What philosopher would you consider the most detrimental in western history and why. Conversely, who would you consider to be his opposite? If this has already been discussed in some previous posts, then point me to it! I’d be interested in knowing!
Even though he is the only Philosopher (human being period for that matter) to be mentioned in so many diverse fields as having a lasting influence (so much so that there is doubt as to whether o not everything attributed to him actually came from him) I cannot, personally, forgive Aristotle when he talks about Natural slaves and Women being little more than deformed men. I know he is a product of his age (as we all are) but for someone of such genius (assuming he wrote all that was attributed to him) to not be able to transcend those biases and see human potential ( unlike his teacher, even though Plato had his biases as well)… I would have to say Aristotle was the most detrimental… by sheer virtue of his near complete influence on Western thought that is still being felt today.
As for his opposite, I would submit that Aristotle’s only worthy competition would be Plato (it was either Russel or Whitehead I believe that said that all philosophers simply followed in the footsteps of either Plato or Aristotle.) many of the answers Aristotle would give would be in response to questions Plato had raised… questions that Philosophers still grapple with today. Plato was probably the first Western thinker to argue (reasonably well since he is still being taught) that the mind itself is something near divine. (That we could know, with certainty, things which the rest of the world attributed to Gods and spirits and all manner of things, not just what we knew, but how we know it). I suppose that that should count as some kind of positive influence.
the most detrimental? jesus… why? inquisition, crusades, wars, lynchings ectera ad nauseam…
his opposite? anyone who calls themselves a “practicing” christian… why? because if they were truly christ like, they’d be crucified until dead and then buried… if they come out of their grave in three days, then and only then can they be truly christlike or christian…
-Imp
Hegel. If your a fan of Popper anyway.
I think he is also the most disrespected philosopher among great philosophers. Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer really thought he was a charlatan: Popper agreed.
Augustine = Bad influence
Locke = Good influence
No philosopher is detrimental, no set of ideas are ultimately unwelcome, but the use to which ideas may be put can be harmful. An example is the misuse of Marx to justify State-totalitarianism; another example is the French misuse of Nietzsche to excuse the absence of values or amoralism.
Actually Friedrich, the French I have read - Klossowski, Bataille, Deleuze don’t use Nietzsche to justify relativism or excuse amoralism. They simple show how Nietzsche developed a way to show how all values have a history and that nothing comes to us from the heavens, with no traces of development or history.
Can it also be said that all aged philosophy writings have a negative influence on the reader’s perspective?
By the word ‘aged’, what I am trying to suppose is that a philosphical enquiry can be exhausted through open debate, to a point only pragmatism can prove the validity of hypothesis. Of course I am also asking you to ignore the influence given here by Charles S. Price and William James, the original develeopers of the doctrine of pragmatism: “An idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.”
Perhaps if we use an extreme case to help explain. A scenario set in the future in which all philosophical writings have been destroyed, and even those who retain knowledge have been executed in order to preserve the reign of a new type of philosophy. This would surely result in the greatest philosophy of all time, the generation of ideas based only on the raw human understanding of the world around us, unhampered by the oldest regulators, they themselves unaware of how ingenious the revolt against the relics of communicative currency could be.
Hell, you don’t even need to imagine this future scenario. It’s happened before. When the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi unified China he had all the books burned in the empire,. and he declared himself the zero point of Chinese History.
This philosophy of yours would only engender monsters and fascists, murderers who echo their violent births
I would argue that this Chinese guy did not satisfy the rules of this scenario to its entirety. For the sake of completeness, he would have to sacrifice not only himself but the people of his house. Might I highlight the original contemplation as one of unselfish endeavour.
Well among the Sophists – Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, and Derrida had the most detremental and decadent influence on Western Civilization.
Among the philosophers – I would agree with Hegel. Hegel led to Marx.
In terms of having the most positive influence, clearly Aristotle and Kant.
I think philosophers like Acquinas, Maimonides and especially pricks like Augustine but for lesser reasons…any of the philosphers who developed well thought out apologetics that make the scriptures viable in the eyes of of almost any less-than-perfectly-trained freethinker who has a desire for permission to believe in scriptures.
Any time you delve into the belief in books like torah or bible, and you go beyond the foothill arguments of the masses, like faith, or a feeling, you get to the “logical arguments.” These are the heavy guns, so if faith doesn’t get you, the “logical” arguments will, because they’re usually too complex to refute by the average person. Any philosopher that contributes to these reinforcements that keep religious people more or less well-satisfied in their beliefs…they’re the worst. I’m talking about those who developed the ontological, teleological and cosmological “proofs” of God’s existence. Pascal. And William James for making faith rational in some ways.
Faith in these old books, and the warm welcoming of those who have such faith, will be the end of us. Any philosopher who’s added highly complex and convincing bulwarks against the influence of free thought have been the worst.
I’m with Friedrich. Philosophers aren’t as detrimental as the people who try to apply the philosopher’s thoughts. No philosophy can subsume everything while assuming nothing and every philosophy falls short in some respect. It is best to study several.
Two things - I’m pretty hardnosed about religious claims and the claims of the faithful throughout the world, but there really is nothing but Faith. By this I mean the hopeful jump out into to world and the idea that you are moving to something. When you sit down in a chair, for example, you have faith that That chair will hold you. You have faith that a hammer will drive a nail into a board and not come flying off or snap at the handle. That’s why we’re surprised when the damn things break
Along these same pragmatic lines, James did give us all a helluva litmus test for beliefs (and faiths) - if an idea causes no actions you do not really believe it.
h3m
Also
Of course everything is faith. But its different levels of faith. Believing the chair will break is a better faith than believing my cousin is a tomato soup can. Both are faith, one makes you crazy, one makes you sit. Religious faith is what I was attacking. The propositional foundations of organized religion are unsound, period. But the castles builton them, one logical brick at a time; well that’s no better than a brilliant lawyer arguing the innocence of OJ and winning. These are the worst philosophers. I agree that James had it right, but I have found he inadvertantly influences people with false sense of permission to believe whatever they want, which is in keeping with Freidrich’s point, so I omit James.
Nietzsche for his failed attempts at philosophy and the fact that his adolescent artistic verbosity led to so many sheep being led to the philosophical slaughter houses of the continent.
That’s so Oxford of you. Nietzsche, in all fairness, was an existentialist poet, although he rarely gets credit for the title. In terms of sheer athletic prose and imagination, he influences many. Ultimately his “philosophies” lack compassion and have been misconstrued by Hitler, Jim Morrison and whitelotus to name a few. But overall, it’s the religious apologetics which gum up the works, not some poet with lofty visions of human potential.
I actually think Morrison might have been more on track with what Nietzsche was about than the mediated image of him lets on.
In terms of leading the pursuit of philosophy up a blind path which it trod for many centuries, there can only be one winner: Aristotle.
All that he was, but he was not a very decent philosopher. Much like Plato, I don’t think poetry has a place in philosophy.