• WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    They don't have to be people associated with philosophy.

    I can't list any women, unfortunately. There are plenty of women in journalism who I respect and whose work I read and learn a lot from, some of them regularly. But I have not yet discovered the work of any woman in theology/religion, academia, literature, social/political activism, etc. that I found to be original, groundbreaking, and greatly impactful. I have no doubt that the latter exists; I simply have not discovered it, unfortunately. That lack notwithstanding, I think I have a list of people from a diversity of backgrounds.

    Anyway, my top ten right now would be:


    1.) Ken Wilber
    2.) Christopher Lasch
    3.) David Smail
    4.) Chris Hedges
    5.) Wendell Berry
    6.) Gustavo Esteva (development critic)
    7.) Martin Luther King., Jr.
    8.) Mahatma Gandhi
    9.) Marvin Harris (anthropologist)
    10.) Richard Wilk (anthropologist)
  • WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    If anybody could recommend any work by women I would appreciate it.

    I have not discovered prose fiction or poetry as intellectual documents to use on my own. I have only experienced them as school assignments to try my best to survive. It's never too late to change habits.

    I tend to gravitate to non-fiction that is iconoclastic, original, independent, against the mainstream, etc. Work that recycles or feeds off of already popular ideas does not interest me much.

    Who is the Noam Chomsky of female intellectuals?
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Interesting to see Wendell Berry on someone's list.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    What are your interests, in particular? As in, subject areas (sub-disciplinary)?
  • WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    Interesting to see Wendell Berry on someone's list.Noble Dust




    Then you might appreciate this: authors from Mexico and India using Wendell Berry as a source.

    In Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri-Prakash quote Wendell Berry extensively.

    A pleasant surprise in a book that only by chance got my attention at the last minute before the bookstore closed (after browsing for several hours I had to leave with something).
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Cool. I need to read more Berry. I like his unabashed individualism; not for it's own sake, but for the sake of saying what he feels needs said.
  • WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    What are your interests, in particular?StreetlightX




    Cultural anthropology, especially economic anthropology and ecological anthropology. Development, colonialism, neo-colonialism, North/South political and economic relations, etc. Indigenism. Political theory in general. Postmodernism, especially in social theory. Some general philosophy. Some general sociology.
  • Saphsin
    383

    Who is the Noam Chomsky of female intellectuals?

    Emma Goldman & Simone Weil, but they're not modern.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k

    Have you already read Eric Wolf's Europe and the people without history?
  • WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    Emma Goldman & Simone Weil, but they're not modern.Saphsin




    Weil sounds especially interesting, judging by the Wikipedia article.
  • WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    Have you already read Eric Wolf's Europe and the people without history?Srap Tasmaner




    It is probably buried in the many sticky notes on my phone or in a folder full of links I emailed to myself.

    Iconoclastic works in anthropological theory are always good.

    I've been wanting to read Robert Edgerton's Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. Maybe Wolf should be read first.
  • WISDOMfromPO-MO
    753
    Who are everybody else's favorite thinkers?
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Speaking solely of women, Hannah Arendt is among my favourite political philosophers and I’d recommend her work unreservedly.

    Wendy Brown probably places a close second, and her recent Undoing the Demos is perhaps one of the most prescient diagnoses of our contemporary situations that I know.

    Melinda Cooper’s recent Family Values is also a monumental work of political anthropology/history and well worth reading.

    Angela McRobbie’s work on consumer culture, feminism, and postmodernism might be something right up your alley as well - a mix of cultural studies and anthropology - and although it’s hard to pick a single work, the ever popular The Aftermath of Feminism is always a good place.

    Saskia Sassen’s work on the sociology of globalisation might be of interest as well.

    Doreen Massey’s works on cultural geography ranks among my favourite writing as well - see her Space, Place, and Gender, or her For Space.

    As far as classic anthropology, there's always Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger), Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa), and Ruth Benedict (Patterns of Culture).

