duckznutz

At the risk of someone telling me to stop being lazy and go buy a book or get googling . . . . . . . I keep thinking of the Monty Python Philosophers' Song and realise that I know NOTHING about any of them! So I was wondering . . could anyone give me a ONE SENTENCE summaryfor each of the basic principal, theory or way of thinking that is normally attributed to each of the following guys mentioned in that wonderful song?

1 Immanuel Kant
2 Heideggar
3 David Hume
4 Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel
5 Whittgenstein
6 Schlegel
7 Nieizsche
8 Socrates
9 John Stewart Mill
10 Plato
11 Aristotle
12 Hobbes
13Rene Descartes
14 Socrates

Thanks in advance . . . . .

RatherThanWords

You are forgetting an important one (and one of my favorites)

Ayn Rand, who said that life should be lived objectively, with all rationale and knowledge coming from our senses and nothing else. Science is absolute.

I believe that Immanuel Kant who said that man's concepts are only a delusion, and that reality doesn't exist. I have a quote on that for you.

His morality consisted of total selflessness.

Hegel said that matter does not exist at all, and that everything is Idea.

That's all I know, but what do you expect, I'm only 18

KoKenZen

Imule kant brought up questions on the universe why was created and if it was created at a certain time why was it chosen if it has always been like this why wouldent the energy have already spread perfectly even.

Socrates hated redundency espically in matters concerning his name

XenuHubbard

They missed my favorite philosopher, Empedocles. He proved that the world consisted of the four elements, and he jumped into a volcano to prove that he was immortal.

He was wrong.

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duckznutz

Not many replies to this in a week! I guess its too tricky?

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Fade

atlas shrugged was amazing... let see if I can find that quote..."I swear, by my life and love of it, that I shall never live for the sake of another man, not ask another man to live for mine."

asaris

I'll try to keep it short. As a consequence, some of these might be less than intelligible.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by duckznutz

Quote:

1 Immanuel Kant

In metaphysics, Kant's key thought was that, rather than reality shaping our thoughts, our thoughts shape reality. So what we perceive is not reality as it is in itself (he *did* think that this existed as well), but rather reality as it is for us. In ethics, the certain idea is the categorical imperative, "Always act in such a way as to treat others as ends in themselves, and not merely as means."

Quote:

2 Heidegger

Heiddegger's main concern was to "ask the meaning of Being". His most famous work, "Being and Time", attempts to come to a formulation of the question through an analysis of the conditions of possibility of human existence.

Quote:

3 David Hume

Hume was an "empiricist", meaning he thought that all of our knowledge came from sense perception. On this basis, he denied the existence of causality and the self. He is also well known for an argument 'disprooving' the existence of miracles.

Quote:

4 Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel

Hegel's main work, "The Phenomenology of Spirit", attempts to trace the development of the human spirit, which is, for Hegel, actualized through the constant tension between the way the self is "in itself" and "for itself". NB -- Sartre is essentially a pessimistic Hegel.

Quote:

5 Wittgenstein

He held the position that, because of the success of science (since Galileo, philosopher have had problems with 'science envy'), the only tasks philosophy should busy itself with are 'language problems'. That is, figuring out how langauge works, and solving apparent contradictions.

Quote:

7 Nietzsche

Nietzsche believed that most people are sheep. I want to note that this was not because he was an elitist -- on some level, he certainly believed that all people were capable of leading a fulfilled life, but most choose not to. His version of the fulfilled life is notably characterized by virtues like strength and power -- he believed that the truth is frightening, and in order to face the truth, one must be strong.

Quote:

8 Socrates

The difficulty with Socrates is that he did not leave behind any written work. The only things we know about him come from Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes (and principally Plato). He seems to have held a doctrine of 'forms', semi-mystical objects that instantiate various properties of objects -- for example, the form of justice, or redness, or whatever. The goal of the philosopher is to throw off the illusionary 'real-ness' of this world in order to view the world of the forms. He is also well known for the "Socratic Method", in which an instructor teaches a student by asking him/her questions.

Quote:

9 John Stewart Mill

Believed that the goodness of an action was dependent on its utility -- the best action would be the action that made the most people the happiest. Almost no philosophers today are pure utilitarians.

