Most/Least Favorite Philosopher and Why?

[Harry Tuttle]

Alright, simple enough. State your most favorite and least favorite philosopher and why you made that choice. I'll start.

Most Favorite:

Ayn Rand - Outspoken, logical, praising of man's accomplishments, found honor in hard work, ardent supporter of Capitalism as a means to freedom, drafter of Objectivism.

Some people may not know of her, but I'm sure a few people have heard of her novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. She is incredibly dry to read, but has a cut and dry way of looking at things that seems to make sense.

She was born in St. Petersburg Russia in 1905 and witnessed the Communist Revolution first hand, which influenced her outlook on life to the extreme. She left the Soviet Union in 1926 and made her way to Hollywood where she would star in a few movies, meet her husband, and draft her books and philosphy.

A very anti-socialist writer, Rand focuses on the "hear and now" and the tangible as a means to knowing "truth", contrary to the socialist "workers paradise" thought process.

All in all she is a very motivational writer.

Least Favorite:

Besides the obvious Marx and Engels...

Henry David Thoreau - in the words of Emerson: "He was bred to no profession; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun."

While his work "Civil Disobedience" is a well reasoned answer to the problem of the "little guy vs. govt" his methods practiced throughout his life seem to make him unqualified. Thoreau was born a son of a rich father, never worked a day in his life, and criticized modern living as being to extravagant (all the while living comfortably at Walden and not working).

His main great act of disobedience was to not pay taxes in response to the Mexican war, a war he saw as unjust (just and unjust points to the war definately, but stay with me for a sec). This act landed him in jail for a day or so. In principle this can be seen as a bonafide way to make your point known. Then again he wasn't waving banners as he marched down the street like anyone who truly wanted to change things might have.

In short I agree with his ideas for moral and just civil disobedience. I disagree with his credentials in that he had little experience of what the common man had to deal with in the mid 19th century. Everytime I read his ideas I just can't get the picture of a spoiled rich kid playing the philosopher, attempting to rally against something just because he wants to be recognized by his literary friends. It just seems fake.



Ok, those are my two. What about you guys?

[KrazyHorse]

Least: Rand

The reasons should be obvious to any thinking person.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Least: Rand

The reasons should be obvious to any thinking person.

Oooh, ouch

[Kuciwalker]

Ayn Rand - Outspoken, logical, praising of man's accomplishments, found honor in hard work, ardent supporter of Capitalism as a means to freedom, drafter of Objectivism.

And founder of the cult of the same name. Read Why People Believe Stupid Things by Michael Shermer (I love this guy!)

[Q Classic]

anybody who says ayn rand's masterwork was Atlas Shrugged is an idiot. if they had half a brain, they'd realize that The Fountainhead was a far better read, once you skip over the sixty-page speech in the trial.

i don't really have a favorite or least favorite philosopher. i do have philosophers i absolutely detest reading, like thoreau.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by skywalker

And founder of the cult of the same name. Read Why People Believe Stupid Things by Michael Shermer (I love this guy!)

Can't quite find a good website. Got a link?

[Kuciwalker]

It's a book

link to it on amazon

He's also the editor of Skeptic magazine, and writes a column of the same name for Scientific American.

[Harry Tuttle]

Ooooh, found a good quote.

"This I surely know, if I wrestle with dung, win or lose, I am always defiled." (as quoted in Blind Watchers of the Sky, p. 39)
-- Rollenhagen (friend of Tycho Brahe)

Not Rand, but still a good quote, one I could use often here at Apolyton

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle

"This I surely know, if I wrestle with dung, win or lose, I am always defiled."

Excellent choice for many Apolyton debate threads.

[Agathon]

Ayn Rand isn't much of a philosopher. I'd put her in the same class as L Ron Hubbard.

There are real philosophers, like the late Robert Nozick, who defend some of the same claims she does, but they are a lot smarter than her.

Favourites: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Hume, Wittgenstein, Quine, Brandom and Davidson.

Least favourite: any of those stupid post-modernists. Those people are linguistic pornographers.

[Inverse Icarus]

fav: descartes.

least: freud. well, he's more of a psychologist, but seriously, i loathe his work with a passion.

[Fake Boris]

Those I like:

Socrates (for the style!) Marx, Rousseau, Freud, Diogenes the Cynical

And what's wrong with the post-modern? Barthes and Lyotard are real nice.

Those I DON'T like:

Nietzsche- interesting depiction of the problems, but crappy solutions.
Ayn Rand- a specialist paralogician, only surpassed by Descartes.
Descartes- he sucks.
Hume- A post-Elizabethan Ronald McDonald at best.

