Well what are yours?

Mine would have to be

Marx
Plato
Aristotle
Voltaire
Therou
Machivelli

I like Socrates' method and Nietzche's prose. I'm fascinated by Lao Tzu's "Tao" and Heidegger's "Dasein." I can't deny the power of the revolutionary claims made by Marx and Freud, and in fact I find them still largely relevant. I find a logical elegance and simplicity in Aquinas, and I appreciate the brilliance of Kant.

Biggest influences from above would be Freud and Lao Tzu.

I must admit that I have little knowagle of Lao Tzu, prehaps when you have time, you could do a small post about him and his views.

I like Kant. I hate Sarte's philosophy (by and large i'm rather critical of existentialism) but there was something there that can't be ignored. I'm a fan of Plato actually and agree with psycholopher that the Socratic method is definitely fascinating and I think one of the best ways to learn and the best way to discuss philosophy at least.

Nietzsche wrote beautiful prose, but i disliked most of the substance I found there, to quote William Desmond (one of my favorite contemporary philosophers) "he took a squiting glimpse at the abyss and wrote about it as if it was enough." He writes a lot about human nature but I don't think he had the guts to dwell in it for any period of time. I'm also a fan of Marx.


I am ashamed to admit i haven't read Heidegger.

My favorites would have to be

Machiavelli
Hobbes
Voltaire
Diderot

B. Russell for his work with mathematics and placing science above faith. That is to place reason above intuition, feeling, or whatever you prefer to call it.

Nietzsche: Brilliant man, though lonely. Great insight.

Aristotle: for without him, the world of philosophy would be the opposite as it is today

Socrates: of course, for his great influence, but I also have a personal reason here: he saved me at a time when I needed it the most.

Confucius: brilliant man, certainly out does Lao Tzu. Though, I never liked Lao Tzu, the Tao-Te-Ching was worth the read, but full of little insight. One would be better to study Buddhism for the same message, for it is all the same.

To an extent I agree. But Zen Buddhism borrows heavily from Taoism, and I think it's important to read the Taoists first so that you have a better idea of where the Buddhists are coming from.

Zen Buddhism, but not Tibetain Buddhism. I am sorry, I should have clarified that.

Read the Tao-Te-Ching and tell me that Lao-Tzu knew nothing of Tibetain Buddhism, the influence is obvious, but the same message is presented differently.

I would recommend Tibetain Buddhism. Specifically, Lama Yeshe, he can communicate the Eastern thoughts to Westerns without loosing any of the message. I personally dislike Robert Thurman. Sorry, but "morphic resonance" is absolutely absurd and without support.

I haven't read much philosophy (hoping to rectify that this summer break), but my major influences/favorite philosophers might include:

Marx
Foucault
Lefebvre
Various trends such as continental philosophy (although similar to Boru I'm very critical of existentialism), post-structuralism, Marxism and post-colonialism (although I'd lump some of these trends more under "theory" or "criticism" than philosophy per se...my fields of specialty really pertain more to the former), some Buddhist philosophy (mostly my own experience growing up Buddhist, I'd like to read some actual texts like the Dhammapada).

I am interested, however, in reading more on Hegel (especially Kojeve's introduction), Wittgenstein, Heidegger (I'd need several good introductions), Husserl, Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuzze, Guattari, Butler, more African and Buddhist philosophy, and perhaps some rationalists like Spinoza and Descartes just so I'm better able to ground my critique of western rationalism.

MY fav philosophers..>>

Plato- I have read his complete works. All philosophy really is a footnote to Plato.

Aristotle- I mean ok, its aristotle Duh!

Machiavelli- It is better to be feared.

Hobbes-his state of nature is true.

Locke- Overall, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.

Hume- Empiricism rules!

Kant- Because sometimes you need pure practical reasoning...or maybe some transcendental idealism...

Rawls-because his dystopia is brilliantly logical and realistic, but has an ideal goal, Justice is Fairness...

Hegel- You may argue with him or against him, but never without him.

Marx-(I use to be a real Marxist, a card-carring communist, i even went to Cuba and spoke with communist revolutionary leaders.) However I have since rejected its solutions.

Nietzsche- I have read a few of major works, Twilight of idols, thus spoke zarathrustra, the birth of tragedy (it began there!) and The will to power. His dark insight is inspiring beyond imagination...

Robert Pirsig- Brilliant modern american philologist and founder of a new pragmatic approach.

Foucault and Derrida, i pair these two, because i read them around the same time, and they firmly planted me in Post Modernism for a great period of time.

Sartre-To me he is the best existentialist.

John Dewey- He made me want to be a teacher.

Arthur Koestler- lesser known science philosopher, who critiqued science and ultimately changed its direction.

Steven Pinker- I'm reading him right now, he has greatly changed my basic beliefs about human nature, namely that we have one...and that its ultimate motivations were brought about by Evolutionary forces.

It's been a while, so I guess I can give an update.

