Who are the greatest philosophers.

[\Firestorm]

Sun Tzu- a military philosopher who wrote the Art of War. "Know your enemy, know yourself and victory is yours."

Bruce Lee- a martial arts philosopher. "Absorb what is useful. Reject what is not"

Mencius- a Chinese philosopher who said "the most important element in a state is the people. The next important is grain and spirit. The least important are the leaders." Mencius also said "If a government turns bad, then the people has a right to overthrow through violent means.

Confucius- a Chinese philosopher who said "Do not unto others what you don't want others to do unto you"

Karl Marx- his philosophy inspired the creation of communism.

Nietzsche- a philosopher who said "If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger"

Hippocrates- the medical philosopher who founded the concept of Hippocratic Oath.

Adam Smith- an economic and business philospher who founded the laissez-faire capitalism, postulated the theory of the division of labor and emphasized that value arises from the labor expended in the process of production

Machiavelli- who believes "Might makes right".

Thomas Malthus- the economic philosopher who made a theory about overpopulation resulting in a depletion of Earth's natural resources.

[AzureWolf]

[FONT=Book Antiqua][COLOR=blue][SIZE=2]Wow, very interesting. My short answer is that the greatest philosophers are the ones who don't bother wasting time philosophizing. I know philosophy is the study of knowledge, questioning everything mankind knows - including logic, but in the end, it's always appeared to me as useless fun.

Don't get me wrong: philosophy is important. Everyone has to have a strong fundamental set of philosophy to live by. However, those that waste time simply musing over knowledge and doing nothing are a waste of everyone's time.

I'm a bit biased, since I both love science and the early history of the United States, but I would say that Rousseau, Locke, and Hippocrates are among the greatest. Rousseau looked at the interaction of man with man, and from there, concluded that man is a social creature and becomes corrupt not because of himself, but because of others.

Locke knew the value of application over theory, and spoke of how it's more important to experience than to learn. Locke probably appeals to me because I agree and understand his view. I mean, I have trouble understanding theory in, say math, but when I see examples (i.e., experience/application), everything becomes clear.

Hippocrates knew the importance of the medical man and his role in social environments. To have a code of honor among those with medical knowledge, to spread that knowledge, and to help mankind thrive were all concepts he saw as important enough to philosophize about. If centuries of endurement aren't enough to say he was right, what is?[/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]

[Inari]

[COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]Way cool thread! Hey if you're really into philosophy, read [U]Sophie's World[/U] by Jostein Gaarder. I'm reading it right now, and I'm loving it!

As far as philosophers go here are a few good (and not so good) ones that you missed, and a few random facts I can remember about them:

Socrates- The gadfly! He said that everyone has an innate sense of justice.

Plato- He wrote [U]The Republic[/U]. He also made the cave analogy where he shows how people today are in a cave starring at shadows, and that is there truth. When someone leaves the cave and sees the light and the [I]real[/I] truth they could never go back to the cave. (That's the "cliff notes" version :) )

Aristotle- He said that women were merely incomplete men, and defined what a Greek tragic hero was. (I completely disagree)

Descrtes- He said "I think therefore I am," and believed that just by thinking of something it made it real.

Francis Baccon- He said that we learn the truth by observing nature.

John Locke- He was all over the social contract theory. He believed that people were naturally good. He then says that people create government as a contract between people who agree to allow a government in order to protect life, liberty and the right to property.

Thomas Hobbes- He also believed in a social contract, but thought that people are inherently evil, and that bad government was better than nothing. He wrote [U]The Leviathan[/U].

D'Holbach- He was an Atheist who thought that people should live their lives well now in order to improve humanity.

Rousseau- He felt that justice is only equal when some are favored over others.

David Hume- People should individually use what they know to predict the unknown.

Kant- He valued duty over happiness.

Bayle- He spoke out against divine right, and promoted stoicism (the show of no emotion).

Montesquieu- He believed in a balance of power for government.

Fontenelle- He believed that man has the ability to make progress and can change its ideas.

Diderot- Wrote the first encyclopedia and believed that knowledge has revealed the good nature of human.

Hegel- He believed that once an idea arises, I creates an anti-thesis. Then these two ideas conflict with each other and create a synthesis. Then the cycle continues.

Charles Darwin- [U]The Origin of Species[/U] and evolution.

Sigmund Freud- Father of Psychology. He's done lots of stuff there.

Voltaire- I read his book [U]Candide[/U] and loved it! It was a great social commentary of France during the Enlightenment.

Confucius- The Chinese guy who believed in a leader who lead by example.

