Who is your favorite philosopher?

[Rapière]

Peter Zapffe

He's one of my favorites also. It's a pity he remained so obscure that no one ever bothered to translate his main work On the tragic, where he expands his ideas from The last messiah. Thomas Ligotti is also very good at conveying the horror of human consciousness, and he builds upon Zapffe's essay, so I'm sure you'll appreciate him too.

 

[Bartzabel666]

I can certainly relate to this Philipp Mainlander guy.

 

[justlookinforanswers]

I almost love philosophy enough to not CTB lmao. Once you get into it it really makes your life look a lot more trivial. Schopenhauer, jung, kierkegaard, bergson, deleuze. I like theories of metaphysics, religion, mental illness, aesthetics. I like reading Nietzsche but don't agree with a lot of what he says

 

[Yakamoz]

Arthur Schopenhauer

 

[TriggerHappy]

Not into philosophy.
What's philosophy? Educated diversion?d.e.volution, perhaps. So like religion. That this monster seeks god is insane but marvellous. I like prayers and spells and magicka esoterica...

I Fucking Love Him: Rabindranth Tagore

 

[akana]

Not all philosophers exactly but people I like the philosophies of are: Alan Watts, Carl Sagan, Naval Ravikant and Eckhart Tolle

 

[Celerity]

Simone Weil because she was just so unflinchingly (and sometimes stupidly) good. Unlike most philosophers, she put her money where her mouth was and put herself in miserable and dangerous situations to do what she thought was right. She was no armchair philosopher by any stretch.

As for how much she accomplished and how much I agree with her ideas, these is far less impressive than her aforementioned moral character, bizarre resume, and tragic death. As an atheist who does not agree with anarchism, many of Weil's ideas challenge my own quite aggressively. That said, I really think she would have been an improvement upon the drivel that many of her contemporaries served up. If it takes a crazy, self-hating Jewish Catholic with an eating disorder to take down the pedophile Michel Foucault and his ilk, so be it.

Her brief exchange with Simone de Beauvoir always cracks me up:

'In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, de Beauvoir reports her first and perhaps only personal interaction with Weil in, most likely, 1929. "A great famine had just begun to devastate China," she writes, and:

I was told on hearing the news she [Weil] had wept; these tears commanded my respect even more than her philosophical talents. I envied her for having a heart that could beat right across the world. One day I managed to approach her. I don't remember how the conversation began; she declared in no uncertain terms that one thing alone mattered in the world today: the Revolution that would feed all the people on earth. I retorted, no less peremptorily, that the problem was not to make men happy, but to find a meaning for their existence. She looked me up and down: "It is easy to see you have never gone hungry," she said. Our relationship stopped there. (239)'

 

[GenesAndEnvironment]

 

[lionetta12]

Søren Kierkegaard.

 

[Insomniac]

To this man, I owe my understanding of dignity and virtue.

View attachment 94753
Diogenes, the most honest cynic.

if he was so honest, why didn't he live in the woods he was a beggar. meaning he was dependent on people who lived in society. also, during the cold, I'm sure he lived in a house. his whole story isn't even credible. Idk why they maintain the myth even in philosophy textbooks

 

[Euthanza]

This has just been added to my table of books.

Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters - Moses Hadas Translation

I'm leaning toward Stoicism, it's great read to kill time, so excited.

Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi are different people, Lao Tzu was almost 200 years older than Zhuangzi, although they are usually classified in the same school, Taoist.

Isn't Taoist allowing suicide under circumstances?

 

[112]

Started investigating Deleuze and Guattari because self-punishment is a thing I guess.

Deleuze and Guattari - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I enjoy them and also later accelerationist politics/theory which exists in their tradition, such as Nick Land before he went off the rails with his stimulants. You're right that they're difficult, but I feel quite personally enriched by what I understand of their schizoanalysis in particular, although I am not informed on their independent work and greater thought outside of what is presented in the C&S volumes. In terms of their rigor and intelligibility, they're quite up there with, e.g., Hegel for me as highly difficult scholars, and sometimes I consider that their books are turning me insane again. It took me a long time to start feeling confident that I understand them to some depth, whereas most of the philosophical canon is easy for me to pick up and interpret outside of very specialized, high-level logic.

Otherwise, to list a "favourite" who hasn't been mentioned unless I missed it, I am quite fond of Zizek more as a personality than in terms of affinity for his corpus, although he's not terrible for his work as much as he's just a meme. I'm also fond of Russell, the pompous ass, and Wittgenstein. When I entered my twenties I had something of an obsession for Witty and although I don't revisit him often I still cite him as a heavy influence.

If I had to pick one as an all-time favourite, however, I'd have to say Nietzsche. I have gotten a great amount of value from reading him extensively and see him as refreshing in light of most of the rest of the canon. As the ultimate antinihilist thinker in the history of philosophy, he is an inspiration against suicide for me. Although I usually do not consider myself an atheist any longer, I still read Nietzsche and enjoy his vitriol against "God," the church and religion generally, and I agree plainly with his critiques of conventional morality, although probably not with respect to all his particulars and prescriptions of substitute. I also consider him a literary figure and see his prose as electric; insofar as he claimed to have mastered German prose and elevated it to the "sublime," I am inclined to agree with him. There is a stunning beauty in almost everything he wrote. He had additionally an incredible influence on early psychoanalytical thought and wrote so extensively on depression that Freud's earliest experiments on the disorder were on the basis of Nietzsche's writings. And he also came up with the famous "Unconscious," which is a psychoanalytical tenet and has been adopted largely by the psychologists.

And I wrote Plato off for a long time but have decided he's not that bad and am getting back into him (with a focus on his later work under some interesting contemporary thoughts I've come across on his indeterminate dyad). I'm also piqued by neoplatonic Christianity.

