who is your best philosopher and why? name 3 if you can?

Answer 1

i have a lot of favorites, but i guess my top three would be john stuart mill, michel foucault, and peter kropotkin.

mill's utilitarianism is the strongest moral theory out there, i think. it gets at the root of right and wrong as being in the amount of pain or happiness our actions cause. all moral theories must be utilitarian to some degree or else face the daunting task of explaining why that theory is desirable if it does not increase happiness and decrease suffering. it also helps to cut through a lot of the confusion that results when moral abstractions are adopted (like rights, the will of god, the law.) These abstractions may be useful, but too often they take on a life of their own, for example with people insisting on their right to luxuries while others starve, or on doing the legal thing even when it causes suffering.

foucault makes my list primarily because he showed that modern morality is largely the product of power. he argues convincingly that, for example, society moved away from public torturings not out of humane morality, but because these public executions were undermining the power of the king. individual rights were adopted not out of the enlightened reason of the philosophers, but because the emerging capitalist class needed for the populace to internalize norms that would protect the capitalists' property. power is found throughout society, and often when we think we are resisting power we are in fact perpetuating our domination.

kropotkin was a 19th century anarchist thinker. foucault would be very much against his view of humans having an essential nature, but i like both of them. i like him for his idea that humans originally existed in tightly knit communities, and that a lot of modern problems are the result of these communities having been abolished. we are taught to think of ourselves as individuals, existing autonomously, and only entering relationships through contractual agreements. but this modern view is actually a fiction, and human nature has evolved to exist in a social environment. it is modern autonomous individualism which causes so many of the problems that afflict society now.

Answer 2

1. Socrates- He believed in questioning everything around him. He set himself apart from others by acknowlegding that the only true wisdom lies in knowing that one knows nothing. Plus he was willing to die instead rather than compromise his principles.

2. Beccaria- His range may have been smaller than most well known philosophers but his writings on crime and punsihment, and what should be the true goals of punishment, are extremely interesting.

3. Ben Franklin- He may not be regarded as a true philospher. However, it is easy to see that he was a true lover of thought, and could spin a phrase or two, plus, he seems to give off a genuine joy for life, which many philosophers seem to lack.

Answer 3

I rather like Aristotle. His views are closest to my own. To name Philosophers, there's no better way than using the Philosopher's Song.
Kant. Heidegger. Hume. Hegel. Wittgenstein. Schlegel. Nietzsche. Socrates. Mill. Plato. Aristotle. Hobbes. Descartes.

Answer 4

Three philosophers: Carl Jung, Kierkegaard and Karl Marx.

I like the work of Carl Jung, especially Synchronicity -- An Acausal Connecting Principle. I admit, I read it for nefarious reasons: namely I had a big teen crush on Sting, and that's what they named their album Synchronicty after Jung's theories, which Sting admired. He is depicted reading this work on the cover of that album. So, I picked up a copy. Wow! Interesting stuff!

Answer 5

Brand Blanshard, Eric Hoffer, Ayn Rand. I am a committed individualist, and these are the three philosphers who understand and endorse the purest ideals of individual rights, self-reliance, and anti-collectivism. I also believe very strongly in the concepts of objective reality, reason as an absolute, and rational self-interest, which are also important themes in the works of these three. Finally, they each make valid arguments against mass movements, collective thinking, and socialism -- which is to be regarded, in my opinion, as nakedly evil.

I strongly reccommend investigating each of these, if only as a point of comparison with other popular philosophers -- the contrast is startling and will in and of itself be interesting for you, i think. Good books to start with would be "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Natrure of Mass Movements" by Hoffer, "The Virtue of Selfishness" by Rand, and "Reason and Analysis" by Blanshard.

Answer 6

Davidson, Quine, Frege.

cuz.

Answer 7

Lao Tse, Rene Descartes, and Stewie from Family Guy.
They are really deep and wise.

Answer 8

Plato - The source of most things Socratic.

Aristotle - The source of most things reasonable.

Einstein - The source of most things related to one another.

Almost everybody else just reshuffled the cards these men dealt.

Answer 9

carl jung, - since you mention it i will read some more of very soon..have barely read any, but he is a great teacher once you learn to understand him....now it is like , how could i not see it before.......and this is the problem with our society today, we can not see were one gets something, can not see it being possible, so we just, critsize them, and let it go in one ear and out the other.....maybe one day we will learn how to use the winnowing fork properly...

Answer 10

i agree with some of Nietzsche's ideas
and 2 more are Kant and Freud