What philosopher do you most identify with?

[The Skeptic]

Which of these do you most identify with? Here's a quick rundown of their views and interests :

Personally, I identify with Paine a lot, so I voted for him, but Nietzsche, Dennett, and Hobbes are also of interest.

Don't complain about Rand being on there either, I included her as an opposite to Marx. I know she is loathed. But hey, she was an atheist.

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Aristotle - Believed in a creator god ( you could say he was a deist ), had a strong interest in observation of the natural world and taxonomy. He also was interested in astronomy, physics, and metaphysics.

Plato - Believed in a higher realm of things, the realm of the forms ( this is what happens when you use ontological argument style thinking )

Immanuel Kant - Claimed that we cannot know the external world directly, and that things are seperated between the nomenal world ( things in themselves ) and the phenomenal world. Was religions, but in a moral sense more than anything else. He destroyed the ontological argument despise being religious himself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Believed philosophy was reducible to language games, and that metaphysics was invalid.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Despised Judaism and Christianity, and western values for that matter. Declared god to be dead, for morals to be relative, and that the will to power drives all thing. He had a bit of a social darwinist streak in him.

Arthur Schopenhauer - Believed the world was represented to us by our will. He improved on Kant's theories and foreshadowed Freud, Jung, and Nietzschean ideas. He was very pessimistic and a misogynist.

Ayn Rand - She was an atheist, hated Kant with a passion, and promoted completely lasseiz-faire capitalism. Somewhat of a moral fanatic in that she claimed that serving your own rational interests was an objective moral, and because of that, that pure capitalism ( not even the mixed economy of the USA) was the only moral society to live in.

Karl Marx - Founder of modern communist thought, and an atheist.

Daniel Dennett - One of the four horsemen of atheism, famous for his books Consciousness explained, Breaking the Spell, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

Lao Tzu -- founder of Taoism, a stoic system of eastern thought and the alleged author of the Tao Te Ching.

Thomas Hobbes - a possible atheist ( definitely a materialist ) famous for his pessimistic view of human nature and believed in an absolute monarch.

John Locke - one of the founders of liberalism and highly influential on the founding of America. He promoted democracy, human rights, and religious tolerance ( despise writing some nasty thing about atheists himself. He was a believer. )

David Hume - A skeptic and an agnostic/atheist. Famous for naturalizing things, such as morality, and made arguments that preceded those of Darwin. He also believed that we cannot know the external world for sure because while our senses perceive things, our mind constructs the world out of those perceptions, such as cause and effect. He influenced Kant greatly.

Rene Descartes - A Skeptic that relied on A Priori arguments to prove god's existence. He was also a mathematician who invented the cartesian plane.

Thomas Paine - A Deist thinker famous for writing the pamphlet common sense that sparked the revolutionary war, promoted liberalism in his book The Rights of Man ( particularly, ideas that fly in the face of people like Glenn Beck that claim to love him so much ) and was a staunch critic of religion, authoring the Age of Reason and Examination of the Prophecies, which were two of the first books on Biblical Criticism.

[Existentialist]

Jean-Paul Sartre - (atheist) developed an ontological account of what it being human really is. This ontology's main features are inescapable subjectivity and the absolute freedom which characterize the human condition. First, each human exists, then defines him/herself. Every human invents their own life meaning and the meaning of everything around them. We are all condemned to be free.

[The Omnissiunt One]

David Hume: he was a great bloke. He came up with two problems that dominate philosophy of ethics and philosophy of science respectively: namely, the Is-Ought problem and the Problem of Induction. He demolished the Teleological Argument and miracles more comprehensively than any other philosopher has. Best of all, he was British (I omit the fact that he was Scottish, but of course, had he been English, I'd identify him as that).

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(31st October 2010 22:28)Existentialist Wrote:  Jean-Paul Sartre - (atheist) developed an ontological account of what it being human really is. This ontology's main features are inescapable subjectivity and the absolute freedom which characterize the human condition. First, each human exists, then defines him/herself. Every human invents their own life meaning and the meaning of everything around them. We are all condemned to be free.

