer, is a far cry from this rigorous style.

The lack of courses devoted to him is not because they have not been exposed to him. His work simply doesn't fit in their view of the correct way to do philosophy.

[/ QUOTE ]
That makes even more sense.

Thanks

chez

[Sharkey]

[ QUOTE ]
There is no more noble purpose than pursuing that which makes you happy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would the happiness you experience be more worthy a purpose for you than the happiness experienced by someone else?

[snowden719]

neck and neck between Kant and Hume

[Warren Whitmore]

Ayn Rand. She changed my life in many ways. If I had to pin point the most important though it would be from believing in Democracy as leading to an ideal utopia to Objectivity. A rather huge differenc.

[evolvedForm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Right now, Nietzsche and its not close. Wittgenstein would have to be second and I'd have to give a lot of credit to Plato/Socrates because for the last 2500 years we've all been foot noting them.

[/ QUOTE ]
So many mention Nietzsche and in the UK you can do a philosphy degree without ever coming across him. At Birkbeck which is very well respected for Philosophy, Nietzsche is a small part of an realtively obscure optional unit.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to intentionally call you out, but I just found this on the Birkbeck website, under the doctorate philosophy programme.



<font color="blue">
The School of Philosophy offers research-based teaching, with a core commitment to analytical philosophy, and a wide range of interests in the history of philosophy (notably Greek, early modern including Spinoza, and Nietzsche).
</font>

Link (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/pg/subjects/philosophy/philphd)

And it's not just here, but in most of the schools I've researched that courses on Nietzsche are offered, including my own. These include Australian, English, and American universities.

edit: chez, perhaps you are right - I didn't see that you mentioned Nietzsche is only a small part, which could very well be true, judging that small description.

[Zapp]

Jonathan Edwards, mainly because (apologies to evolvedForm) he "speak[s] directly to the most important human questions." He is widely acknowledged (arguably) as the greatest philosopher America has ever produced. And how much better can you get than to be a great philosopher and a sound theologian all rolled up into one?

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Right now, Nietzsche and its not close. Wittgenstein would have to be second and I'd have to give a lot of credit to Plato/Socrates because for the last 2500 years we've all been foot noting them.

[/ QUOTE ]
So many mention Nietzsche and in the UK you can do a philosphy degree without ever coming across him. At Birkbeck which is very well respected for Philosophy, Nietzsche is a small part of an realtively obscure optional unit.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to intentionally call you out, but I just found this on the Birkbeck website, under the doctorate philosophy programme.



<font color="blue">
The School of Philosophy offers research-based teaching, with a core commitment to analytical philosophy, and a wide range of interests in the history of philosophy (notably Greek, early modern including Spinoza, and Nietzsche).
</font>

Link (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/pg/subjects/philosophy/philphd)

And it's not just here, but in most of the schools I've researched that courses on Nietzsche are offered, including my own. These include Australian, English, and American universities.

[/ QUOTE ]
syllabus (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/programmes/undergraduate/ba_courses)
Nietzsche is only covered in the optional unit Nineteenth Century German Philosophers.

By degree level I meant undergraduate degree.

chez

[AceofSpades]

[ QUOTE ]
Nietzsche. The greatest combination of insight, prose, sarcasm, elegance, thoughtfulness, understanding of human nature, etc., all rolled into one neurotic figure.

"I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful, of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man. I am dynamite."

[/ QUOTE ]

If I was going to read one book on/by him what would you recommend?

[RJT]

Don’t put Descartes Beauvoir the horse.

(I think “the horse” is also supposed to be substituted with the name of another philosopher. It has been a long time since I heard this one and I forget the whole joke. This is the punch line.)

[evolvedForm]

One book? Either 'Genealogy of Morals' or 'The Gay Science.' But whatever you do, keep this in mind. Nietzsche is extremely easy to misunderstand and he contradicts himself quite often (for a reason). He himself warned about reading his works too quickly.

[Green Kool Aid]

[ QUOTE ]
he contradicts himself quite often (for a reason).

