Your Top 8 Favorite Philosophical Ideas (and the philosophers that had them).

schopenhauer1

What is your top 8 philosophical ideas (in order of importance to you) and why? So you don't have to choose a philosopher's whole corpus of thought- you can cherry pick 1 or 2 ideas. I picked 8 because that's what I can think of- your list can be longer or shorter.

1) Natural rights theory (John Locke 1689): Really Locke wrote the first formalization of natural rights theory- that government's main job is to protect people's ability to think/believe/speak/express ideas and to not be unduly persecuted by the governing authority for doing so. It is not just that government is "allowing" you to have freedoms, you automatically have freedoms, and it is our job to not let government encroach on our individual entitlements for the exercise of our conscience. The reason we are doing this forum and any expression of ideas is that we are living in a society influenced by Locke's ideas of natural rights.

2) The striving-for-nothing nature of man (Arthur Schopenhauer c. 1840): Getting at the very root of our human-animal nature, Schopenhauer's core idea about humans was that we need goals (mainly related to survival/comfort/entertainment) and we strive after them, and when we achieve them, boredom sets in and we repeat the goal-setting process. Our nature is to strive- we are always becoming but never being. Restlessness is our nature. We are in a sense, always lacking, always needing.

3) It's all about the economics stupid! (Karl Marx 1848): Marx' idea that economics is the foundation for ideals, reminds us that we are never disconnected by the material circumstances of how we survive/get by as a society. The relations that we have to our work, trade, consumption, and productive forces are interwoven in our very nature of what it means to be man living in society.

4) The Thing-in-Itself (Immanual Kant 1781): Kant essentially framed the original question regarding not mistaking the map for the territory. By placing space/time/causality/categories in the mind of the viewer, the world "as it is in itself" can never be known. He also didn't speculate more than he thought was possible as to what the reality was in and of itself possibly avoiding the pitfalls of later German idealists (like Hegel).

5) Problem of induction (David Hume 1740): This notion creates skepticism of the ground for knowledge in induction. How do we know we don't just learn to create necessity out of habit? Is necessity "out there" as a metaphysical "thing" or just an internal habit based on learned reactions to events? This opens the door for cogntivists later on and generally trying to hone our understanding of epistemology.

6) Socratic Method (Socrates c. 430 BCE): Constant questioning creates aporia or puzzlement. Dialectic between varying ideas can break down old notions leading to more constructive new ones.

7) Sisyphean absurdity (Albert Camus 1942): Existence and our struggle against the absurd is paramount to anything else- including metaphysical questions. The universe is aggressively indifferent to our human longing for meaning and satisfaction. The Earth turns and revolves, the universe expands.. We are often repetitively doing the same tasks over and over, just to do them again. Our tasks are absurd in themselves and we often suffer in our longings in our everyday life.

8) Radical freedom (Jean-Paul Sartre 1943): When you do something, is it due to social pressures, other people's role expectations, or out of your own authentic desires? Maybe ethics is about authenticity.

Shawn

Just top 3 for me:

1) The veil of ignorance, by John Rawls

2) The seventh proposition of the Tractatus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein

3) The problem of evil, various.

BrianW

1. KRISHNA -
-> 3:5. No one can stay truly action-less even for a moment, for the properties of prakriti (matter) compel all to act!
-> 3:21. What the best one is doing, the others are doing as well: people follow such an example.
-> 4:11. In whatever way people come to Me, in the same way I receive them. For the paths by which people come to Me from all sides are My paths.
-> 5:15. The Lord is not responsible for the deeds of people, be they bad or good. This wisdom is covered by ignorance that overcame people.
-> 5:18. The wise look equally upon all — be it a brahman endowed with knowledge and humility, an elephant, a cow, a dog, or even a man eating a dog.
-> 8:6. Whatever state is habitual to man at the end of existence in the body, in that very state this person remains.
-> 9:29. I am equal towards all beings. To Me there is no hateful or dear ones.
-> 10:36. I am in the gambling of cheats, in the magnificence of the most magnificent things.

The above quotes by Krishna are from The Bhagavad Gita.
While representing God, Krishna does not exclude anyone or anything from his teachings. People may say they're spiritual or religious, but all I see is philosophy.

2. GOD (Christian God) -
-> 'I AM WHO I AM'

This quote (from the Bible) is the best there is. Most people, if asked 'who are you' would give their names or a description of their personality. But, let's face it, we are who we are, not who we were or can be.
Eminem comes close with, "I am, whatever you say I am. If I wasn't, then why would I say I am." This is as close to the principle of subjectivity as you can get. No matter what we perceive, it is coloured by our inherent bias, even when we are objective. Hence, the intelligent question is never 'what do we perceive?' But, 'why do we perceive what we perceive?'

3. JESUS -
-> Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
-> Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

It is hard to see beyond the many miraculous events surrounding him, but I think Jesus is the best psychologist. He was also a master in ethics.

4. BUDDHA - The teacher.
-> “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

It isn't enough to say that his teachings have revolutionized our modern society. in principle, they define and inspire the ethics we try to attain as humanity.

5. SOCRATES - This is the man who leads himself straight and true and would not compromise his morals no matter what. To me, he represents true leadership.

6. PYTHAGORAS/PLATO - The true scholars. They achieved more, using logic, than science has through the intervening millenia, from their deaths to the present.

7. EMANUEL SWEDENBORG - Perhaps the best example that science and spirituality have the same origin - universal wisdom.

8. RALPH WALDO EMERSON - The seer. Through all his writings, as demonstrated in 'Representative Men', no one has shown such a capacity to observe the essence of things as has Emerson.

9. MUHAMMAD ALI - He fought in and out of the ring.
He denied and changed his 'slave-name'; stood against his nation over 'unjust' war politics; even lost his well-deserved and hard-earned titles for a while; and all because he believed in his principles. If life has a warrior, perhaps it somwhat resembles Ali. It is no wonder his romanticized title as the G.O.A.T is yet unchallenged.

There are many others: Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I & II,... etc.

Your Top 8 Favorite Philosophical Ideas (and the philosophers that had them).

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