Thomas Moore- He wrote [U]Utopia[/U] and spoke out against the enclosure movement in England. (This was when the land lords kicked the peasants off their land and raised sheep because it was more profitable this way.)

Thoreau- He was the one who talked about the civil disobedience, and refused to pay his taxes.

I know I'm missing lots of good ones, but these were all I could think of at the moment. And as for my comments on each one, I know I oversimplifying them all, but I didn't want to write an essay about each one so this is what I got.[/COLOR]

[LizerisCnh]

[quote]Wow, very interesting. My short answer is that the greatest philosophers are the ones who don't bother wasting time philosophizing. I know philosophy is the study of knowledge, questioning everything mankind knows - including logic, but in the end, it's always appeared to me as useless fun.[/quote]

Then Albert Camus may be of some minute interest. His philosophy capitolized on that all is meaningless and that indifference is the only sanctuary. Here's an essay that appears in 'The Myth of Sisyphus', his work which proclaims that human existence is a pointless struggle. He compares our lives to Sisyphus, whom the (Greek) gods had condemned to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Its a lengthy excerpt, but its worth it's weight.

[quote]Ephemeral Creation

At this point I perceive, therefore, that hope cannot be eluded forever and that it can beset even those who wanted to be free of it. This is the interest I find in the works discussed up to this point. I could, at least in the realm of creation, list some truly absurd works. (Melville's Moby Dick, for instance). But everything must have a beginning. The object of this quest is a certain fidelity. The Church has been so harsh with heretics only because she deemed that there is no worse enemy than a child who has gone astray. But the record of the Gnostic effronteries and the persistence of Manichean currents have contributed more to the construction of orthodox dogma than all the prayers. With due allowance, the same is true of the absurd. One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it. At the very conclusion of the absurd reasoning, in one of the attitudes dictated by its logic, it is not a matter of indifference to find hope coming back in under one of the most touching guises. That shows the difficulty of the absurd ascetics. Above all, it shows the necessity of unfailing alertness and thus confirms the general plan of this essay. But if it is still too early to list absurd works, at least a conclusion can be reached as to the creative attitude, one of those which can complete absurd existence. Art can never be so well served as by a negative thought. Its dark and humiliated precedings are as necessary to the understanding of a great work as black is to white. To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries---this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, it the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.

This leads to a special conception of the work of art. Too often the work of a creator is looked upon as a series of isolated testimonies. Thus, artist and man of letters are confused. A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape. Likewise, a man's sole creation is strengthened in its successive and multiple aspects: his works. One after another they complement one another, correct or overtake one another, contradict one another, too. If something brings creation to an end, it is not the victorious and illusory cry of the blinded artist: "I have said everything," but the death of the creator which closes his experiences and the book of his genius.

That effort, that superhuman consciousness are not necessarily apparent to the reader. There is no mystery in human creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret. To be true, a succession of works can be but a series of approximations of the same thought. But it is possible to conceive of another type of creator proceeding by juxtaposition. Their words may seem to be devoid of inter-relations, to a certain degree, they are contradictory. But viewed all together, they resume their natural groupings. From death, for instance, they derive their definitive significance. They receive their most obvious light from the very life of their author. At the moment of death, the succession is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own condition, to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses.

The effort to dominate is considerable here. But human intelligence is up to much more. It will merely indicate clearly the voluntary aspect of creation. Elsewhere I have brought out the fact that human had no other purpose than to maintain awareness. But that could not do without discipline. Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective. It is also the staggering evidence of man's sole dignity: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in an effort considered sterile. It calls for a daily effort, self-mastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure, and strength. It constitutes an ascesis. All that "for nothing," in order to repeat and mark time. But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.

Let there be no mistake about aesthetics. It is not patient inquiry, the unceasing, sterile illustration of a thesis that I am calling for here. Quite the contrary, if I have made myself clearly understood. The thesis-novel, the work that proves, the most hateful of all, is the one that most often is inspired by a smug thought. You demonstrate the truth you feel sure of possessing. But those are ideas one launches, and ideas are the contrary of thought. Those creators are philosophers, ashamed of themselves. Those I am speaking of or whom I imagine are, on the contrary, lucid thinkers. At a certain point where thought turns back on itself, they raise up the images of their works like the obvious symbols of a limited, mortal, and rebellious thought.