Quote:

10 Plato

See Socrates.

Quote:

11 Aristotle

Said something about everything. Probably the best known Aristotelian doctrines are that everything is composed of form and matter. The form makes something what it is, and the matter -- well, pretty clear what this is. In his ethical theory, he taught that every virtue is a mean between two extremes; so, for example, courage is a mean between cowardice and foolhardiness.

Quote:

12 Hobbes

Hobbes believed that, in order to prevent violence within the state, the state needed to have a supreme monarch, one which had no duties to the people except maintaining his own power. His famous quote is that, in the state of nature (before government), the life of man is "nasty, brutish, and short".

Quote:

13Rene Descartes

He believed that, since what he had been taught contained many errors, it was best to start from the beginning, doubting everything that was possible to be doubted. He noted that one cannot doubt one's own existence, since the existence of the doubt presupposes someone to be doubting -- this is the origin of his famous cogito ergo sum -- I think therefore I am.

So that's 3000 years of philosophy in a nutshell. Sorry, but I don't know anything about Schlegel, other than that he was a German philosopher of the 19th century.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

cjvasco

very nice synopsis asaris

duckznutz

Well done Asaris! Most excellent! thanks.

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Where your talents and the needs of the world cross . . there lies your vocation.

duckznutz

I couldnt get my head around some of that! Struggling badly . .especialy number 4 . . but Descartes sounds like my kind of guy . .thats where I will start reading . .thanks again Asaris . . a herculean effort and much appreciated.

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Where your talents and the needs of the world cross . . there lies your vocation.

4thTimeLucky

Hats off to Asaris, that was pretty impressive.

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I've been 4thTimeLucky, you've been great. Goodnight and God bless!

asaris

Well, as far as Hegel goes, it's generally assumed that you can't understand him. I'd be willing to say that, if you think you understand Hegel, you don't understand Hegel. But, of course, even if one does not have a comprehensive understanding of something, that doesn't mean that one can't say some true things on that subject. What I posted here is my understand of Hegel -- I'm sure that there are plenty of people who would disagree with it.

And thanks for the kind words. As it turns out, I've been studying philosophy for about six years now, so if I can't turn out a sentence or two about most philosophers, I'm in trouble

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Ace_of_Lobster

You should really start with Plato's Republic its quite short.

you can find it here


Republic,The

Lots of good stuff at classicreader.com.

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josobot

Philosophers have basically two questions: is this lived world the only reality? and how should I be moral? Many philosophers' works are exercises to follow an arguement to all its conclusions. Some of my favorites are the failed arguements and the philosophers who realize this towards the end of their lives.

KoKenZen

Josbot these failed arguments are of intrest to me could you list a few

rodimus

i can't believe you havn't heard of plato or socrates, havn't you ever seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

josobot

I especially enjoy the arguement by Camus in The Rebel against capital punishment and killing for political reasons. It is so weak that he attempts to resolve it by having a rebel then commit suicide. I relate to the issue since I received official CO status after 10 mos in Viet-Nam. I was a medic but I carried a gun nearly all the time. I never had to use it. Plato's forms are easily stretched to have being, whatever that is...being. Decartes' "I think therefore I am " needs major qualification. The great Socrates probably deserved the hemlock...see "The Greeks" by Kitto. These guys create their own private language and we are supposed to somehow relate that to the real world and to ordinary language...the translations usually don't work. By translation I don't mean from foreign language to English...I mean from the individual philosopher's private language to our ordinary lived(though imperfect) language.

human

asaris - Thanks for the useful info. I needed some direction in where to go next.

And I know it's sorta the popular book on the topic, but Sophie's World by Jostein Garder has a pretty good summary on most majour philosophers over human history. I found it was a pretty good starting point for getting into reading more hardcore philosophy texts.

feloniouspunk

I thought I'd add in my own understanding of things, incomplete though it is. I have a few critiques of your explanations, but that's what philosophy is all about. Here goes my own understanding.

Its important to note that Kant follows from Hume, in a sense. Kant's major work (The Critique of Pure Reason) is pretty damn big and covers a lot of ground.