    Otherwise, authors like Linda Zerilli, Susan Moller Okin, Iris Marion Young, and Nancy Fraser, are among the best philosophical philosophers, living or dead.
  • Thanatos Sand
    843


    In (roughly) temporal order:

    Plato
    St. Augustine
    St. Anselm
    David Hume
    Edmund Burke
    Immanuel Kant
    Karl Marx
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    Soren Kierkegaard
    Feodor Dostoevsky
    Sigmund Freud
    Martin Buber
    Jacques Lacan
    Louis Althusser
    Julia Kristeva
    Jacques Derrida
    Jean-Francois Lyotard
    Gilles Deleuze
    Judith Butler
  • Saphsin
    383
    Also since you listed Gandhi, you should know he's a controversial figure on the Left. I recommend Norman Finkelstein's book on him from an appreciatory point of view & Arundhati Roy (a female political activist) for a critical perspective on him.

    https://www.amazon.com/What-Gandhi-Says-Nonviolence-Resistance/dp/1935928791/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501138662&sr=8-1&keywords=norman+finkelstein+gandhi





    https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Saint-Annihilation-Between-Ambedkar/dp/160846797X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501138613&sr=8-1&keywords=arundhati+roy+gandhi

  • Beebert
    569
    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    William Blake
    Sören Kierkegaard
    Simone Weil
    Plato
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    Giacomo Leopardi
    Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Gregory of Nyssa
    Meister Eckehart
  • Michael
    14k
    If anybody could recommend any work by women I would appreciate it.WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Anscombe, on morality.
  • Michael
    14k
    I'll go with the four I mention in my profile: Wittgenstein, Dummett, Putnam, and Chalmers.
  • Beebert
    569
    "If anybody could recommend any work by women I would appreciate it."

    I recommend Simone Weil.
    Gravity and Grace, Waiting for God, The Abolition of Political Parties, The Need For Roots...
  • Jake Tarragon
    341
    Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch packs a punch.
  • anonymous66
    626
    Right now?

    Gabriel Marcel
    Tolstoy
    Aristotle
    Plato
    Socrates
    Philip Yancey
    Martha Nussbaum
    the ancient Stoics
  • _db
    3.6k
    I've been increasingly impressed by Cioran. Reading him sometimes feels like ripping a band-aid off. It's like, y'oww, I was not prepared for that but I'm glad it happened.

    But I don't really play favorites, because that's when you narrow your perspective and become one of those insufferable dick-sucking acolytes. :-d
  • The Questioning Bookworm
    109


    Favorites:

    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    Niccoló Machiavelli
    Plato
    Albert Camus
    Alexis de Tocqueville
    Soren Kierkegaard
    C.S. Lewis
    Leo Tolstoy
  • Hippyhead
    1.1k
    They don't have to be people associated with philosophyWISDOMfromPO-MO

    Do they have to be associated with people?

    If not, probably pine trees, and the retarded squirrel who resides in a cage just outside of our bedroom.

    Seriously. NOT being clever, cutesy, snarky or humorous etc.

    Why study what somebody says about reality when we can study reality itself?

    Why content ourselves with second hand sources?
  • Albero
    169
    Let’s revive this thread

    Since this doesn’t seem to be solely limited to philosophers, I’ll go with:


    • Max Stirner, Zhuangzi, Lao Tzu (I know he wasn’t one guy) Nietzsche, Novatore (he seems forgotten), and I know he’s not really a thinker or a philosopher, but I think Alan Watts has a lot of good things to say sometimes.
  • Ciceronianus
    2.9k
    Well, these guys, I think:

    John Dewey
    Wallace Stevens
    Marcus Tullius Cicero (of course)
    O.W. Holmes, Jr.
  • The Questioning Bookworm
    109
    Love Nietzsche, can't stop reading him...
  • Pinprick
    950
    In no particular order:

    Nietzsche
    Socrates
    Diogenes
    Hume
    George Carlin
    Camus
    Plato
    Hitchens
    Johnathan Haidt
    Saul Williams
    Aleister Crowley
    Carl Rogers
    Marx
    John Lennon
    Cornell West
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