Sartre's interesting, but his ideas are typically woolly for the Continental philosophical tradition. I'm not sure that his radical libertarianism vis-a-vis free will is correct.

[Yahadreas]

It was a toss-up between Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, but I opted for Wittgenstein. My identification with him is more philosophical than my identification with Nietzsche (which is more of a value identification). In my view, most philosophical questions arise through the mistake of reification, and can quite easily be answered with a common-sense understanding of how words are used in every-day life.

[Rev. Rye]

It's very much a toss-up between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but, having read both, I am more inclined to identify with Schopenhauer, if only because he shared the same attitude that I exhibit in die Fleischwelt about human interaction: necessary, but comes with a lot of pain.

[Tiberius]

Quote:Don't complain about Rand being on there either, I included her as an opposite to Marx. I know she is loathed. But hey, she was an atheist.

I'm not complaining. Heck, she's the only one on the list I identify with, and I'm not even an Objectivist

[Violet Lilly Blossom]

Machiavelli isn't up there. Test is broken.

The one there, with whom I most identify, would be Marx.

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Quote:Immanuel Kant - Claimed that we cannot know the external world directly, and that things are seperated between the nomenal world ( things in themselves ) and the phenomenal world. Was religions, but in a moral sense more than anything else. He destroyed the ontological argument despise being religious himself.

It is not that we cannot know... it is that knowledge is merely assumed correctness. The ant sees a mountain, the man sees a computer, the giant sees a pebble, the god sees all.

Quote:Ayn Rand - She was an atheist, hated Kant with a passion, and promoted completely lasseiz-faire capitalism. Somewhat of a moral fanatic in that she claimed that serving your own rational interests was an objective moral, and because of that, that pure capitalism ( not even the mixed economy of the USA) was the only moral society to live in.

Yes... the ferengi certainly are moral Objectivists are funny.

Quote:David Hume - A skeptic and an agnostic/atheist. Famous for naturalizing things, such as morality, and made arguments that preceded those of Darwin. He also believed that we cannot know the external world for sure because while our senses perceive things, our mind constructs the world out of those perceptions, such as cause and effect. He influenced Kant greatly.

I like that. Except we can know (quite certainly and vehemently) things that are ultimately false. It can also work backwards (the mind constructing an external world that the senses then perceive)... or at least the brain thinks they do.

Quote:Thomas Hobbes - a possible atheist ( definitely a materialist ) famous for his pessimistic view of human nature and believed in an absolute monarch.

So absolute that they get replaced by any number of things when they die or are otherwise removed. I wonder what you mean by "absolute monarch"?

Quote:Thomas Paine - A Deist thinker famous for writing the pamphlet common sense that sparked the revolutionary war, promoted liberalism in his book The Rights of Man ( particularly, ideas that fly in the face of people like Glenn Beck that claim to love him so much ) and was a staunch critic of religion, authoring the Age of Reason and Examination of the Prophecies, which were two of the first books on Biblical Criticism.

That helped set it ablaze. The things he wrote about and their impact on the colonists (or rather, a few select ones) is more likely that which sparked the war. And even then, it would be more correct (perhaps) to say that the government of England sparked the war.

I do happen to like him though. Wouldn't identify with him, but I like him nonetheless.

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(1st November 2010 01:41)Tiberius Wrote:  

Quote:Don't complain about Rand being on there either, I included her as an opposite to Marx. I know she is loathed. But hey, she was an atheist.

I'm not complaining. Heck, she's the only one on the list I identify with, and I'm not even an Objectivist

There really weren't that many choices, were there?

[ib.me.ub]

Well to answer this question, I would have to read all of the above Philosophers work, considering I haven't, I probably should't answer this question.

But, I do like the very early Philosophers.

[theVOID]

Where the fuck is Bertrand buddy?

[Existentialist]

(31st October 2010 22:52)The Omnissiunt One Wrote:  Sartre's interesting, but his ideas are typically woolly for the Continental philosophical tradition. I'm not sure that his radical libertarianism vis-a-vis free will is correct.

You need to be sure, or you will never be free.