Most/Least Favorite Philosopher and Why?

[Kuciwalker]

I like Kant

[oedo]

: Thomas of Aquin, Bertrand Russel
: Ayn Rand; George W. Hegel

[Whaleboy]

Least favourite: Popper. His "enemies on the open society", along with the poker incident ant his beliefs in absolutes that went with it are enough to make me despise what he's done.

AFAIK, the poker incident was a fabrication. Popper was a good political philosopher and a competent proponent of democracy. I don't like what he did but he did it very well. Its the same situation with Kant.

If you want to calculate, do some maths. If you want to talk about people, forget the rigid rationality, economics has shown it isn't true.

Which would seem to leave a somewhat existentialist solution (not necessarily Sartre but the generic field). What that basically means is applied relativism . Utilitarianism does therefore suck *dances on grave of Bentham*.

[Whaleboy]

I like Kant

Hence your problem

[Soul Survivor]

Best: Plato, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Protagoras!

Worst: any of those bloody utilitarians

[Whaleboy]

I think I have minions!!

Soul:

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Personally I think they should have given up right after the Epicureans came along.

[Bereta_Eder]

I like Protagoras (a sophist) because he could weazel his way out of practically anything. Added bonus that he could seriously piss off Plato.

[Soul Survivor]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Personally I think they should have given up right after the Epicureans came along.

epicureanism! now thats a useful philosophy!

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Ramo
Combine limitless logical fallacies and the morally despicable idea (according my philosophy ) that greed is good, and you get her.

I wouldn't say her philosophy is that greed is good. More to the point it is about ownership of your creations and your dominion over them. There are numerous times in her books where she has a character being forced to give out a loan to a disreputable person, give up their formula to the benefit of the do-nothing leeches in power, or conform to how others think.

It's not about greed, it's about working hard toward a greater goal, striving for excellence, and more importantly keeping the goddamn looters off your back who seek to mislead with "for the greater good of society" rhetoric.

In order to understand Rand's outlook on things I think you have to understand her life. She was a baby of the Communist Revolution and had her family thrown into poverty by the Marxists. Anyone who would have gone through that would have some very hard views on who and what the "looters" are and what capitalism is really all about.

Not to say she's perfect though. Her writings were during and after ww2, but she left out any thoughts on war. And her writings didn't attempt to design an everyday life for people, just some sort of framework for what she calls "the self".

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I believe she also concluded that one of the most evil men in history was Robin Hood.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by bfg9000


Derrida's deconstruction of Heidegger and Hegel has made me look at those philosophers ideas in a different light. So there is some value to linguistics.

What Derrida seeks to undermine in common with other postmodernists is the metaphysical certainty not only that the unique 'I' behind any utterance guarantees a consistent, totally conscious, and rational point of view, or that a unified meaning might be traced back to an originary intention, but also that graphic modes of representation, be they in words or images, directly refer to a pre-existent reality.

Yes, but it's all so silly. If you want a rational attack on the Cartesian notion of the person read the Churchlands and other eliminativists. They have the benefit of at least attempting to be scientifically respectable. One could argue that other philosophers have said the same thing, Wittgenstein and Rorty leap to the mind. But the difference is that the latter had arguments and wrote in plain language instead of spinning out meaningless claptrap. Where are the arguments?

Heidegger and Hegel. Ugh!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
I believe she also concluded that one of the most evil men in history was Robin Hood.

She's seriously deranged, a sort of Ann Coulter of the 50s. What's wrong is that she doesn't provide good arguments and ignores much of the recent history of philosophy. It's a cult.

And she does say that it is rational to always act in one's self interest although she doesn't provide a good argument for that.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I've never read her work- though going by my experiences with self-proclaimed Randists I can believe the Robin Hood point. So many seem so preoccupied with preserving the crystalline purity of their own logic that they fail to spot the fact that the conclusion they're taken to is totally dysfunctional.

[Spiffor]

Favorite:
Kant. I fortunately didn't read his works (save for Idée d'une histoire universelle d'un point de vue Cosmopolitique, I trust Agathon to tell you the English title ), but what I was taught of his doctrine changed my life. I don't know if he invented the idea, or if he merely repeated it, but I like it when he explains it is in our very nature never to discover reality.

Other favorite:
Bourdieu. Not a philosopher, as he's interested in the study of our contemporary society, but not really a sociologist either. His claims are valid, and his analysis of the social use of symbols is an eye opener. His style is a beyatch though, and I strongly advise to read books about him, rather than to read his books directly.

Least favorite:
Don't know. Insert any pure rationalist here. Or insert any religious figure. Yeah, that'll teach 'em.