They perhaps prove something. But those proofs are the ones that the novelists provide for themselves rather than for the world in general. The essential is that the novelists should triumph in the concrete and that this constitute their nobility. This wholly carnal triumph has been prepared for them by a thought in which abstract powers have been humiliated. When they are completely so, at the same time the flesh makes the creation shine forth in all its absurd luster. After all, ironic philosophies produce passionate works.

Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity! And diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life. Detached from it, the work will once more give a barely muffled voice to a soul forever freed from hope. Or it will give voice to nothing if the creator, tired of his activity, intends to turn away. That is equivalent.

Thus, I ask of absurd creation what I required from thought---revolt, freedom, and diversity. Later on it will manifest its utter futility. In that daily effort in which intelligence mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

Let me repeat. None of all this has any real meaning. On the way to that liberty, there is still a progress to be made. The final effort for these related minds, creator or conqueror, is to manage to free themselves also from their undertakings: succeed the granting that the very work, whether it be conquest, love, or creation, may well not be; consummate thus the utter futility of any individual life. Indeed, that gives them more freedom in the realization of their work, just as becoming aware of the absurdity of life authorized them to plunge into it with every excess.

All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics---in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the divine fable that amuses and blinds, but the terrestrial face, gesture, and drama in which are summed up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral passion.

-Albert Camus[/quote]

[Inari]

[QUOTE] Originaly posted by [B]AzureWolf[/B]
Wow, very interesting. My short answer is that the greatest philosophers are the ones who don't bother wasting time philosophizing. I know philosophy is the study of knowledge, questioning everything mankind knows - including logic, but in the end, it's always appeared to me as useless fun.[/QUOTE]

[COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]How can you find philosophy pointless? Is seeking to find who we are, why we're here not the greatest and most noble quest of them all? Without furthering our knowledge of mankind (I hate using that masculine pronoun, but oh well) how can we progress as a society? Philosophy defines us, gives us purpose and direction, and without it humans cease to wonder and discover truths about our very beings. Philosophy furthers understanding, how can you call it "useless fun?"[/COLOR]

[Godelsensei]

[COLOR=Gray][FONT=Courier New]I'm sided with Azure.

Philosophy by itself gets us nowhere, but when applied to our everyday interactions and jobs, whatever they may be, it can make us more successful.
It's important to think about what you do, but doing nothing [i]but[/i] thinking about things doesn't get you too far. You eventually need to take some form of action.

At least I think that's what he was getting at.

I agree with him anyway, because the man's never wrong, except about Eva. : O

Confucious' philosophies appeal to me alot, simply because I agree with alot of things he said.

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop."

I do alot of clump downloading. I don't care how long it takes to get the Pillows' full discography onto my computer, as long as it gets there eventually. Which should be in an hour and a half. : O[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Xander Harris]

[QUOTE=Inari][COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]
As far as philosophers go here are a few good (and not so good) ones that you missed, and a few random facts I can remember about them:

Socrates- The gadfly! He said that everyone has an innate sense of justice.

Descrtes- He said "I think therefore I am," and believed that just by thinking of something it made it real.

COLOR][/QUOTE]
Nice list, Inari! Very impressive!

I would just like to say, though, that I just got out of philosophy class fifteen minutes ago, and we were talking about Descartes. He didn't believe that by thinking of something he made it real. That idea is sort of like phenomenalism, which is what he believes in the first meditation.

In the first meditation he decides to doubt the existence of all reality, thinking himself to be in a dream or decieved by a powerful demon (ala the Matrix). He comes to the conclusion that one thing he can be certain of is that he exists. Hence "I think therefore I am".

Throughout the next three meditations, he eventually builds off of that to a belief in the existence of God and the existence of the things around him. Reality is real, is the ultimate conclusion. He doesn't believe that whatever he thinks is made real.

(Actually, there are a lot of holes in Descartes arguement, but I figured I'd just give the readers digest version :p )

I want to say that Socrates is also important because of the "Socratic Method" in which philosophy is accomplished by questioning. Most of his stuff (written down by Plato) is in the form of dialogues.

This could be an interesting thread!

[Inari]

[quote name='Xander Harris'] I would just like to say, though, that I just got out of philosophy class fifteen minutes ago, and we were talking about Descartes. He didn't believe that by thinking of something he made it real. That idea is sort of like phenomenalism, which is what he believes in the first meditation. [/quote]

[COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]You're right. (As I dig out my old notes.) I didn't fully explain Descartes. He did say that you exist because you can imagine yourself. He was talking about the possibility that you are the only person that exists, and that you imagine everyone else. He rules out this possibility by saying that because you can recognize your own faults, other people must exist. He also said that God exists because we can imagine him.