[/ QUOTE ]

we are reading him in my western political thought class very soon. is this generally accepted (that he contradicts himself?). also...is there a short answer for why he does so? i normally can't get past contradictions.

[madnak]

I second the Gay Science. It's a very accessible collection of aphorisms, and it's also one of his stronger works.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
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Philosophers up to this point have tried to interpret the world. The point, however, is to change it




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Then Marx was wrong if he thought that philosophers didn't change the world by their interpretations of it.

[/ QUOTE ] No, he didn't think this, what he thought was that as long as the world functioned in the disgusting way it functioned at his time most people would not be able to see the truth or, if they could, would not change the world that much. An analogy would be like someone thirsty in the desert who knows that people see imaginary oasises in the desert, seemingly sees an oasis, but is well aware of the fact that what they are seeing right now is an illusion; however, they still see it; it is real in their mind. What people see/feel is beyond people's control to a considerable degree. To Marx, a philospher in a heartless world will often feel untruth or have thoughts in favor of untruth creep in to her mind even if she knows better and writes about the actual truth in her professional papers.

So insofar as the point of philosophy is finding and illuminating the 'truth' Marx thought that this required philosphers to both study the world and to change it.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]


Many western philosophy departments focus on analytic philosophy. Nietzsche,while a great writer, is a far cry from this rigorous style.

The lack of courses devoted to him is not because they have not been exposed to him. His work simply doesn't fit in their view of the correct way to do philosophy. In fact, I know many professors who say his work isn't philosophy in the sense they use to describe their work. They think it belongs in literature type courses.


[/ QUOTE ] This is correct: I just have one thing to add. because Nietszhe's arguments are not rigorous, they are notoriously easy to refute or demonstrate that they are in fact meaningless (because they are vague, equivocal, etc.). I like Nietzsche, he is a good read and will help you to question many assumptions that you previously thought didn't even realize you made because they are so commonly believed in: but he is good because of a reason he gave:

"The mistakes of great men are more illuminating than the truths of small men"

[miketurner]

Voltaire. He said that in a hundred years, the Bible would have passed into the mists of history as people became more liberated and enlightened. Oh, wait... that was 250 years ago. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[NobodysFreak]

Despite the fact that I like The Gay Science, I would have to recommend almost anything written after it. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Twilight of the Idols are good starting points. You'll find many parts in them which influence Freud and Wittgenstein.

In order to better understand Nietzsche you should probably do some reading on his life. Its notoriously difficult to find much written about his life in English, but you'll better understand him once you get an idea of who he was. As a precaution, I'd stay away from anything written about him (in English) prior to about 1970.

His philosophy is heavily empirical and despite the fact that most think he's entirely ammoral, his moral code is more rigorous than many have the stomach for. Don't expect a list to follow. Part of reading Nietzsche is that he wants you to figure things out for yourself. He detests what he calls "the herd" and has a love of the uncertain and the instinctual.

[LearnedfromTV]

My undergrad thesis was on Nietzsche and Wittgenstein (there are surprising parallels, particularly in their treatment of language) and I have studied Nietzsche extensively.

As an introduction, I would suggest Richard Schacht's <u>Nietzsche</u>. It is accessible but thorough and does a good job of extracting Nietzsche's philosophical arguments from his literary style. The question of what work to read first is a difficult one. Many would say <u>On the Genealogy of Morals</u>, and this is probably the best choice if you are only reading one book and want a glimpse of what most consider Nietzsche's most powerful and influential thesis - that morality is the triumph of the weak over the strong. I tend to favor <u> Human, All too Human </u> from that period, but barely, and only as a matter of aesthetic preference. Both are important works.

I would caution against reading one book and thinking it captures Nietzsche's thought. Much of understanding Nietzsche requires understanding the arc of his career, which can be reasonably reduced to three distinct phases. <u> Genealogy </u> is likely the best introduction to the third phase, but without reading, at the minimum <u> On the Birth of Tragedy </u> and <u> The Gay Science </u>, as representative works of his earlier phases, you could very easily be lost and not even realize it. Of course, the whole of an author's work always presents a better picture than a single work, but this is particularly an issue with Nietzsche because he is so easily misread.

