can you get a true philosopher who is evil? please give example?

Question

by true philosopher i meant someone who undoubtedly contributed to philosophy. I am interested to see Machiavelli being suggested, not sure if he was evil or trying to do good from his narrow minded perspective.

Nietzsche was not evil. just very funny maybe not good towards women, although their is a theory that some of his work was re-written by his sister. Kant's books really are a bit much sometimes!

RE: since when was hitler a philosopher? he was a politician

Answer 1

the best example of this would be lucifer.
he was very phylosophical about his future
he said,
I will ascend into heaven
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God
I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds
I will be like the most High
but as usual i fcuked up init..lol

Answer 2

My favorite EVIL philosophers would have to be Nietzsche, Rand, and Machiavelli. I love them all because they have no mercy upon the weak.

But in fairness to Nietzsche, he was very clearly not an anti-semite but the Nazi party did like to misquote him a lot. He hated anti-semitism almost as much as he hated Christianity.

BTW, I really couldn't say that any true Philosopher can be evil. For better or worse, whether right or wrong, a true Philosopher is someone who believes in what they say and that what they say is something good. Nietzsche certainly felt that Christianity is evil because it is ressentiment against the strong. And Rand believes that those who have sympathy for the guilty (the parasitic weak) have none for the innocent (the productive strong).

The only "philosopher" that could be evil in my book are those who purposefully lie in their writing. And if that's the case, I certainly won't consider them as true philosophers.

Answer 3

Nietzsche was emphatically NOT an anti-semite, anyone who reads his books knows this. He also despised German nationalism. He may have been stubborn and mysogynistic, but that's something else.
The problem is imagining evil as a person's essential quality, I don't believe this is realistic. There has never been a person who is eveil personified, even Hitler. He loved animals and that's not really very evil.

(edit) Yaoi, Marx did not take Hegel 'on faith', he critically used parts of Hegel in his own work. As for Ayn Rand, she is not only a fraud, but does more practical damage than Kant has done in 250 years. Read widely and not just the free books the Rand organisation gives you.

Answer 4

Evil is a point of view. And besides that, true philosophers are concerned with the metaphysical, which in addition to being philosophical leaves them very much incapable of describing their thoughts and teachings good or evil.

Answer 5

Hmmm...I suppose it depends on what you would call a philosopher. In my view philosophy is all about an investigation of life based on rational lines of thinking. Nietzsche was supposed to be something of an anti-Semite, and maybe an influence on the Nazis, but I don't think he was actually 'evil' as such. And a lot of philosophers would say that evil does not exist in of itself, since it is a moral judgment applied by soceity, and morality is not a fixed concept.
For example some societies have regarded cannibalism as ok, but in the modern world we might describe it as 'evil'.
So my answer to your interesting question is no, I don't believe you can.

Answer 6

A man may indeed be evil, as all of us are sometimes,to one degree or another, and 'do' some philosophy as well, but that will not make of him an evil philospher; just like the gesture of the gift is not tainted because it comes from a thief.

Answer 7

You're going to run up against a different question in your question... what IS evil? This can sometimes seem to be more a matter of definition than a provable one.

Personally, I consider knowledge to be good, so it would seem reasonable to consider ignorance as evil. Likewise, I like progress and creation, so regression and destruction that lead to nothing seem to be forms of evil to me.

The philsopher, then, who most epitomizes destructive ingorance would probably be the first solipsist - Gorgias. If we all agreed with him that nothing exists, nothing can be known, and nothing can be communicated then what would we have? Nothing.

No society, no knowledge, no life, everything would be impossible and pointless.

That someone would seem to seek to produce this with his work is - to me - repugnant and disgusting, if not outright evil.

Answer 8

I have to agree with Ayn Rand that Kant was evil because his ideas about "pure" reason, "practical" reason, and "noumena," have confused more people than any other philosopher by expecting to have his ideas taken on faith. His ideas take twists and turns that make the mind go numb, and you realize why when you discover it is all "bunk." There is no making sense of "bunk." Kant did not want you to use your own mind on his ideas, because any person with epistemological reason could have picked out the holes on page one of "Pure Reason"--as I did.
But, what makes this evil? Hegel took Kant on faith; Marx took Hegel on faith; the Soviets and the Chinese, Cuba, and others, took Marx on faith, and in the process billions (remember how many Chinese there are) faced starvation, political mass killings, and the the injury and insult of being prisoners in their own nation.
That--is evil.
Never take a philosopher's ideas on faith. Investigate them, and when they make your sensibilities spin, then you should stop and re-examine his (or her) premises. They are probably untenable epistemologically; and probably frightening for the human race metaphysically.

Answer 9

Hitler.

Answer 10

By moving from "true" to "evil," a type of equivocation.

If by "true" you include "Truth," "God," then no "True" philosophy, or love of wise dominion, is logically possible to also be "evil."

If by "true" you exclude the Oneness of Truth, God, you are assuming materialism. In the latter case, the only kind of "evil" is relativistic, what you (and/or citizen Hobbes, rationally and pragmatically) decide.

In God-centered wisdom, "evil" is energy-veiling, e-veiling, eviling; Plotinus' One Mind Soul has no evil, until and unless an error (e-veiling, distortion) is committed while attempting Soul-individuation.

Thus, if no God, no evil, save what you define/accept as such.
If God, no true is evil.

Hence, your question is equivocal.

"Climb the Highest Mountain," Mark Prophet, "A Philosophy of Universality," O. M. Aivanhov, and "The Path of Virtue," Jonathan Murro, are worthwhile in this respect.

best regards,

j.