# NFs, Who Are Your Favorite Philosophers?



## Firemoon (Sep 19, 2015)

Socrates, Camus and Rousseau
I really love philosophy, I'm glad this thread exists!


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## Silent Theory (Nov 1, 2014)

Sartre, Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, Camus, Heidegger, Kant, Diogenes, Lao Tzu, Thoreau, Emerson,... They all have their value.


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## Fortunalector10 (Jan 6, 2015)

There's a bunch that I really respect but my favorite, hands dow, is Socrates. 


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## Zeta Neprok (Jul 27, 2010)

I think as of right now my favourite thinker is Peter Kropotkin. "The right to well being for all" is a simple but fundamentally good idea that I wish more people would embrace.


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## DOGSOUP (Jan 29, 2016)

Machiavelli, but it's complicated. Hannah Arendt is interesting.


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## MuChApArAdOx (Jan 24, 2011)

Friends and lovers. They are the real deal in real time, we have very similar Philosophies about life, lifestyles, people and things. Why look to those who have lived and died years ago for amazing Inspiration and truth when you have people in your life that bring that and more. Times have changed, what was Inspirational back then may not be so Inspirational today, depending on who said it I guess. Personally I choose the opinions and philosophies from people who are alive and well today, their experiences can be shared in real time, they have happened and are currently happening. I respect this form of data and Information apposed to the dead.


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## Khalaris (Sep 9, 2012)

Thomas Metzinger (self model theory of subjectivity) and Alfred Korzybski (General Semantics - "the map is not the territory")


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

Immanuel Kant-makes the profound insight that the human mind structures reality. This highly complicated system that he created is reflected in essence by our new ideas of how the mind structures reality.
David Hume-changes the way everything is framed, right out of your dogmatic slumber he takes you.
Karl Popper-best philosopher of science around
Bertrand Russell-how do you not?
Socrates-I know he's amazing but I never read full works about him.
Pyrrho-because he invented skepticism 
Buddha-could also be considered religious, but compared to the others in this list, his ideas are highly applicable to living life
Noticeable lack of continental philosophers because they are boring and insatiable.


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## Tkae (Oct 15, 2009)

Not in any particular order, but...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rumi
Dogen
Soren Kierkegaard
Noam Chomsky
Murray Rothbard
Plato
Carl Jung

Ayn Rand in moderation. Elements of her philosophy I agree with, but in its entirety I find it self-contradictory.

I despise Nietzsche with the heat and intensity of a thousand suns. I appreciate Aristotle and his descendants, but fundamentally disagree with their worldview. Nietzsche, though, is just an arrogant ass. Richard Dawkins is just an unintelligent version of him.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

very small sample
augustine
aquinas
scotus
ockham
abelard
lombard
boetheus


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## TimeWaster (Apr 26, 2015)

Kierkegaard and Plato. 

I also find these philosophers interesting: 

-Machiavelli 

-Schopenhauer

-Rousseau 

-Thomas Aquinas 

-Nagel


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## Mirkwood (Jul 16, 2014)

I am not familiar with many, but..

Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal

My copy of Penses by Pascal is just riddled with highlight stickers.

For example this: 
_"Thoughts come at random, and go at random. No device for holding onto them or for having them. A thought has escaped: I was trying to write it down: Instead i write it has escaped me"_
It reminds me so much of how sometimes were like "Damn!, i can't remember now".. Then next day or next while sitting on the toilet "A-ha!" :laughing:, which has inspired me to just chill a little more when forgetting something, no need to damn oneself.


By Kierke gård i just remeber that one that circa goes like this "You will regret marrying.. You will also regret not marrying".
... Like, there is always something to regret.


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## Flaming Bassoon (Feb 15, 2013)

The dead ones.


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## Fievel (Jul 9, 2013)

Vinniebob said:


> very small sample
> augustine
> aquinas
> scotus
> ...


Scholastic are we?


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

Fievel said:


> Scholastic are we?


