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Who is the greatest philosopher and philosophy?

jay gw

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Is there one philosopher that you think is the greatest/wisest? I keep coming back to Aristotle because of the rational, systematic way he dealt with the major questions. And the lack of mysticism, which is just stupid in philosophy.

I guess rationalism or empiricism would be my pick for greatest philosophy, ideas connected to the Enlightenment. They really set the West apart from every other tradition.
 
Er, you realize that dealing with questions in a rational systematic way is sort of the basic methodology of philosophy, right? I mean, Aristotle was really really really good at it - and right up there in the running for greatest ever - but hardly for just that. Heck, Spinoza and Berkeley probably top him in dealing with things rationally and systematically (given a suitably instrumental view of rationality).

The general consensus as far as I know is that when picking 'The Greatest Philosopher' you really should be choosing between Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein*.

(*The inclusion of Wittgenstein is not neccessarily uncontroversial, partially because it hasn't been too long since he died, and partially because no one is entirely sure what he was arguing half the time. Still, he's waaay up there in the rankings.)
 
Now, now...if you are going to limit this to dead white guys, just say so..
:D

If you want to base the contest on the most T shirts sold, the pseudo connection between Lao Tzu and New Age stuff like Tai Chi ought to count for a bunch...
:p
 
Paul Jennings, who invented Resistentialism (" Les choses sont contre nous"). He also coined the handy word "bunkrapt" to describe people who are besotted by highfalutin' twaddle.
 
I think it's a toss-up between Felix Guattari:
We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.
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and Calvin Thomas:
The excrementalization of alterity as the site/sight of homelessness, of utter outsideness and unsubiatable dispossession figure(s) in . . . Hegel's metanarrational conception of Enlightenment modernity as the teleological process of totlization leading to absolute knowing.
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~~ Paul
 
...annoying kopji digression toward precision

Resistentialism
'Les choses sont contre nous.' 'Things are against us.' This is the nearest English translation I can find for the basic concept of Resistentialism, the grim but enthralling philosophy now identified with bespectacled, betrousered, two-eyed Pierre-Marie Ventre. In transferring the dynamic of philosophy from man to a world of hostile Things, Ventre has achieved a major revolution of thought, to which he himself gave the name 'Resistentialism'. - Paul Jennings


bunkrapt
Recently I came across a word in a book called The End of Science by John Horgan that triggered an explosion of laughter on my part. I thought, Mencken would have loved it. Talking about some pseudo-scientific theory Horgan used the word bunkrapt, a twist on bankrupt and apparently a portmanteau word composed of bunkum and rapture.
http://www.antiwar.com/letters/letters361.html
 
Is there one philosopher that you think is the greatest/wisest?

No. I do not believe a successful life can be lived by following a single rigid philosophy, code, or rule. Philosophers can tend to become a substitue for a priest or religion. When that happens it is bad.

Some 'traditional' philosophers I respect: (not in any particular order)

Lao Tzu - (Tao Te Ching) High return on investment per word.
A philosophical Taoist is something like a liberatarian environmentalist who rejects violence and aggression as a means to an end. :D LT was robably not a real person though.

Nietzsche - By far, probably the most maligned and misunderstood philosphers. Every artist or person of a creative temprement should read Nietzsche.

Sun Tzu / Machiavelli - Yeah, learn from the dark side Luke.

Aristotle - Aristotle has a great way to understand how to develop character by practicing certain habits of life. Some Aristotle is just plain obsolete, but a lot of useful modern 'self-help' writings are based on Aristotle. (IMHO Covey's 7 habits borrows quite a lot from Aristotle.) A good way to understand Aristotle for modern times is through the writings of Mortimer Adler. Can be found on the web in many places under the nomen 'The Great Ideas'. Yeah I like Adler, so sue me.

The sparks really fly within scientific philosophy. That's more difficult to pick a 'camp', so I generally don't. I like reading Sagan, Popper, Gardner, Einstein, etc.

There are 'asthetic' philosophers - writers, artists, and poets. There is much to learn. These would be people like Matso Basho, Picasso, or Escher.

humm.. not nearly a complete enough list.
 
I've always been partial to Socrates. He claimed to be the wisest of all men because while he knew nothing of worth, he at least knew that he knew nothing.

Most philosophy strikes me as being similar to a lot of modern art and poetry. A successful poet knows that if he uses sufficiently vague and obscure language, his readers will be more than happy to provide the "meaning" and write endless contradictory academic papers about it, thus making him seem profound. Additionally, he can rely of the Emperor's New Cloths effect to protect his status (I don't get it but I'm not going to admit it since it would cause me to lose face with my intellectual peers).

A lot of philosophers appear to employee the same method (see Paul's post above for classic examples).
 
Aristotle has a great way to understand how to develop character by practicing certain habits of life. Some Aristotle is just plain obsolete, but a lot of useful modern 'self-help' writings are based on Aristotle.
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Well, that's just about the most appalling thing I've ever heard anyone say about Aristotle.

Not entirely false, of course, though I wonder about the 'self-help' references. And also about Adler being useful for understanding him (I would think a more promising avenue would be, you know, the thousands of years of intensive Aristotle scholarship).
 
I haven't read enough to make a choice, so whenever anyone asks, I say Mario Bunge. I feel so original for picking someone still alive. If the philosopher must be dead, I'll pick Ghazali (which I only know by name, besides he was a theologian...).

/feels smart for making obscure picks.
 
I actually thought Plato was better than Aristotle. At least Plato had the decency to guide you through his arguments, Aristotle takes out the old philosophical baseball bat and beats you over the head with it. And then there is his teleology, which is not as important to his philosophy as some might think, yet his prime mover argument is often abused.

I'd say Plato in first, Aristotle second. Nietzche gets third place for criticizing both of them.
 
kopji,
OK, I'll give you Resistentialism. Jennings did not invent it but merely reported Ventre's brilliant work, which built on the foundations laid by Freidegg and Heidansiecker
Not so sure about " bunkrapt ": I've followed Peter Medawar in the introduction to his 1982 collection " Pluto's Republic ", where he attributes it to Jennings. Mind you, I haven't been able to pin the attribution down, so you may be right.
Regards
LMoG

PS This beats Aristotle, doesn't it?
 
LMoG
I enjoyed your post and even looked up a great short story by Jennings.

And 'bunkrapt' is a great word, whoever coined it.

Some of Aristole is boring or obsolete, but much offers some practical insight and wisdom that seems to have been almost completely forgotten in the intervening years.

Yeah, I like Socrates too...
 
Rather obviously, I think I'm the best philosopher ever. For non-me philosophers, I think Jagger said some pretty insightful things.
 
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