The question of Nieztsche's place in the Anglo curriculum is a very interesting one. Unfortunately I don't have time to continue right now, but I'll try to remember to come back later. To say that Nietzsche has no place alongside analytic philosophy because he lacks clarity is remarkably off base, though. This is neither a dig at analytic philosophy nor clarity.

As an aside, I have three answers to the original question -Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein.

A couple of posts above mentioned Nietzsche as a turning point in the history of philosophy. I am not a fan of these kind of characterizations (I think they oversimplify), but I would argue that Kant is a larger and more fundamental turning point. I don't particularly enjoy reading him, however. DeCartes deserves mention in that category as well.

[evolvedForm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
he contradicts himself quite often (for a reason).

[/ QUOTE ]

we are reading him in my western political thought class very soon. is this generally accepted (that he contradicts himself?). also...is there a short answer for why he does so? i normally can't get past contradictions.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think there is a short answer. My best attempt, though, would be to say that Nietzsche saw the world as chaos. Therefore, contradictions are inherent. It's incorrect IMO to do a reading of Nietzsche that revolves around a central idea or framework. Heidegger and Kaufmann tried that but the French Nietzscheans, like Foucault and Deleuze, disagree (as I do).

Not really sure if that helps. Like I said in another post, reading one or two works by N. won't get you the whole picture, so keep an open mind.

[HLMencken]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nietzsche. ..

[/ QUOTE ]

If I was going to read one book on/by him what would you recommend?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would recommend Beyond Good and Evil first followed by Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

[LearnedfromTV]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nietzsche. ..

[/ QUOTE ]

If I was going to read one book on/by him what would you recommend?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would recommend Beyond Good and Evil first followed by Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

[/ QUOTE ]

I just realized that I made an error in my earlier post. Beyond Good and Evil is the other book that I meant to mention (in addition to Genealogy) from Nietzsche's later period. Both written in the mid-late 1880's. Human, All Too Human is a collection of aphorisms from much earlier (late 1870's). The covers of my copies of those two are similar and I always confuse the titles.

Re Mencken's Zarathustra choice, depending on your literary taste, you may find it moving or melodramatic and absurd. It is highly metaphorical, the most intellectually ambitious of N's completed works and it gives a good high-level picture of his view of the man and the world, along with what he intended his legacy to be. It also walks a thin line between genius/prophecy and wild overreaching, which is a decent description of N in general. In a sense, everything after Z was to fill in the details. But to some readers, Z is incoherent babbling only somewhat justified by the later work.

[amirite]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nietzsche. ..

[/ QUOTE ]

If I was going to read one book on/by him what would you recommend?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would recommend Beyond Good and Evil first followed by Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll throw in a recommendation for Twilight of the Idols simply because he was very close to full-blown batshit insane by the time he wrote it and it's a fun read.

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
he contradicts himself quite often (for a reason).

[/ QUOTE ]

we are reading him in my western political thought class very soon. is this generally accepted (that he contradicts himself?). also...is there a short answer for why he does so? i normally can't get past contradictions.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think there is a short answer. My best attempt, though, would be to say that Nietzsche saw the world as chaos. Therefore, contradictions are inherent. It's incorrect IMO to do a reading of Nietzsche that revolves around a central idea or framework. Heidegger and Kaufmann tried that but the French Nietzscheans, like Foucault and Deleuze, disagree (as I do).

Not really sure if that helps. Like I said in another post, reading one or two works by N. won't get you the whole picture, so keep an open mind.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nietzsche contradicted himself on purpose as part of his attempt to undermine the value we place on the truth and on the true/false dichotemy (at least that was partly his reason for contradicting himself). He was more interested in influencing readers through other means than speaking the truth (I agree that it's very difficult to get around the apparent contradiction in that methodology as well).

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll throw in a recommendation for Twilight of the Idols simply because he was very close to full-blown batshit insane by the time he wrote it and it's a fun read.