I've always thought that the statement "Our thoughts shape reality" confused the issue a bit. Its not that our thoughts have any effect on reality itself, but rather that we each individually shape a reality for ourselves, based off of our senses and experiences. It has no connection to what truly exists, since we can never truly know what that is. All the info we have is secondhand, from our senses.

The categorical imperative is big too. The first part basically says only do things you wish were universal maxims (that is, the things would be done by everyone everytime). The means to an ends is key here. A person can never be treated as a means to an ends, even if it is for their own benefit. Respect for the autonomous ends of the individual is a requirement.

A side note on Kantian ethics: Kant believed that a man who did the right thing because he had a duty to do so even if he didn't truly want to was more moral than a man who wanted to do the right thing.


I've never read any Heidegger, so I'll pass here.

Empiricist just about wraps it up. Check out An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Its a decent place to start. See also Berkley.


I'm pretty rusty on my Hegel. I would argue that Sartre wasn't pessimistic at all though. I think he's misunderstood by most philosophy students, especially those steeped in the analytical tradition.

I also think Hegel was only partially right about philosophy being about language problems. Language problems creep into philosophy quite a bit, but there is more there. Philosophy is thinking about thinking. Post-modern philosophers have some very interesting things to say about the nature of language itself. Thats for a different time and place though.

Nietzsche is a tough nut to crack. The Portable Nietzsche is as good a place to start as any. I'm not sure I have anything else to add here. I'm still wrapping my head around him.


Its important to note that Socrates didn't write anything. The world knows him as a Plato (his student) wrote him. Early Platonic works are more heavily influenced by Socrates, but later on Plato continues to express his own ideas through the mouthpiece of Socrates.

The biggest things I've gotten from Socrates are the Socratic Method and that knowing what you don't know makes you wiser than someone who thinks he does know. Phheww. That was one helluva sentence.

Dead on here. Although utilitarism mixed with other philosophies has arisen in recent years.

This isn't quite that simple. Plato had some pretty big ideas on his own. His major work, The Republic, was all him. He just continued using Socrates as a mouthpiece in his writing. There are a lot of important ideas about political philosophy raised in The Republic.

Aristotle was Plato's student as Plato was Socrates'. Aristotlian thought ruled the ancient and medevial worlds. Almost all of it is junk. He's still important to read though, because his ideas influenced so many. They can be seen influencing philosophers for 2000 years. Not too shabby.


I can tell by reading this bit here you're not a political philosopher. Hobbes is much more complex than that. So much more, he deserves his own thread. I won't get into it much, but his ideas about the nature of man and the formation of societies was the beginning of modern political philosophy. The Leviathon is his major work. A must on your philosophical journey.

Descartes is huge in philospher. His Meditations On First Philosophy is a pretty good place to start after you read some Plato.

I've always been rather found of Sartre's refutation of Descartes' "I think therefore I am." Sartre said "You think, therefore you have thoughts." Nothing more than that. Brilliant. Understanding that really opened some doors in my head.

I don't know much about Schlegel either.

duckznutz

Thank you felonious! A lot of work in that post too! My biggest problem is 'time' . . . . .ie I dont have enough of it! I would love to read all that stuff but I know I just will never get around to it . . . why is life so short?!

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asaris

Well, I might as well throw in another .02$

This isn't quite right. The 'phenomenal' world (the world we create through the categories and the schemata) is real, it's just not reality in itself. This is why Kant spends so much time trying to prove the validity of the categories, among other things. If they are not valid, then the phenomenal world isn't real, and that's a consequence he wants to avoid.

I don't think this is right (though it is the most common reading of Kant.) It seems to me that the important thing for Kant is whether or not we would act morally if we were not so inclined, so that, in order to show this more clearly, he uses cases where we are acting against our inclinations.

This can be seen from Kant's discussion of the 'holy will' later in the Second Critique. He writes that the ideal will is the holy will, a will that always acts according to the categorical imperative both out of duty and inclination. Not that any human beings have a holy will, but it is clearly set up as a goal.

