• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Favourite Philosophers?

Seneca. He was by all accounts a complete hypocrite, but I truly love the classical elegance of his letters and essays on Stoicism. A more modern philosopher who's had a big impact on me is Hume; his "problem of induction" and ruthless criticism of the teleological argument for God are just a couple of his brilliant coups.
 
Hume is definitely important, but his sceptical arguments are his most interesting; imo he's much better at tearing down than building up. The "bundle" theory of the self, for instance, is a bit silly.
 
satricion said:
^^
Yeah totally. Hume doesn't have much 'sex appeal' but he's one of the most important philosophers ever for sure.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I've noticed I have a much more enjoyable time talking philosophy with people who DON'T take Hume as a key influence or starting point. Not that enjoyment is the measuring stick for good philosophy, by any necessity. Just sharing my experience.

Alan Watts is pretty amazing. Reading him will always temporarily change the interaction between me and the world in a way that's beneficial to both.
 
^

I don't really understand how Hume can't be universally accepted as a turning point in western philosophy. His skepticism set the conversation down a path where the weaknesses of Locke, Descartes and other earlier philosophers, were tightened up - particularly by Kant, who famously credited Hume for awakening him from his "dogmatic slumber."

This is what I mean by saying that Hume marked a pivot point away from a time where blind faith tended provide a starting point and reason would trace the path back, providing a justification. By deconstructing everything that many had always assumed, like causation, Hume's philosophy is in my opinion pure, and really his own.
 
satricion said:
Is anyone else here into Deleuze?
Click to expand...

Hmm apparently not :|

It's a shame because (imo) he is in a class all by himself, and more people need his concepts detonating in their minds.

Deleuze's books are equal to my most exquisite, mindblowing psychedelic experiences in their reality-expanding (and disintegrating) power.

Aristotle was often referred to as "the Master of Those Who Know"... but if anyone deserves this title, it's Deleuze.

keep it rhizomatic... ;)
 
Last edited:
Rorty, Dewey, James, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Rawls, Searle, Dworkin.

Frankly I think the French, living and dead, should be banned from philosophy, with the exception of Diderot and some of his contemporaries.
 
Levinas, Baurdillard and Lacan? Quite a combo. I've been getting into Lacan recently - I've never read a more intellectually narcissistic author but he's very important to the history of poststructuralism.

I've read his seminar on Poe's 'The Purloined Letter' and I've read the mirror stage essay. What other essays are important? (I've got Ecrits)
 
^i like them to fight in my head

i must say Lacan would be my least favourite of my favourite philosophers. though i find some of his ideas very interesting and thought provoking, many times i end up picking up a text of my other favourites in favour of his for some reason. i found the mirror stage the most interesting (“Le Stade du miroir comme formateur du « Je »”) .
the four fundamental concepts (of course). and the tenth seminar about angst (l'angoisse) is a must read imo (but that was probably because i was working on the subject of existential fear in Kierkegaard and Heideggers works). also the one titled psychoses. but my Lacananian understanding is definitely still in early stages. in ecrits: the signification of the phallus, the subversion of the subject and the dialectic of Desire in the Freudian unconscious, the function and field of speech and language, and both the instance and agency of the letter.

but well thats all relative to my interests tbh :) and im not really sure if i should actually keep him in my list of favourites. im leaving him aside more and more these days.
 
Last edited:
The philosophers that have had the biggest impact on my life would have to be:
1. Ayn Rand (somewhat contemporary: mid 20th century)
2. Aristotle
3. Friedrich Nietzsche
4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Thomas Hobbes
6. John Locke
7. Albert Camus
8. Leonard Peikoff (a contemporary philosopher)
9. Nathaniel Branden (another contemporary)
10. Victor Hugo (obviously more of a writer, but he sparked the great literary movement of Romanticism which inspired the writings of numerous philosophers)
 
azzazza !? said:
^i like them to fight in my head
good heavens, i forgot to mention Baudelaire.

i must say Lacan would be my least favourite of my favourite philosophers. though i find some of his ideas very interesting and thought provoking, many times i end up picking up a text of my other favourites in favour of his for some reason. i found the mirror stage the most interesting (“Le Stade du miroir comme formateur du « Je »”) .
the four fundamental concepts (of course). and the tenth seminar about angst (l'angoisse) is a must read imo (but that was probably because i was working on the subject of existential fear in Kierkegaard and Heideggers works). also the one titled psychoses. but my Lacananian understanding is definitely still in early stages. in ecrits: the signification of the phallus, the subversion of the subject and the dialectic of Desire in the Freudian unconscious, the function and field of speech and language, and both the instance and agency of the letter.

but well thats all relative to my interests tbh :) and im not really sure if i should actually keep him in my list of favourites. im leaving him aside more and more these days.
Click to expand...

Cheers. I'm reading him because he was influential on other authors that I use in my work. He's so important for understanding poststructuralism for example, you can see his influence on Foucault, and you can see reactions against Lacan in a lot of post 1970's social theory.
 
true, quite the landmark he is. and he knows it lol. you'll probably be interested in anything pertaining the symbolic and the imaginary. poststructuralism is pretty much defined by the decentering of the subject through linguistics, leaving the subject itself revealed as fundamentally an other-to-himself. you should probably get The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, it'll be of good use.

on an unrelated side note, i just love foucaults notion of discourse.
 
^^
Okay I will. Should I read that before the stuff in Ecrits?

And yeah, reading Lacan emphasises what a huge break poststructuralism was, but it also shows where it came from. There's a sense in which someone like Judith Butler basically takes Lacan and sets the whole thing in motion, emphasises contingency, etc. So it's a big change, but not THAT big.
 
doesn't really matter, you can perfectly start off with the ecrits. in fact i would. i supposed you already did. those are his more inspired and revolutionary essays. the seminars are somewhat ment as retreadings of the ecrits, while broadening them. the four concepts is about the relationship between psychoanalysis and science and religion as well as defining the unconscious, the repetition, the transference, and the drive as the underlying concepts of psycho-analysis.

no philosopher is ever a monolith. even the the big break-ups are all defined by what they're breaking up with (naturally) =D
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top