 

[ghqkiiia2]

I'm leaning toward Stoicism, it's great read to kill time, so excited.

Isn't Taoist allowing suicide under circumstances?

Taoism is not my major, so I could be wrong. But I think the general interpretation would be that, since Taoism sees the distinction between death/living is a illusion and sees death/living as the same, so killing yourself is not what they would recommend for you.

 

[Panna]

I've always been a fan of epicurus and his philosophy of epicureanism. It really has stuck with me over the years.

 

[John-LW]

DIOGENES. Trolling at its finest.

 

[No blackangel]

Kant, just all in in what he believed

 

[outatime_85]

These two have been added to my book stack.

The Stranger—Translated by Matthew Ward.

Plato: Five Dialogues—Translated by G.M.A. Grube.

 

[Meaninglessness]

My favorite philosopher is Plato. Humans can´t understand reality with our limited brain and limited senses, not even with aids. We all live in the cave of Plato.

 

[Tiberius85]

Marcus Aurelius.

He's always on my side. He's the best friend I never have in real life, who always looks over my shoulder at any time, who I can go to and ask for guidance and who always has a fair, thoughtful answer.

His Meditations are always on my side. They help and helped me through difficult times. I read a few pages and feel soon calmer, kinder, with less strong negative emotions.

As a highly sensitive person, I can only say his Meditations work better than any drug ever could work for me. They make me think, reflect and address my inner demons.

Marcus wouldn't ever have wanted the fame and acclaim that's attributed to him, especially these days. He'd never would have wanted his personal journal to be published, either. Yet, even Marcus would take quiet joy from knowing he continues to help people a more virtuous life, which is the ultimate Stoic achievement: dead and still teaching them the right way to live.

 

[𖣴 nadia 𖣴]

Jane Addams - pragmatist philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, social reformer and political activist. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States and was America's first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.



'There are a number of reasons why Addams was not generally recognized as a philosopher until the late twentieth century which include her gender and her association with social work. Another factor in this lack of recognition is that she was not a systematic philosopher either stylistically or methodologically. Addams' writing style is not typical of the philosophic tradition in that it lacks a sustained abstract character. For example, in Democracy and Social Ethics, arguably the most philosophical of Addams' books, the chapters address charity workers, family relationships, domestic workers, industrial working conditions, educational methods and political reforms. To the trained philosopher, these topics appear far removed from more familiar considerations of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. However, a careful examination of her work reveals that Addams begins with social phenomena and draws theoretical inference from these experiences.

In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams offers intriguing, even radical, insights into the nature of ethics and epistemology. To read Addams as a philosopher requires setting aside assumptions about beginning from abstract theoretical positions. As a pragmatist, Addams is strictly interested in social philosophy. Everything she writes seeks what James would refer to as the "cash value" of an idea for social growth and improvement. Four interrelated cornerstones of her social philosophy are the concepts of sympathetic knowledge, lateral progress, cultural pluralism and fallibilism.'

Addams, Jane | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

iep.utm.edu

 

[KD6-3.7]

Who is your favorite philosopher?
My favorite philosophers are Spinoza and schopenhauer!

SPINOZA


SCHOPENHAUER

Who is your favorite philosopher?
My favorite philosophers are Spinoza and schopenhauer!

SPINOZA


SCHOPENHAUER

Baudrillard and Gramsci - I'm not the brightest so I've found it difficult to get into Schopenhauer lol, "The World As Will and Representation" was too much for me.

 

[LonelyEmerald]

John Locke

 

[AdaSmiles]

Marcus Aurelius

 

[goneStar]

Michel Foucault. I'm mostly familiar with his literary criticism, but I found a lot of interest there. And I think a lot of his ideas are proving true with the Internet, ubiquitous cameras, and a rise in authoritarianism.

Although in an hour I might change my mind and say Bertrand Russell. I especially like the idea to continually re-evaluate ideas and realize we're all just making our best guess at everything. I don't like the idea of a world government, however. The governments that have come closest to achieving that were all horribly inhumane.

as an ex mathematician, calling russell anything other than a mathematician is a grave offense lol

 

[outatime_85]

This has been added to my table of books.

Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, Hazel E. Barnes (translation)

 

[Ultracheese]

Are we defining the term philosopher in the traditional sense? While I enjoy reading philosophical texts, I personally find art to be a more nuanced and interesting exploration of ideas and the human condition. I'll take Aristophanes over Aristotle any day.

 

[Whistea]

Hard to say which is my favorite of all time, but lately I've been enjoying Seneca a ton.

 

[murmur]

i gained interest in philosophy when i started reading psychoanalysis.
Although Lacan isn't ascribed as a philosopher, i have him to thank for exposing me to philosophers that converge with psychoanalysis or helped build it,
My favorite of those being Schopenhauer, Deleuze, and Zizek.

i started reading about the infinitude chaos of desire and the fragility of ideology at a young age and it has stuck with me deeply till this day as an adult.
As a kid with a growing proclivity to deject being that i was dealt a bad hand by birth (whilst disagreeing with the way things are dealt generally), i felt that i was so far from ever being able to reach a state of being put together or to mesh well with others no matter how much i tried,
after reading that feeling shattered and alienated from all facets of life was not only normal but granted, it saved my sanity and I embrace hardship for a good portion of my life.
Even though I've come to the conclusion that the overwhelming negatives in life are not worth living for, reading philosophy at least gives me the pleasure of observing life from the outside looking in a constructive manner.

 

[BruhXDDDDD]

I disagree with Epicurus on a few things, but I love him just for not rejecting all the spiritual mumbo jumbo of his time.

i meant to say rejecting. not "not rejecting" lol

 

[Kawika12]

Yogi Berra.