WE?
oh, you mean me and my pet gerbil whom resides in myanus
no just me
gerbils can't read


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## MonogamyIsNice (Mar 21, 2012)

Social philosophers, above all. I don't really care much about people who were forerunners but who are, nonetheless, totally obsolete as thinkers, now. That's pseudo-intellectual novelty-based-appreciation city to me ^^

Sam Harris and Voltaire. But for the aforementioned obsolete category, and to also rope in others who are goofballs that I have still enjoyed witnessing - Spinoza, Kant, Emerson.. Rousseau. Descartes. Most of the philosophes (prominent figures of the French Enlightenment.)

The list of legendary thinkers whose novelty doesn't even count for anything with me, or who I think are plainly moronic is quite a bit longer, and is basically a compendium of every other name in this thread


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## lecomte (May 20, 2014)

Prothagoras, Kierkegaard and Pascal are to me, Princes of Philosophy.

Socrates appears to me too much proud but very useful. The same goes for stoicism with Marcus Aurelius which I absolutely love but we don't really know what is "Reason" in his philosophy.

Cynical philosophers are cool: Diogenes the Dog makes me laugh and Clisthene is really impressive. I like the Bhagavad Gita, from indian philosophy: Veda. 

I despise Sartre philosophy because it is existence without existence, Nietzsche becomes rapidly annoying and repetitive... and manipulative.

Spinoza has his flaws and can be pedantic, I find Hannah Arendt very judgmental and not really comprehensive. Same as Voltaire, which is a paternalist cunt xD. Rousseau and Camus says weird and unreasonable things to me.

I am not really fan of Aristotle, Plato because of their judgement, categorization towards society, ideal of "Reason".


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## Stopping By Woods (Jun 20, 2016)

Voltaire

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Carl Jung

Robert Anton Wilson

Terence McKenna 

William Melvin Hicks


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## Varyafiriel (Sep 5, 2012)

Plato
Baruch Spinoza
Jeremy Bentham
Emmanuel Kant
G.W.F. Hegel
Ludwig Feuerbach
Arthur Schopenhauer
Karl Marx
Albert Schweitzer
J.-P. Sartre
Simone de Beauviour
Hannah Arendt
Theodor Adorno
Peter Singer
Sam Harris


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## Fennel (Jan 11, 2017)

Not really into hardcore Philosophy because sometimes it seems like thinking for Thinking's sake. My preferred thinkers are usually shelved in Psychology and Spirituality, but here goes:

- Pythagoras, because I haven't found many others who relate math to music to life.
- Gordon Allport - The Individual and His Religion
- Ken Wiber - A Theory of Everything
- Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning (logotherapy)
- Kazantzakis - his musings about spirituality are always interesting
- Zen teachings - koans, Dogen and Rinzai mostly
- anything Taoist, or just touching on nondoing as a way of getting things done
- Sun Tzu (Art of War) and Zhuge Liang (36 Strategies)
- Toltec teachings along the lines of Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
- Judeo-Christian writings, if I may call them that - Psalms, Provers, Ecclesiastes, Jesus' teachings in the Gospels, Epistles of John

* Not one of my favorites, but Ayn Rand is a big influence on my mentor, so I study in an Objectivist studio. I consider it a major factor in my teacher's successful career.


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## tinyheart (Jun 17, 2016)

*shrugs?*


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## courageous_soul (Oct 20, 2016)

Who counts as a philosopher?? Haha. I'd put down Jesus and Hayao Miyazaki :laughing:


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## inaradutu (Mar 5, 2017)

Lao Tzu
Epicurus
Michel de Montaigne
Voltaire


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## Reiyn Isa (Dec 9, 2015)

Jalaludin Rumi


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## tinyheart (Jun 17, 2016)

Myself?


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## BlueWings (Jan 27, 2015)

mytinyheart said:


> Myself?


