My personal opinion is Plato. I find his work way beyond its time.
Any thoughts people?
put into a historical context(2000 years of hindsight) id also agree that Plato was one of the greatest of all time. He is one of my favorite though my reading list is rather short.
Plato was a donkey. Read Aristotle, Heraclitus and Epicurus. Then Nietzsche. Then loudly proclaim Wittgenstein to be the greatest philosopher. That’s my advice.
Or even just start with this:
geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ptra.htm
You can print out and read it in a day - more wisdom in one paragraph then Plato’s entire guardian/pig (good man glaucon - had it sussed early!) city would/could contain with their carefully designed limitations on life and breeding.
What - You don’t believe me?
OK sample paragraph:
“with Thales especially one can learn how philosophy has behaved at all times, when she wanted to get beyond the hedges of experience to her magically attracting goal. On light supports she leaps in advance; hope and divination wing her feet. Calculating reason too, clumsily pants after her and seeks better supports in its attempt to reach that alluring goal, at which its divine companion has already arrived. One imagines two wanderers by a wild forest-stream which carries with it rolling stones; the one, light-footed, leaps over it using the stones and swinging upon them ever further and further, though they precipitously sink into the depths behind. The other stands helpless there most of the time; one has first to build a pathway which will bear a heavy, weary step; sometimes that cannot be done and then no god will help one across the stream. What therefore carries philosophical thinking so quickly to its goal? Does it distinguish itself from calculating and measuring thought only by its more rapid flight through large spaces? No, for a strange illogical power wings the foot of philosophical thinking; and this power is creative imagination. Lifted by the latter, philosophical thinking leaps from possibility to possibility, and these for the time being are taken as certainties; and now and then even whilst on the wing it gets hold of certainties.”
(Nietzsche on Thales from Philosophy in the Tragic age of the Greeks - all Thales said was “everything is water” but Nietzshe takes it and runs (leaps even))
Why only European phylosophers people?
I think Buddha and Christ were greater phylosophers, because their names are still alive, much more than any European phylosophers. Names like Plato and aristotle are pretty small in front of the names of Christ and Buddha who are worshipped till this day, and they were not whites.
Renaissance203.
They may have been great thinkers but a philosopher who requires “worship” ain’t much of a philosopher.
I do like a bit of Taoism meself though!
Krossie
Bertrand Russell and maybe J-P Sartre aswell
Daniel C. Dennett is catching up 
‘White philosophers’ make up the majority of great philosophers in the world. So what? Are you not white, and therefore feel obliged to pick a non-white philosopher as your favourite? Is that not just as subjective as you are implying the ‘white’ people on this thread are being?
i agree… chinese/jappanese philosophers are catching up though
I’m reading your link, Krossie.
First of all… Christ was barely a philosopher… i’ve little respect for “his work” although other people wrote it; much of the same goes for Buddha.
Now… Confucius was another things; he deserves to be up there with Plato and all the other great greeks;
Also the fact that Christ/Buddha’s philosophy turned into religion is a thing to be criticised; they’ve turned against human knowledge.
Not mad for Confucius I have to say - seems to be mainly advice for wanna be rulers and very conservative and uninteresting advice at that.
Example:
“the cautious seldom err…the superior man wishes to be slow in his speech and earnest in his conduct†(Analects 1:4).
Most Confucionists were probably Taoists in the privacy of their own home!
I’ve read some Buddhist stuff that was good - I’m not mad for the whole avoiding suffering thing - it never works!
Good man!
Of course its robbed from the ILP text archive above
- one of his shortest but a good read.
OK sorry for all the posts another slooooooow day at work
Krossie
Nietzsche reffered to the superior man aswell; might there be some truth to what they were saying ? i think there might be.
Simply said, could you divide the world between people who want to rule and people who want to be ruled ? Ofcourse.
Why is it that there are only a few people who can hold an objective view of the world while others see everything subjectively ?
I think it has greatly to do with the structure of the brain; mainly the link between lower brain functions and higher brain fucntions.
Personally I’d advice every one to rule and have as little time for rulers as possible… (Nietzsche would, of course, counter with something like “where all rule none rule†– but that mightn’t be the worst either)
That fatalism is indeed in Nietzsche - I don’t like it though sometimes I reckon, with great reluctance, that he could be right.
Confucious and co advised absolute humility and keeping back - at least until you were old.
Plus he surrounded himself with sycophants and students and was willing to hoe himself out to any satrap or governor that would throw him a few schillings (at least the sophists had some honesty to ‘em)
Nietzsche walked a lonely path
Krossie
Actually he wasnt, as his writings would leed us to believe, a “mean” person; he’s known to be a very respectufl gentleman who never insulted people.
Moreover it was necessary of anyone who held “unorthodox” beliefs to walk a lonely path “back in those days”.
Moreover still pretty much every major intellectual is known to have been an introvert and as i see it “be his own kind of man”.
Also Nietzshe said that such a man would, through his own rationality, set his own moral rules; now even if this supposed man would come to the same conclusions as the majority it would still be a wonderful exercise of his own rationality.
F. Nietzsche
He was an artist philosopher. A cross between Shakespear and Schopenhauer. Every single sentence from Zarathustra is a sentence worth remembering.
Krossie
“our atheists are too pious” Max Stirner
I like this quote; however to answer it one should distinguish between atheists and antitheists; there cannot be “pure atheists” as long as there is still alot of religion in the world, so most of them/us are antitheists.
The only way everyone could be a non-pious atheist is if there was no religion in the world; something like a post-theist society.
This argument was put together by Colin McGinn.
P.S. Duder… i like your avatar
Antitheist- actually I think I’ll use that more often describes me better than atheist. As for Stirner and his quotes there’s a thread around here some where…
Cheers
Krossie
So the European civilisation needs to be criticised for worshipping Christ and for making him great, which he was not.
Buddha however said that he did not wish to be worshipped after his death, but foolish followers…hah!
Do you think Buddha was not a good phylosopher? But he told some damn truths about human life and spiritual wisdom, unlike the materially concentrated phylosophies of European phylosophers. I do not say that European phylosophers were not good, but I want to say that much of the phylosophy in the east is just as great as any European phylosophy…they are just not that famous, because European imperialists glorified only themselves. There are tons of knowledge in Chinese, Japanese and Indian cultures if you are willing to know.
Renaissance203.
Nietzsche–as pivotal between classical and contemporary philosophy. Here is the poet-philosopher who defies Plato’s bifurcation of logic and aestheics.