What Philosopher do you most closely align yourself with?

1. 83

   oceansnsunsetsposted 13 years ago

   What Philosopher do you most closely align yourself with?
   
   When thinking about what matters in life, there is no escaping that we all have a philosophy.  Is there any philosopher in history that you most closely align yourself with?  Or one that you share parts of their views, perhaps?

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2. 0

   Sooner28posted 13 years ago

   Eh.  Tough.  Two philosophers I enjoy are Karl Popper and A..J. Ayer, who argued for falsification and verificationism respectively.  I also enjoy reading Plato, though how much I agree with him, I cannot say.  And of course, I like John Stuart MIll and Karl Marx, though I am not currently a Marxist.

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3. 79

   randslamposted 13 years ago

   Nietzsche was ever misunderstood, but probably the closest to describing the 21st century experience for humanity.
   
   I identify with his ideology because he stated, "Become what you are."  And none of the boundary creating, philosophizing theorists or Freudian apostles ever came close to describing the ability for humankind to evolve intellectually--none, but Nietzsche.
   
   His work was ridiculed because it was "bastardized" by his sister's compulsion with anti-Semitism and Hitler's rise...she actually gave his walking cane to Hitler as a gift...which Hitler loved along with the works of the mythological works of Wagner.
   
   Wagner and Nietzsche were friends for a time until Wagner discovered Nietzsche's secret "crush" on Wagner's wife.
   
   The reanalysis of Nietzsche's work led to great prize-winning works by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Leo Strauss and Michel Foucault along with interests by the intellect of the political worlds.  Nixon, Mussolini, Charles de Gaulle and Theodore Roosevelt studied his works.
   
   Nietzsche does it for me...it was enough to say, "God is dead," as a metaphor and be misunderstood--it is another thing to be valid even a hundred years after your own demise.
   
   We have much to learn.

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4. 87

   Electro-Denizenposted 13 years ago

   George Berkeley 1685 – 1753, Irish philosopher. I like the fact that quite intuitively, his philosophy cuts right to the bone and deals with the problem of perception and the nature of language - which actually echo the main components of eastern religions and philosophies and metaphysics. Brilliant. The veiling power of words... (in the beginning was the word...), and the the subjective nature of reality itself...

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5. 75

   Joyus Crynoidposted 13 years ago

   I've always been a big fan of Socrates.  I resonate with the Aristotelian conception of causality, the transcendental idealism of Kant, the perspectivism of Nietsche, and the absurdism of Camus.  And among contemporary philosophers, I tend toward the deep ecology of Freya Mathews.

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6. 59

   adagio4639posted 13 years ago

   Karl Popper and William Warren Bartley. A J Ayer falls in there somewhere as well, but Popper and Bartely are my guys.

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7. 60

   Jarpposted 13 years ago

   Wilfred Sellars'... His’ theory of thinking is a proto-functionalist one, he combines this with a distinct account of sensation, one which stresses the intrinsic character of sensory experience. Sellars' is the master at explaining how our mental episodes of thoughts and sensation are held by by ourselves to be reconcilable with a broadly naturalistic metaphysics.

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