Not such a big fan of Socrates, seeing as his philosophy is only conveyed to the modern world through Plato's works. I just can't find anything positive about a philosopher who claims to be trying to use a logical dialetic to discern the truth but then turns around to create a world filled with ideas that he can't really pinpoint, but which he has simply created out of fancy. The whole concept of the Realm of the Forms simply drives me batty.

The fact that Socrates' thought is reported rather than written directly is no reason to suggest it is better or worse than any directly written thought.

Socrates never claimed the claims you attribute to him. You're getting the 'fictional' and the 'real' Socrates confused.

You may not have been informed (or perhaps choose to ignore) an important literary point about Plato's work.

On the whole, it can be divided into 3 periods: early, middle and late. Early Plato is very much influenced by Socrates (e.g. Apology, Euthephro*). The middle period has strains of both (e.g. Meno, Gorgias) and the later works are all Plato (e.g. Republic). When I refer to Socrates, I'm referring to the early dialogues, characterised by a Socratic, rather than dialectic, method, and a very different epistemic criterion. Socrates doesn't use forms or base matters on abstracts of that nature.

Also... Cut him some slack! There wasn't such a thing as science back then and most reasoning was a priori and a lot worse.

*I don't have the books with me, so the spellings might be a bit off.

The rant in my last post was directed at Plato. We can't know but so much about Socrates because of the way in which his ideas have been transmitted to us, so the best we can do is see him as a character used within Plato's writings to convey his messages. We don't know, strictly speaking, what Socrates used, but we do know what Plato used and that's what I take issue with.

Aristotle, on the other hand, had a much more appropriate - in my view - way of approaching things in general. While no thinker is perfect and he certainly thunk his thoughts in a world in which reality was regarded much differently than it is today, Aristotle created an ingenius way of approaching anything man might discuss or about which he might think. Plato has some useful ideas, but on the whole he simply isn't the sort of transformational, frankly amazing, thinker that Aristotle was.

Political philosophy: Friedrich von Hayek

Political philosophy: Noam Chomsky

Chomsky is great, but I don't believe he is a philosopher - he is a Linguistics Professor and I would describe him as more of a Foreign Affairs Analyst.

Jean Jacques Rousseau would be my favourite philosopher.

Socrates and Kant, of course seen in a historical perspective (i.e.: the thoughts of Socrates have been developed in a time in which the scientific method was not formalised yet, Kant is an almost contemporary of us).

While I wouldn't necessarily exclude Chomsky from the realm of great philosophers (even if you don't like him he's obviously made a difference in the way people think), I don't know of anything of his dealing significantly with issues foreign to language. That is not to discount the great, and I'd say philosophical, effect his take on language and its use has had on modern society.

Kant's always nice, although I personally tend to vasilate between a Kantian outlook on ethics and a somewhat less extreme version of Nietzsche idea of ethics being replaced by aesthetics.

Any Hume fans?

How could I forget Sartre? Thanks to reading some of his work I am now truly an Existentialist.

Oh so many philosophers... I like the existentialists quite a bit, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein (though I have to admit I've only read a little of his work directly, but I like everything I have read and learned about through discussions) and Sartre.

I really enjoyed reading Martin Buber when we read a little of his stuff way back in my Freshman philosophy class, though we only read a little, and I only really remember some bits and pieces.

I also have a bit of a soft spot for Hegel, though his writing is so dense it's hard to make myself read much of it in the years since I got out of school.

I've also enjoyed reading about the bits of Heraclitus's works that still exist.

Someone else brought up political philosophy which of course opens up a whole other realm of discussion. John Stuart Mill has always really really impressed me, and John Rawls, especially his work "A Theory of Justice" is pretty amazing (even if you don't agree with him, he's crafted such an amazing theory that to be taken seriously these days you pretty much have to at least address Rawls' "Theory of Justice" before you can really start talking about your own ideas.). Finally, even though I don't really consider myself a conservative (really I consider myself a moderate with liberal tendencies) I have tremendous respect for Edmund Burke. I wish more people did, if more of the "conservatives" of today were classical conservatives in the tradition of Edmund Burke, I think this country would be much better off.

Geeez I guess you'se guys never heard of Yogi Berra?
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra

I'm throwing my support behind Hume.

Steevokun:

If you like, what you might call 'early Plato', I call 'Socrates' - I don't much about the histroy, only the philosophy. If you want to get all empirical about it, I haven't got a time machine to go back and check, but what I do know is that the early platonic/Socratic epistemological criteria are quite different and should be considered individually, rather than lumped together under the heading 'Plato'.

Nietzsche!

Hey, i actually spelled that correctly!

Hobbes.

And Descartes, obviously.

God, Hume is the worst writer ever. =D

It's funny how my "favourite" philosophers are usually the ones that I don't necessarily agree with, but I find their ideas to be fascinating. I'm a fan of Sartre and his contemporary Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus is probably my favourite philosophical essay, and I'm just sad that Camus met an untimely demise because I'm sure he would have gone on to write many great things. I like Kant's ideas, and I'm a big fan of John Stuart Mill's writings despite that the two quite disagree on the matter of ethics.

I agree with Steevo that Plato's Realm of the Forms was crap, but I can see it as making a lot of sense at a time when naturalism was barely making ends meet. I do like Socrates though, and Diogenes for the same reason, they're entertainingly smart and witty and have a way of turning everyone into a fool. I wish the two would have debated, it would have been one for the books.

I liked Aristotle's influence in that he brought naturalism back into play, but I think he was too influential, in that most of his ideas carried through until the Renaissance despite being wrong. I look at Freud and Jung in a similar fashion.

