Friday, March 04, 2005

Top 5 Philosophers

Melbourne Philosopher asks: "who are your all time, desert-island, top 5 philosophers?" I haven't read very widely yet, so my selection pool is rather limited, but here goes...

1. J. S. Mill
2. Dennett
3. Hume
4. Parfit
5. Douglas Adams [hey, if MP could choose Heinlein... ;)]

To develop the meme, I'll add my top 5 philosophers I feel guilty about not having read:

1. Kant
2. Wittgenstein
3. Aristotle
4. David Lewis
5. Sartre

What do your lists look like?

15 comments:

  1. Richard, what about Quine or Kripke? :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. Plato
    2. Aristotle
    3. Kant
    4. Hegel
    5. Nietzsche

    Honorable Mention

    6. Montaigne
    7. Descartes
    8. Leibniz
    9. Hume
    10. Husserl
    11. Emerson
    12. Merleau-Ponty

    I'd love to include Heidegger, Brentano, Foucault, Spinoza, Locke, and Rousseau, but I think 12 is already pushing it for a Top 5 list.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Are these supposed to be philosophers whose writings you'd want to have with you on desert island? Or are you supposed to imagine being on the desert island with the philosophers themselves?

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  4. *shrug* Take your pick. (I just went by their writings.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. 1 Nietzsche
    2 Sartre
    3 Wittgenstein
    4 Aristotle
    5 Plato

    And philosopher and/or writer Dostoyevsky would have to be included as well.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 1. Wittgenstein
    2. Davidson
    3. Hume
    4. Fodor
    5. Kripke

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  7. Top 5 favourite philosophers:

    1) Friedrich Nietzsche
    2) Edmund Heidegger
    3) Ludwig Wittgenstein
    4) John Stuart mill
    5) Mary Wollstonecraft

    Top 5 I wish I had studied more:

    1) Niccolo Machiavelli
    2) Karl Popper
    3) Jean-Paul Sartre
    4) Soren Kierkegaard
    5) Michel Foucault

    ReplyDelete
  8. Just five is difficult...My list is, "If I could only read five philosophers for the rest of my life, they would be":

    1. Wittgenstein (not necessarily because I agree with him, but just because I find him so damned thought-provoking)
    2. David Lewis
    3. Nietzsche
    4. Quine
    5. I think I'd want to put Russell here

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  9. 1. Kierkegaard
    2. Levinas
    3. Wittgenstein
    4. Nietzsche
    5. Buber

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  10. do you know about the h2g2 film coming out later this month? i'm v excited because i know where my towel is.

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  11. 1.Nietzsche
    2.Nietzsche
    3.Nietzsche
    4.Nietzsche
    5.Nietzsche

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  12. 1.John Locke
    2.J.S.Mill
    3.I.kant
    4.Hegel
    5.B.Spinoza

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  13. 1. Rene Descartes
    2. JP Sartre
    3. Martin Heidegger
    4. Michel Foucault
    5. Plato.

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  14. 1 Kant
    2 Wittgenstein
    3 Frege
    4 Quine
    5 Plato

    Hume just misses the cut.

    Henry

    ReplyDelete
  15. 1. me

    In my opinion I agree with the best of all the other people.

    ReplyDelete

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