Foucault- so many insights into power, discourse, epistemes...
Heidegger- poetic writing, fascinating use of critical thinking, and yes, ontology is critical...
Marx- come on. the only man who proved philosophy is bullshit, and used philosophy to do so. on a serious note: just brilliant, a man whose "is" demands an "ought" (the science of value and the communist revolution).
Deleuze- i've only read his work with guattari, but I'm eager to get to difference and repetition this year. fun, fun, fun. exploring modern society with an explosive edge. so many useful concepts- rhizome, assemblage, war machine, nomad thought.

and the two philosophers who i haven't yet read but who i've heard enough about to know i like them already (is that dangerous?): derrida and butler. well, at the very least i'm eager.

i've read others like hume, kant, berkeley, and i must say i don't have a taste for the classics. analytic philosophy is not looking up, though i told myself i'd look into it just so people couldn't accuse me of drifting in the clouds. hegel is a ***** on many levels, though so important he's hard to doubt.

Forget the above list, new one:

Heidegger- awesome critiques of epistemology, deployed by rorty in the analytic tradition. own critique of husserl's descriptive phenomenology led to questions of "appearance" and "disappearance" of phenomena, which was the critical force behind derrida's deconstruction of the western "metaphysics of presence." insightful look at being-in-the-world, which moves us beyond substantialist conceptions of identity and subjectivity, allowing us to engage dasein's first "thrownness" in the world, being-alongside and being-with, which isn't reducible to the "present-at-hand" or epistemically conceivable. amazing philological skills, and really interesting retheorizing of key terms like aletheia (greek "truth") as (un)covering. arrogance and his refusal to apologize for previous nazi commitments even provoked emmanuel levinas to give us his brave contribution to the philosophy of the other (in a sense, levinas was the marx to heidegger's hegel!)

Foucault- very useful for considering mechanisms of discipline and power beyond dogmatic marxism's class reductionism. basically provided a critical base for postcolonial studies, particularly said's redefinition of orientalism as a power/knowledge complex discursively producing "the East" as the West's other. key concepts like discourse and episteme help us locate the ways in which knowledge is produced and disciplinary truth claims authorized. governmentality concept moves us through and beyond the state/civil society dichotomy in order to examine capillary (individualizing-totalizing) modes of power.

Alasdair Macintyre- theorizing tradition as an embodied argument is useful to constrain a trendy take on poststructuralism as a persistent "will to unmask (power/knowledge)"--de-emphasizing the lone intellectual and promoting "communities of discourse"--though i'm still wrestling with the relation the tradition concept has to disciplines themselves (i don't think disciplines ARE traditions, especially insofar as the former are produced through western modernity, whereas the latter seem to connote pluralism and "difference" through-and-beyond that same modernity). also, interesting critique of capitalism--"the goods aren't internal to the practices themselves"--though his aristotelian psychology and lack of theory of political articulation and power are a bit problematic. thus, why thinkers like talal asad and david scott have "paradoxically" supplemented him with foucault.

Ernesto Laclau- excellent thinker of political articulation, and SERIOUS critique of marxist base/superstructure topography (along with chantal mouffe's contribution). excellent redefinition of "the people" and populism as social logics rather than definitions to be elaborated through a taxonomy of political movements. awesome rigor in applying theory of discourse, and some really interesting uses of psychoanalysis, too!

Gayatri Spivak (though I've only read articles)- wow wow wow, i only recently began to get her arguments, and i find her pretty amazing. to give a quick one: she notes that recent pomo theorizing about the "emptying" of the (western) subject takes its place through a sanctioned ignorance of imperialism, and the fact that the third world subject had to cathect the position of self-consolidating other. awesome critiques of foucault and deleuze's failure to account for the "spacing-timing" of the imperialist project in their alleged critique of the "sovereign subject." finally, great political uses of deconstruction through strategic imperatives, though as qadri ismail notes, her theory doesn't fully sync with her politics. finally, her theorization of the subaltern concept provides us with the postcolonial consequences of derrida's deconstruction, a brilliant riposte to those who would study the philosophical "greats" as a collective monument to the west without studying their elisions and silences that render the west as project itself deeply compromised.


If you'll notice, i don't really mention some of the more obvious theorists and philosophers (ie. aristotle, kant, hegel), though their intertextuality with the above thinkers should be recognized. look at heidegger's brilliant "destruktion" of the history of ontology, beginning with aristotle, or derrida's labyrthine writings on hegel as the "last philosopher of the book, the first philosopher of writing." same with laclau's (post)marxist detour through gramsci and freud. though spivak is resolutely marxist! macintyre's augustinianism is an intriguing source of inspiration (though augustine is compromised by his "political theology of power"? see william connolly's critique). and finally, none could forget foucault's genealogist par excellence, nietzsche.

I guess it's been a year, so might as well make a new post. I've been reading up a bit on Zizek, Badiou, and some of the latest continental philosophers to try and make a break with "the sophists" (ie. the deconstructionists). They've incorporated more analytic philosophy, like Russell and Wilfred Sellars, which I have yet to read. But it's very interesting take on the whole obsession with "discourse" and "the text" which has captured philosophy these past few decades. I guess there is a metaphysics after Derrida!

In the meantime, I'm also interested in looking into political theory, and my obsession with Laclau remains. I'm much less interested in the postcolonialists though, to the extent that remain mired in what I refer to as "postcolonial separatism" (almost obsessive focus on difference, sometimes ontologically reified as the basis for "tradition," a hermeneutic return visible in the works of people like David Scott and Dipesh Chakrabarty). I prefer to think about difference within the horizon of a new universality, but it's an idea that I haven't fully worked out.