I'm not a big fan of Descartes other than his Cogito... I would have thought he would be better at logic then when I read all the Meditations... Also not a fan of Leibniz.

Nietzsche and Ayn Rand.

Plus all those mentioned in the Bruces' Philosopher Song from Monty Python.

Foucault, Nietzsche, Hegel

Good Lord! Ayn Rand? Really? You can read her and Nietzsche next to one another and not see the obvious inferiority of Rand as a thinker?

Then again you are just out of high school right? I've often thought high school was about the right time to read Rand, you can get the nuggets of good out of it, and still have time to grow out of the useless crap those nuggets are surrounded with and hopefully graduate to a real philosopher like Nietzsche... (So I suppose if you already like Nietzsche you're on the right track!)

At least I'm not the only Catholic who likes Nietzsche, lol. What are the chances of two of those being on one forum? =D

Well, I'm no philosophy student. I want to make money. But I do find her interesting, if impractical.

Like Atlas, I shrug.

Haha, I rather have to agree with DrOct on Rand. The first time I read her I thought she had some rather intriguing ideas, but the more I read the more she seemed to just be whining about how badly the Soviet Union was. Not that she doesn't have the right to do that, but whining isn't the right tone for philosophical thought.

If they're not a Transcendentalist, that's a good start.

Favorite: (Concerning Diplomacy)- Machiavelli

Yeah, that's exactly what I got Steevo. I thought her ideas were fantastic despite that Atlas Shrugged could have been a LOT shorter and still gotten the point across. The more I read though the more I felt she was just whining about the Soviet Union and jacking off to American capitalism, despite that America was not anywhere near a free market.

Haha, exactly Chrispminis. She sounded like the Libertarian group at my college (I used to belong until everyone quit doing anything with it). Basically we would have meetings at the president's house where everyone would just gripe and moan about the government being out of control and the meeting would devol into a LAN party or video game fest. Way to put your money where you mouth is... (to both Rand and that stupid club I was in, lol).

Oh, and since this is the perfect place for it, here's an awesome quote from Karl Marx: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." That's his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, which is of great value regardless of an individual's philosophical leanings. In other words, quite bitching and start a revolution, lol.

I think "quit* bitching" is you mean. XD

Because "quite bitching" would mean "quite awesome," and while that was an awesome quote, I don't think that's what you meant.

That remark was quite bitching.

"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

Wow. I kinda agree with Karl Marx on something. I don't know how to feel right now.

Haha Invictus, I think you'll find that you agree with Marx on many things. I don't believe communism will work, but he's got some very good points.

There are also the active philosophers like Sartre and Camus in the French Resistance during WWII, though Sartre would later admit he always felt a little bourgeois because he wrote more than he acted.

Haha, I definitely did mean quit bitching, my bad.

As for Marx, the only serious issue I have with him is his anti-religion point of view. If you take most of his philosophy and then allow for the practice of religion, it's great. It's basically the idea of allowing the technological build-up of the capitalist period to grow into a situation where machines/robots (he said machines since they didn't have robots) to do all the work essentially, while men can pursure hobbies/work at their leisure and are no longer tied down to any particular way of life/occupation. Simultaneously, man is provided with what he needs by these machines without any worries about waste and over-production, which result from the current system of competition between corporations, amongst other factors.

Granted, it's just a teensy bit Utopian, but hey a guy can dream, lol.

fav Marx quote
"Religion is the opiate of the people"

and its sister quote from the Doug Anthony All stars (DAAS- Australian comedy group)

"Opiates are the religion of the masses"

I feel that the Utopian ideals expressed by Marx are not sstainable by humans.
For a very good illustration of what I think will happen if we follow that path just read Issac Assimov's books concerning the laws of robotics.

Many of Marx's points on their own are good but if you put them together and try to run a country like that then you are totally screwed. Which doesnt make a great deal of sense unless you consider that humans are generally "evil"...

And I've lost what I was going for but never mind.

Well, Marxism can only be put into place on a global scale according to Marx himself, so it's more of a New World Order (Novus Ordo Seclorum...Freemasons anyone...?) than a form of government. It is very much Utopian though. However, keep in mind he sees it not as something to institute but as what will eventually (however long it takes) come into existence as the order of the world as a result of social forces.

Far too little love for Descartes, the ideals of Locke and Voltaire and Jefferson and a great deal of the Enlightenment stems from him.

I like Plato, Socrates, Virgil's alright..........

Marx I'm not wuite sold on; whether you're a Marxist or not isn't the question, I just don't think his ideals are all that original- "fair is fair, 1 for 1" and "workers first" and "New World Order" have been used in countless revolutions and other things in different times, many before Marx; he may have popularized and created the present view of the idea- but I don't think he invented it on his own as much as some think.

And me myself, I'm a Marxist- but only if you count
Groucho Marx-ism. :p

"One night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know." Classic. :)

Least favorite: Descartes, hands down. He's what happens when religious nuts have too much free time.

As for Groucho Marx, I find that hard to disagree with, lol.

As for Karl Marx, the general ideas he had certainly weren't original, what was original about his work was his very detailed explanation of capitalism (Das Kapital), what he thought capitalism would do to the world, and how the workers ought to react specifically. The inverted Hegelian dialectic was his contribution. Too bad for him communism is a Utopian ideal and capitalism is still kicking butt over a century about his death. :D

Yeah, I think Descartes was overrated, but as far as religious nuts goes, Leibniz takes the cake in terms of strange justification of God.

Marx was original in that he thought communism was also the inevitable successor to capitalism just as capitalism was the inevitable successor to feudalism, and he described fairly specifically how the change would be wrought.

The only thing I really remember about Leibniz is his monadology and calculus.