Epicurus, Russell.

I've tried others but had no clue what they were talking about.

+1 for Darwinsbulldog for mentioning David Deutsch

David Hume, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, Democritus, Epicurus. In that order.

Nagarjuna, Whitehead, Husserl, Mohtzu, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and the best of the western analytical tradition.

I'm also fond of the direction Nyaya was going before it's development was cut off; probably by the deplorable living conditions in British India.

I'm a great fan of Edmund Husserl, even though he was technically a idealist and I most emphatically am not. I think he's one of those rare geniuses who manage to make a truly universal study that transcends mere school and tradition.

They all put me to sleep, except Voltaire. Panglos was a fantastic idea: He was a spoof of Leibniz

Voltaire actively rejected Leibnizian optimism after the natural disaster, convinced that if this were the best possible world, it should surely be better than it is

Leibniz must have thought better worlds than this would be logically inconsistent or something, meaningless as that is.

BTW, most people except scientists and philosophers put me to sleep unless they happen to be exceptionally gifted writers.

The Doctor wrote:Who are some of your favorite philosophers?

I really like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Peter Singer.

That's a very very odd mix.

Are you sure this isn't just a list of philosophers you happen to have read?

shh wrote:Nietzchse, for his awesomeness, and I have to say, I don't understand why so many people claim he's hard to understand, he seems a lot clearer than most to me, Kant, just because of his importance, I have to admit, the Critique was probably the most diffficult book I've ever read

That's interesting, I found Kant to be a lot easier to read than Nietzsche.
But maybe that's because Kant's philosophy is much more in line with mine (nice rhyme).

Oh, I happened to have a chat with a famous philosopher in my country and I asked him what his favourite philosophers would be. He named Dawkins and Sagan among others and I replied "But they're not philosophers". I got schooled after that statement

But I'm still left wondering who can be labeled a philosopher then. Is it, because I write a book that delves into philosophy I am a philosopher?

LIFE wrote:

shh wrote:Nietzchse, for his awesomeness, and I have to say, I don't understand why so many people claim he's hard to understand, he seems a lot clearer than most to me, Kant, just because of his importance, I have to admit, the Critique was probably the most diffficult book I've ever read

That's interesting, I found Kant to be a lot easier to read than Nietzsche.
But maybe that's because Kant's philosophy is much more in line with mine (nice rhyme).

Nietzsche is pretty clear once you get that he's not always arguing directly, that some of his arguments are phrased in irony. 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' is probably the most obscure, but even than it's pretty comprehensible once you tune into the symbolism.

What of Kant did you read? I tried getting through his Critiques and they were utterly impenetrable, more use as doorsteps than anything else. After "What is Enlightenment?", Kant seems to get very very difficult to read.

Invictus_88 wrote:

LIFE wrote:

shh wrote:Nietzchse, for his awesomeness, and I have to say, I don't understand why so many people claim he's hard to understand, he seems a lot clearer than most to me, Kant, just because of his importance, I have to admit, the Critique was probably the most diffficult book I've ever read

That's interesting, I found Kant to be a lot easier to read than Nietzsche.
But maybe that's because Kant's philosophy is much more in line with mine (nice rhyme).

Nietzsche is pretty clear once you get that he's not always arguing directly, that some of his arguments are phrased in irony. 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' is probably the most obscure, but even than it's pretty comprehensible once you tune into the symbolism.

What of Kant did you read? I tried getting through his Critiques and they were utterly impenetrable, more use as doorsteps than anything else. After "What is Enlightenment?", Kant seems to get very very difficult to read.

I haven't read the Critiques but I wonder how they can be so much different from the rest? Maybe some stuff gets lost in translation?

I've read Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God if my mind serves me well.
I have to add that we dealt a lot with Kant in philosophy class, prior to me reading some of his works so maybe I was more in tune with his writing style than I ever was with Nietzsche. I fail to interpret his symbolism in Thus Spake Zarathustra in the right way

anthroban wrote:....... do you mean that it is "bullshit" in the sense that it is all a priori speculation, or otherwise baseless musings; or do you mean that the study of philosophy is simply not pragmatic?

I must admit, I don't 'get' philosophy, so the above (though I didn't originally post it) might include some of my misgivings. I struggle to think why philosophy might be important, beyond just being historically interesting and possibly a generally good intellectual discipline. In this sense it seems analogous to those stationary, rotating exercise machines in gyms, or a hamster wheel.

LIFE wrote:

shh wrote:Nietzchse, for his awesomeness, and I have to say, I don't understand why so many people claim he's hard to understand, he seems a lot clearer than most to me, Kant, just because of his importance, I have to admit, the Critique was probably the most diffficult book I've ever read

That's interesting, I found Kant to be a lot easier to read than Nietzsche.
But maybe that's because Kant's philosophy is much more in line with mine (nice rhyme).

The Critique is extremely difficult, but a lot of that has to do with Kant's style, and invention of terms, on top of reading it in translation.
Nietzsche (even in translation) is one of my favourite writers. Which is a bit odd tbh.

Oh, I happened to have a chat with a famous philosopher in my country and I asked him what his favourite philosophers would be. He named Dawkins and Sagan among others and I replied "But they're not philosophers". I got schooled after that statement

But I'm still left wondering who can be labeled a philosopher then. Is it, because I write a book that delves into philosophy I am a philosopher?

Pretty much, although I'd only consider Dawkins a philosopher if the words "fucking awful" precede it.

Foucault, Derrida, Chomsky, Satre............

Russell, Wittgenstein, Kant and Hume are the ones I enjoy reading the most and who have ideas that intrigue me.

Wow, I'm a little out of step with people here. I like quite a few of the contemporary philosophers of religion, for instances, Peter Byrne, Robert M. Adams, Mike C. Murphy, J. L. Schellenberg and others; however, I'm mainly inclined towards ethicists, so I'd include Richard Boyd, Philippa Foot, Christine Korsgaard, Martha Nussbaum, William Fitzpatrick and Russ Schafer Landau too.

LIFE wrote:Nietzsche is hardest to read for me. I don't get half of what he says

There are good German translations of Nietzsche's works.

Plato, Aristotle, Sankara, Rousseau, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger

Peter Singer, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris (not officially a philosopher, but close enough) and there are many others who I just cannot think of. One guy wrote a column for The Stone (NYT) and said we should wipe out any carnivorous species in nature if the consequences would not be exploding prey population that ultimately ends up getting wiped out anyway. You could argue this is pointless since almost all carnivores limit a prey population, but the point, which I think wa a brilliant one, was that nature only has value in so far as it contributes to the wellbeing of sentient beings. There is not some "mother nature" that we must protect for its own sake.
A critical point, I think. Wish I could remember his name...

Hume, bonaventure, aquinas, berekely, descartes, plantinga, a few others.