And ABOVE ALL: the utilitarists, Mill and Bentham. I CAN'T stand their pure, excuse for non-rationality BS. If you want to calculate, have some math classes and leave the intelligent guys alone.

[Berzerker]

Frederic Bastiat, although he was primarily an economist.


Now someone will probably find an embarassing quote from him. But here are some quotes I like...

Under the pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law takes property from one person and gives it to another; the law takes the wealth of all and gives it to a few — whether farmers, manufacturers, ship owners, artists, or comedians. Under these circumstances, then certainly every class will aspire to grasp the law, and logically so.

Hey, campaign finance "reform" will fix that problem, right?

Bastiat's analysis of the USA in 1850 was very favorable except for 2 issues:

What are these two issues? They are slavery and tariffs. These are the only two issues where, contrary to the general spirit of the republic of the United States, law has assumed the character of a plunderer.

Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.

It is a most remarkable fact that this double legal crime — a sorrowful inheritance from the Old World — should be the only issue which can, and perhaps will, lead to the ruin of the Union. It is indeed impossible to imagine, at the very heart of a society, a more astounding fact than this: The law has come to be an instrument of injustice. And if this fact brings terrible consequences to the United States — where the proper purpose of the law has been perverted only in the instances of slavery and tariffs — what must be the consequences in Europe, where the perversion of the law is a principle; a system?

11 years before the US Civil War, and the 2 primary reasons for that war? Slavery and protective tariffs...

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

The Proper Function of the Law

And, in all sincerity, can anything more than the absence of plunder be required of the law? Can the law — which necessarily requires the use of force — rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right. This is the most fatal and most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined. It must be admitted that the true solution — so long searched for in the area of social relationships — is contained in these simple words: Law is organized justice.

Now this must be said: When justice is organized by law — that is, by force — this excludes the idea of using law (force) to organize any human activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion. The organizing by law of any one of these would inevitably destroy the essential organization — justice. For truly, how can we imagine force being used against the liberty of citizens without it also being used against justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?

Three Systems of Plunder

The sincerity of those who advocate protectionism, socialism, and communism is not here questioned. Any writer who would do that must be influenced by a political spirit or a political fear. It is to be pointed out, however, that protectionism, socialism, and communism are basically the same plant in three different stages of its growth. All that can be said is that legal plunder is more visible in communism because it is complete plunder; and in protectionism because the plunder is limited to specific groups and industries. 4 Thus it follows that, of the three systems, socialism is the vaguest, the most indecisive, and, consequently, the most sincere stage of development.

But sincere or insincere, the intentions of persons are not here under question. In fact, I have already said that legal plunder is based partially on philanthropy, even though it is a false philanthropy.

With this explanation, let us examine the value — the origin and the tendency — of this popular aspiration which claims to accomplish the general welfare by general plunder.

Law Is Force

Since the law organizes justice, the socialists ask why the law should not also organize labor, education, and religion.

Why should not law be used for these purposes? Because it could not organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice. We must remember that law is force, and that, consequently, the proper functions of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force.

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They safeguard all of these. They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all.

Law Is a Negative Concept

The harmlessness of the mission performed by law and lawful defense is self-evident; the usefulness is obvious; and the legitimacy cannot be disputed.

As a friend of mine once remarked, this negative concept of law is so true that the statement, the purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.

But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed — then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.

Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

The Law and Charity

You say: "There are persons who have no money," and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

The Law and Morals

You say: "Here are persons who are lacking in morality or religion," and you turn to the law. But law is force. And need I point out what a violent and futile effort it is to use force in the matters of morality and religion?

It would seem that socialists, however self-complacent, could not avoid seeing this monstrous legal plunder that results from such systems and such efforts. But what do the socialists do? They cleverly disguise this legal plunder from others — and even from themselves — under the seductive names of fraternity, unity, organization, and association. Because we ask so little from the law — only justice — the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. The socialists brand us with the name individualist.

But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.

What Is Liberty?

Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties — liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism — including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?

It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire — learned from the teachings of antiquity — that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#container1104

Oh, least? Name any socialist (or statist) philosopher

[Ramo]

My favorite would be Mikhail Bakunin.

I'll hop onto the bandwagon and say Rand is my least favorite. Combine limitless logical fallacies and the morally despicable idea (according my philosophy ) that greed is good, and you get her.

[Asher]

My favorite would be myself, and my least favorite would be Agathon.