With his theory in mind, do dragons exist? We are able to imagine them now, but this could be because we have been influenced by other historical/mythical accounts of dragons. Were the first people to write or speak about dragons imagining them or did they really exist? I disagree with Descartes on the thought that God exists because we can imagine him. There?s more to it than that. Believing in God is more of a leap of faith. His existence can neither be proved nor disproved. Just because we can think of things doesn?t mean that they are real. [/COLOR]

[Xander Harris]

[QUOTE=Inari][COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]You're right. (As I dig out my old notes.) I didn't fully explain Descartes. He did say that you exist because you can imagine yourself. He was talking about the possibility that you are the only person that exists, and that you imagine everyone else. He rules out this possibility by saying that because you can recognize your own faults, other people must exist. He also said that God exists because we can imagine him.

With his theory in mind, do dragons exist? We are able to imagine them now, but this could be because we have been influenced by other historical/mythical accounts of dragons. Were the first people to write or speak about dragons imagining them or did they really exist? I disagree with Descartes on the thought that God exists because we can imagine him. There?s more to it than that. Believing in God is more of a leap of faith. His existence can neither be proved nor disproved. Just because we can think of things doesn?t mean that they are real. [/COLOR][/QUOTE]


Yeah, like I said, Descartes is famous, but his arguements are full of holes. It's interesting that you should use a dragon in your example, since that's what we used in class too. That and a flying horse. I guess part of the arguement is that since he knows what imperfection is, then it follows that perfection exists, and since perfection exists God must exist.

Another problem with the arguement is that Descartes already knew about the concept of God before he started his meditations. Would someone doing these meditations who had never had any religious idea given to him by another arive at the same conclusion? I personally believe that God exists in part because throughout the world in so many civillizations there are people who believe in a higher power (but that's an arguement/discussion for another time). However, not all of them believe that the higher power is the epitome of perfection. Far from it, some people imagine the gods to be little more than giant humans. So they could go through the same thought processes as Descartes and never arrive at the conclusion of an omniscient and omnipotent God existing.

So, anyhow, we spent like a week studying the dude, and then one day ripping his theories to shreds. Fun.

(Wow, I'm actually spending my free time discussing philosophy on the web... college must be getting into my bloodstream... ;) )

[Inari]

[COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]
[quote name='Xander Harris']So, anyhow, we spent like a week studying the dude, and then one day ripping his theories to shreds. Fun.[/quote]

I studied Descartes in my AP European History class, and we only spent about fifteen minutes on him, and we read an excerpt by him. We didn't even get to argue about his thoughts. Oh well...

So what do you think of John Locke? He was the one that said that in our natural state humans are good to each other and it is only though outside influence that we turn to "bad" or "good" things. He also said that everyone is born with a [I]tabularosa[/I] or a blank slate, and that everyone is equal at birth. Locke said that we fill our blank slate with our experiences and these are what shape us. King Louis XIV did an experiment with his theory by isolating a bunch of babies. He only allowed nurses to go in to feed the babies, but they weren't allowed to hold them. Louis thought that the babies would come out speaking in the language of nature, but instead they all died.

I like his thoughts on the [I]tabularosa[/I], and how our experiences shape who we are. I don't believe in the Calvinistic "Original Sin," and how we are all born with sin, so I side more with Locke. He used the thought that our experiences shape us to explain why the Europeans and the Asians were very different. I think our experiences are very important. The one thing I don't like about his [I]tabularosa[/I] is how he/Americans used it to justify slavery. I think that regardless of your upbringing, no one deserves to be placed in a subservient role like that.

Locke also believed that government is created through a social contract in which the people all agree to form a government that will protect their natural rights, which were life, liberty, and property. He goes on to say that when ever the government becomes oppressive the people have a right to over through it. A lot of these ideas went into the United States' Declaration of Independence.

I disagree that government always originated from a contract. I tend to believe more in the force and the evolutionary theories. Either government came from the most powerful person around or it evolved from the social structure of a family or society. Ideal governments should be agreements, but I don't think there are many out there that are truly social contracts. Also, on his point about securing the property of the governed, I realize this is important to some people, but it isn't necessary for government. Communism is a legitimate form of government, but no one has property. I think that as a wealthy person himself, he was looking out for his own interests after England set up its new government. Finally, I do agree in his thoughts on oppressive governments. If a government is oppressive, its people should abolish it. This power should not be over used, but it should be there.

Yeah... So those are my thoughts on John Locke, what do you guys think? And if I wrote anything incorrect please say something about it.[/COLOR]