8 Philosophers worth investing your time in.
8 Philosophers Awakening Me from Dogmatic Slumber
In a previous article, I showed you to 10 contemporary philosophers I figured were worth reading. This week I’d like to introduce you 8 essential philosophers who played a great role in the development of my own thinking.
1. Laozi
A semi-legendary figure, Laozi (also Lao-Tzu) is usually dated to around the 6th century BCE and seen as a contemporary of Confucius. Contemporary historians, however, believe that the historical figure actually refers to a number of anonymous authors, collectively referred to as the Old Masters (the Laozi) who lived during the Warring States period of the 5th or 4th century BCE. A central figure in Chinese culture, Laozi is best known as the reputed author of the Daodejing and as the founder of philosophical Daoism. The Daodejing is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Daoism and has inspired philosophers, poets, painters, even cooks and gardeners since it was written more than 2,500 years ago.
A really fascinating topic in the Daodejing is that of wu wei. Literally translated, it just means ‘doing nothing,’ but as a concept it better translates as ‘doing without trying.’ To visualise this, you might compare wu wei to ‘being in the zone’ or achieving a ‘state of flow.’ Although achieving wu-wei is the ultimate goal, Laozi claims we should never even try to bring it about. Instead, we should just forget about it and rely on the ‘Dao,’ the ‘Universe’ to make things happen.
2. Confucius
Master Kong Qiu (551– 479 BCE), remains the most important single philosopher in Eastern history. He espoused significant principles of ethics and politics, in a time when the Greeks were espousing the same things. We think of democracy as a Greek invention, a Western idea, but Confucius wrote in his Analects that “the best government is one that rules through ‘rites’ and the people’s natural morality, rather than by using bribery and coercion. This may sound obvious to us today, but he wrote it in the 5th century BCE. Confucius defended the idea of an Emperor, but also advocated limitations to the emperor’s power. The emperor must be honest and his subjects must respect him, but he must deserve that respect. Any ruler who acted contrary to these principles was a tyrant, and thus a thief more than a ruler.
Confucius also devised his own, independent version of the Golden Rule, which had existed for at least a century in Greece before him. His phrasing was almost identical, but then furthered the idea: “What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognizes as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.” The first statement is in the negative, and constitutes a passive desire not to harm others. The second statement is much more important, constituting an active desire to help others.
3. Plato
One of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy, it often argued that the whole canon of Western philosophy merely consists of a series of footnotes to Plato (428 – 348 BCE). He was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy and the founder of Western political philosophy. Among other dialogues, his Republic, and Laws, provide some of the earliest extant treatments of political questions from a philosophical perspective.
One of Plato’s most famous arguments is that those in power must be wise, and that if they are not, then they are ineffectual rulers. It is only through philosophy that the world can be free of evils. Plato’s preferred government was one a benevolent aristocracy, those born of nobility, who are well educated and good, who help the common people to live better lives. He argued against democracy proper, arguing the will of the majority would always result in tyranny.
Plato’s own most decisive philosophical influences are usually thought to have been Socrates, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Pythagoras. Few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.
4. Epicurus
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE) has gotten a bit of an unfair reputation over the centuries as the teacher of self-indulgence and excess delight. His principles for a happy life have been passed down to us as a now famous set of aphorisms:
Don’t fear god; Don’t worry about death; What is good is easy to get;
and What is terrible is easy to endure.
However, rather than teaching self-indulgence, I would argue that Epicurus advocates to “enjoy life no matter what happens, because you only get one run and it won’t last long.” The central ideas in his work all revolve around living happily and centre on the just treatment of others, avoidance of pain. In other words, living in such a way as to please oneself, but not to overindulge in anything.
His most profound statement, in my opinion, is the paradox that “It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely, well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely, well and justly without living a pleasant life. With ‘wisely,’ Epicurus means the avoidance of pain, danger, disease, etc.; ‘well’ would be proper diet and exercise; and ‘justly,’ to not harm others.
4. Zeno of Citium
Although his name isn’t that familiar to most today, his philosophy is. Another 3rd century philosopher, Zeno (334 – 262 BCE) founded the school of Stoicism. The name Stoicism comes from the Greek Stoa – the roofed colonnades, which often surrounded ancient Athenian marketplaces – and Stoic thought is based on the idea that anything which causes us to suffer in life is actually an error in our judgment, and that we should always have absolute control over our emotions.
Emotions like rage and depression are all just flaws in your reasoning, and thus, you are only emotionally weak when you allow this to be so. In a more catchy phrase, perception is reality. Scholars consider Stoicism to be the opposite of the aforementioned school of Epicureanism, but today many people mistake one for the other or combine them. Whereas Epicurus argues that displeasures do exist in life but must be avoided, in order to enter a state of perfect mental peace (ataraxia, in Greek), Stoicism claims that mental peace must be acquired out of your own will not to let anything upset you. Death is a necessity, so why feel depressed when someone dies? Why would you get enraged over something? Both depression and rage won’t result in anything good while controlling your emotions will bring about a state of mental peace. Also important is to shun desire: you should strive for what you need, but only that and nothing more. Prioritising want over need will lead to excess, and excess doesn’t help, it just hurts.
5. St Augustine of Hippo
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE) was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions.
In both his philosophical and theological reasoning, Augustine was greatly influenced by Stoicism and Platonism His early and influential writing on the human will, a central topic in ethics, would become a focus for later philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell was impressed by Augustine’s meditation on the nature of time in a passage in the Confessions, where he writes of walking up a flight of stairs and entering the vast fields of memory – clearly indicating that the ancient Romans were aware of how to use explicit spatial and architectural metaphors as a mnemonic technique for organizing large amounts of information – favourably comparing to Kant’s version of the view that time is subjective.
Augustine’s philosophical method, demonstrated in his Confessions, have had continuing influence on Continental philosophy throughout the 20th century. His descriptive approach to intentional, memory, and language as these phenomena are experienced within consciousness and time anticipated and inspired the insights of modern phenomenology and hermeneutics and Augustine’s philosophical legacy continues to influence contemporary critical theory through the contributions and inheritors of 20th century philosophers.
7. Immanuel Kant
A German philosopher who is a central figure in modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) took himself to have effected a revolution in philosophy, of no less importance than Copernicus’ reversal of the age-old belief that the sun revolved around the earth. His beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics.
In 1781, Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy. In this work, Kant attempts to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the scepticism of other thinkers.
Kant regarded himself as ending and showing the way beyond the impasse which modern philosophy had led to between rationalists and empiricists and is widely held to have synthesized these two early modern traditions in his thought.
The full corpus of Kant is too wide-ranging and complicated to discuss here, but important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history, include the Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788), the Metaphysics of Morals (Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797) and the Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790).
8. Søren Kierkegaard
Widely considered to be the first existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and prolific author. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one should live as an individual, giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment.
As Kierkegaard wrote in Danish, the reception of his work was initially limited to Scandinavia, but around the turn of the 20th century his major writings, Either/Or (Enten-Eller) and Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven) were translated into French, German, and other major European languages and mid-20th century his thought exerted a substantial influence on philosophy, theology and Western culture.
Many contemporary philosophers and theologians have drawn concepts from Kierkegaard, including the notions of angst, despair, and the importance of the individual. His fame as a philosopher grew tremendously in the 1930s, in large part because the ascendant existentialist movement pointed to him as a precursor, although later writers celebrated him as a highly significant and influential thinker in his own right.
[T]here you are.