Damn you beat me to it


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## tinyheart (Jun 17, 2016)

My face rn:


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## brightflashes (Oct 27, 2015)

Friedrich Nietzsche
Albert Camus
Jean-Paul Sartre
Erich Fromm
Soren Kierkegaard
Voltaire
Socrates
von Goethe


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## Ald52OnMyTonguePleas (Mar 3, 2017)

William S. Burroughs
Alfred Korzybski
Lao Tzu
Terrrence McKenna when he isn't full of his own shit
And the little I have read of Robert Anton Wilson is pretty nutty and intriguing.


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## OutsideLookingIn391 (Mar 10, 2017)

Nietzsche


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## abnormal (Jun 24, 2015)

In no particular order..

Nietzsche (I know, so trite, but he's been such an influence on me honestly)
Kafka
Hegel
de Beauvoir
Sartre (another cliché, but oh well, I could care less)
Arendt
Kierkegaard (save the bit about religious leaps of faith)
Heidegger
Lacan (though he's more psychoanalytical, so I'm not sure if he counts)
_Camus_
Rawls
Chomsky

And just to be clear, I do not consider Ayn Rand a philosopher. In fact, I do not consider her at all.


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## Snowflake Minuet (Feb 20, 2016)

Arthur Schopenhauer and Immanuel Kant are favorites, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the existential philosophers very soon in class: from the little I do know, I like them very much (but not well enough to name particular ones). And Socrates 


Although, Schroeder pretty much has it all figured out:










:kitteh:


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## Taciterse (Mar 31, 2017)

I'm actually a bit surprised at the lack of Weber mentions here.



abnormal said:


> _Camus_


The power of italics!



abnormal said:


> And just to be clear, I do not consider Ayn Rand a philosopher. In fact, I do not consider her at all.


I laughed too much at this.


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## abnormal (Jun 24, 2015)

Taciterse said:


> The power of italics!


Yes, the italics are crucial! Camus is the _ greatest_


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## Kenkao (Dec 18, 2016)

C.s. Lewis and thomas aquinas (not sure if they are considered as philosophers but for me they should)


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## babblingbrook (Aug 10, 2009)

Copy-paste:

I actually got into philosophy through literature, by reading Franz Kafka in my early 20's. So my interest was triggered by existentialism at first and so I tried to understand Kierkegaard, but was a bit put off at first by trying to get through Either/Or, which is quite an advanced and also very thick philosophical work. It is not a typical philosophy book, since it is also literary, but at the time it felt it was too much. Later, during my media studies I came into contact with postmodern philosophy; philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, John Fiske, Fredric Jameson and also Nietzsche, as he can be seen as a proto-postmodernist. After my studies, a couple years later I followed hundreds of audio lectures from The Teaching Company on Greek philosophy, continental philosophy including existential philosophy, moral and political philosophy and intellectual history. Also followed a MOOC from HarvardX on moral philosophy. Only last summer I rediscovered eastern philosophy, the Upanishads and the Tao Te Ching in particular and gained interest in Western thinkers such as Heraclitus, Heidegger, Spinoza and Whitehead, that I find very compatible with Eastern thought. 

So far my journey in philosophy.

My favourite philosophers, by category (rough categories):

Existential philosophy (Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers)
Humanistic psychology (Frankl, Fromm)
Jungian archetypes and mythology (Jung, Campbell)
Virtue ethics (Aristotle, Mencius, Macintyre, Sandel)
Human rights (Nussbaum, Sen)
Egalitarianism (Rawls, Rousseau, Marx)
Nonviolence (Thoreau, Gandhi, Tolstoy, ML King Jr)
Poststructuralism (De Saussure, Derrida, Baudrillard)
Metaphysics (Heraclitus, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Spinoza, Whitehead)
Eastern philosophy and Mysticism (Vedanta (unknown), Lao Tzu)


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## classicism (Jan 1, 2017)

I'm currently in a very passionate love-hate relationship with Immanuel Kant.


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