[/ QUOTE ]

Two recommendations for this. I really, really disagree. Twilight of the Idols is one of the hardest of Nietzsche's works to understand. I'm not sure anyone can effectively interpret the ideas in it without having some understanding of the earlier works.

Personally, I think reading the early works first is the best strategy. 90% of the gross misinterpretations of Nietzsche I see come from people who jumped into his later works without recognizing the subtlety and irony.

Zarathustra is the classic of course, but to me it was neither as insightful nor as fun to read as the earlier works. Getting everything out of it is difficult, and it is rather self-important and melodramatic. Nietzsche was very ego-driven, particularly late in life, and it unfortunately weighs down some of his language. I think he's at his best when he's playful and unaffected.

[amirite]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'll throw in a recommendation for Twilight of the Idols simply because he was very close to full-blown batshit insane by the time he wrote it and it's a fun read.

[/ QUOTE ]

Two recommendations for this. I really, really disagree. Twilight of the Idols is one of the hardest of Nietzsche's works to understand. I'm not sure anyone can effectively interpret the ideas in it without having some understanding of the earlier works.

Personally, I think reading the early works first is the best strategy. 90% of the gross misinterpretations of Nietzsche I see come from people who jumped into his later works without recognizing the subtlety and irony.

Zarathustra is the classic of course, but to me it was neither as insightful nor as fun to read as the earlier works. Getting everything out of it is difficult, and it is rather self-important and melodramatic. Nietzsche was very ego-driven, particularly late in life, and it unfortunately weighs down some of his language. I think he's at his best when he's playful and unaffected.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well yeah, I wouldn't honestly recommend Twilight to introduce someone to Nietzsche, I was somewhat joking around in my post. I do find it a really interesting read though because syphillis had basically eaten his brain by the time he wrote it.

[NobodysFreak]

Oddly enough there's much in Twilight of the Idols which Freud and later Wittgenstein will pick up and run with. He might have been a year or so away from full blow insanity, but he was still productive in this period.

[siegfriedandroy]

What is he saying here?

[aeest400]

Most "pros" would probably choose Kant or Hume, at least among the biggies. Personally, I prefer Hume, but belive that Kant was more of a pure genius (Hume merely had twice as much intelligence asnd common sense as most folks). Locke and Descartes also have their places. I used to like Nietzsche, but then I studied philosophy. He was definitely a genius, but I think much of his insight is lost on those who cliam to embrace him. This goes double for Wittgenstein. Ann Rand is not worthy of comment. The correct answer, which was noted in an early Seinfeld episode, is, of course, Aristotle.

When I read Hume, I think "This guy is [censored] right."
When I read Kant, I think "This guy is [censored] smart."
When I read Aristotle, I think "Wow. This is the smartest guy who ever lived. He wrote all this did this before paper? He must be some kind of alien."

There is a reason that people referred to Artistotle as "The One Who Knows" for about 15 centuries.

[cliff]

I love Camus' writing and thoughts, but would you call him a philosopher? He never developed a system, not wrote serious philosophy. I think of him more as a general intellectual, or maybe an applied philosopher (if such a label exists), maybe similar in some ways to Dostoevsky or Kafka, as opposed to a philosopher such as Sartre or Kierkegaard (picking from philosophical and literary types he is associated with).

[guesswest]

Sorry to be boring, but Kant. Close second would be Spinoza but probably more due to his character than anything else. Dostoevsky would maybe get my nod if it was clear that he counts as a philosopher.

And RE: Aristotle. Undoubtably the most influential figure in philosophy, probably in western thought generally - but the question was 'favourite'. The problem with Aristotle is his ideas have to such a massive extent been built into the framework we use that he's largely invisible.

[cliff]

I'd have to say Nietzsche, but for pretty poor reasons. As I am not a philosopher, I find it hard to force my way through a complete formal treatise by most and likely do not fully appreciate their works. Nietzsche, on the other hand, is quite readable and I often read his works for pleasure. So while he may not be the "best" philosopher (I would lave this distinction for someone more qualified to argue), he is certainly my "favorite". I also think Fichte is both interesting and readable.