Well, guilty as charged -- I was raised in the analytic tradition, though I've since left it. I suspect, though, that our disagreement here is simply regarding the use of the word 'pessimistic'. I only mean that Sartre does not think it possible to unify the 'in-itself' and the 'for-itself', while Hegel thinks that it is possible to do so. Whether or not Sartre is pessimistic overall is a different question. (Actually, my suspicion is yes here as well. See my sig file.)

It's always unclear exactly what's Plato and what's Socrates in the early to middle Plato. I was taught, ages ago, that early Plato is pretty close to Socrates and middle Plato is a bit more muddled. But the Republic is middle Plato, so it still, as far as I know, bears Socratic fingerprints. "The Statesman" would be Plato's own, mature views on the subject.

Eh, not all of it is junk. His views on choice are as good as any I've come across, and his views on ethics better than most. But you're right that he's very important. He's really, more than Plato even, the founder of Philosophy as a discipline.

Oh, don't dismiss me so quickly. I'm aware he's more complex than that, but I was trying to describe him in one sentence. And no, I'm not a political philosopher, but I'm more of a political philosopher than, say, an epistemologist.

I like Husserl's better. "I think, therefore there is thought."

Thanks felonius! It's nice to think about some of these thinkers I haven't thought about in a while.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

duckznutz

Thanks Asaris . . I think I am actually learning something here! Just a question though . . . are there any female philosophers? Or are they as rare as female Monty Python fans?

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Where your talents and the needs of the world cross . . there lies your vocation.

feloniouspunk

The same goes here. Going back and thinking about some of those people made me realise how much I've forgotten. Just about all of your critiques of me were dead on. I'm still not so sure about the Plato stuff, but thats not really a philisophical matter. Its more a matter of what we were taught I suspect.

Its always a pleasure to run into someone with well thought out and clear ideas on the internet. Its such a rarity.

As for the question of female philosophers, they're pretty rare. There is one ancient Greek woman who's name escapes me at the moment who was a philosopher of note (although a large part of it is because she was a female philosopher in a very patriarchal society). Wallstonecraft comes to mind for post Renaissance/Industrial Revolution era stuff.

There are some very big postmodern/feminist philosophers too. Its a damn shame I'm terrible with names or I could recommend a few. But as far as classics go, there aren't many.

ishkeb

I'm not being directly helpful, but if you want to quickly learn about the major philosophers, pick up "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant. It's basically a bunch of outlines on philosophers, but it still has enough of the philosophy itself to not be completely boring.

asaris

Not many. Wollstonecraft is the only one I can think of off-hand pre-1900. Since then, Simone de Beauvoir (Sartre's wife), Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt, Elizabeth Anscombe, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch are really the only ones that come to mind. Even now, there aren't alot of women in grad school (though that's not necessarily from discrimination -- Philosophy is a male-dominated field, so a lot of women feel intimidated by that, even if there's no intimidation involved.)

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

nietzsche

Personally I would be inclined to pursuing Nietzsche as an entrance to the philosophical world. The major battle with reading Niezsche is comprehension, sentences that lose their meaning are his greatest weakness. But once you get comfortable with his from of writing, or lack thereof, you will be very much intrigued by his thought. Or at least I was when starting out. As far as recommended readings by Nietzsche Id start with either Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his most famous work, or The Antichrist, a short attack on Christain ideology.

You can't beat Nietzsche's Ubermensch (superman) ideal.

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Moonduck

I had no trouble with Nietzsche. I don't say that as a brag on my abilities, as I had the devil's own time wrapping my brain around Hegel for instance. I just seemed to slide naturally into Nietzsche's style and concepts. As non-PC and possibly scary as it is to say, I found "Beyond Good and Evil" to be one of the single most incisively true reads I've had in my life.

Aristotle continues to amaze me. It's mind-boggling that someone could be so demonstrably wrong and yet have had such a pervasive influence over so great a period. I guess it is the most famous case of arriving at the wrong decision through the right methodology.

Kant, I wish I'd read more Kant. I spent so much more time on the Relgious Studies side of the curriculum in earnign a degree in philosophy that I do not have astrong enough grounding in Kant and a few others. *shrug* I'll read him some day.

Brdd99boy

My favorite was empanado who said that burritos are not the only thing you can wrap in dough and call it a funny name