Dope Philosophers
 

i gotta write a lame-ass paper on some philosopher dude. Anyone got any recommendations for a good one at least? Preferably one that goes completely insane :)

Not sure what the topic is exactly, but Kant is always pretty interesting, Descartes is fun to tear apart, Nietzsche is pretty wild, Camus is the epitome of cool, if you're more interested mathematical philosophy Bertrand Russel or Georg Cantor are pretty sweet, and you know those mathematicians usually go insane. In terms of just life story or whatever, Blaise Pascal is pretty interesting especially after he loses his marbles. I can probably come up with more if you like, do you actually have to talk about their philosophical views (and compare them to something else?) or are you taking more of a historical/biographical perspective?

im supposed to concentrate more on their beliefs and less on their back story, and then give my opinion on it etc
You gave me a pretty large list already there so thanks :)

I highly recommend Voltaire, or Nietzsche, even though Nietzsche is kind of a pain to read.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is incredibly crytic and hard to get through, while Candide is short and to the point.

Plus, Voltaire is a neat psuedonym

Yeah, Camus is pretty good. And Kierkegaard. David Hume had some interesting ideas as well.

Immanuel Kant is to me one of the most interesting, but if you want to go more modern Bertrand Russel goes over a lot of ideas in an easy to digest manner, in Problems of Philosophy for instance. Camus is one of my favorite authors, so if you want to be able to read some great fiction and analyze it he's probably the one I would go for.

I wouldn't do Nietzsche since probably everyone will do him. Plus its ****ing stupid how everyone always quotes him and puts it everywhere because they think it makes them an intellectual.

I like Soren Kierkegaard alot.

i doubt that ethan,

the girl next to me asked if she could do kanye west :-/

:) stupidity is sometimes quite humorous...sometimes.

I agree with Crowquill. Existentialism ftw.

Too focused on theology, imo.

Everything I've read about Voltaire makes me think that I would totally hang out with him if he was alive. He seems funny.

I like Descartes. If you want to do something easy and boring, do like, Aristotle or Pluto or Socrates or Darwin. It would be easy to find a ton of stuff on them.

Check out Fyodor Dostoevsky though. I kind of got into philosophy after reading a book on him. I was also reading Sun Tzu and Machievelli's "The Prince". I was obsessed with war at one point.

Sometimes I'm glad I have left school. I live by my philosophy now! Good luck Matious.

neithzche (spelling) i'm pretty sure spent the second half of his life living in caves and wandering through the mountains bearded and mad as a hatter, atleast i'm pretty sure that's how it went, he also inspired hitlers nazi regieme, and famously declared 'god is dead', but i wouldn't go with him, kant was quite a boring one if you ask me and although they may be great plato and socrates would probably bore the crap into anyone.
mind you i'd either do thomas hobbes, jeramy bentham or peter kropotkin, hobbes was a pessimist who believed that given freedom from government the interests of each man would lead them to try and destroy one another, bentham was a utilitarian who belived the soul purpose of existance was to enjoy life not seperating base from higher pleasures basically implied he didnt care if that meant ****ing pigs if thats what tickled your fancy, he's also still got his body preserved in a university in england somewhere and the board still wheel him out for meetings which is kind of creepy, hethought the dead should be used as ornaments especially celebrity bodies so he requested that he not be buried but put on display. kropotkin had a pretty anarchistic view on life and believed if we were ridden of a system of government our mutual aid instincts would mean we'd all get on just fine, and he was a man of many examples. all three would be good choices if you ask me.

You could always go with Carl Marx. Just, you know, get the fuck out of America if you do it, commie.

A.Nothing is really know about Socrates life, he lives on through his student Plato and Plato's student Aristotle.
B.Correct me if I'm wrong-but I dont think he ever wrote anything down.

Surprise your teacher by not writing about a western philosopher (esp. Northern European 18th/19th/20th century or Ancient Greek). You could write about Asian philosophers like Lao Tzu, Zhuang Zi, Vātsyāyana (wrote the Karma Sutra) or maybe an African philosopher. More interesting than just harping on about a bunch of dreary Germans.

interesting and good advice. Eastern philosophy has always interested me, but I need to delve little deeper.

Plenty is known about his life and it's quite interesting, especially his death. I don't know of anything he wrote but the things he discussed lived on through Plato's writings. He "philospher" tree alone is something to write about.

I don't know why I'm defending him though, I said that he'd be a boring choice.

I liked Adam Smith's economic theories. But for someone looking for a ''dope philosopher'' this might be boring...

How about the guy who set up the religion ''church of the flying spaghetti monster'' ?

Evidence at Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

It's Karl Marx, and his theories weren't the same as communism. He wrote about the didactics of the enlightenment (I'm not sure if I translated this correctly), and Marxism. Which said that plan economics was better than free economics, because the lather would collapse.

My bad on the spelling, but he was very active in the communist parties.



And he wrote the "Communist Manifesto".

I thought that a part of marxism was that communism would eventually rule. I didn't really link him with being a communist himself.

Then again, I didn't really go deep into the matter.

[edit]

''The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the bourgeois social order and to eventually bring about a classless and stateless society.''

You were right.

I thought Marxism was an accepted thing in America, with the che t shirts and everything. Quite parallel to kurt cobain.

Longest sentence ever

I've been watching a lot of Colbert Report lately.

I would definitely do Marx. Socialism is a very interesting subject. Why Americans hate it so much is odd to me? I mean you have tons of people who don't want to work screaming for universal health care.

woah, dood,
i <3 alternatives to democracy as much as the next guy
but you're gonna have the CIA investigating MB if you keep talking like this...


:)

Marx is overrated.

Lol.

Yeah well if the CIA ends up wanting to mess with me than they will also have to mess with the whole trailer park!

Aye, i have a habit of doing that. Although i don't think I've actually been grammatically incorrect there. o.o

The Beatles.

If you have a fetish for hippy idealism, I guess.

I see nothing wrong with love, sex, music and drugs.

^babies. Lots of them too.

That's hardly a philosophy...

Einstein was absolutely crazy and did some important/weird stuff. Read up on him, youll be impressed.

I don't have to talk about whether or not I got raped in jail. - Tupac Shakur

i was under the impression that Einstein was a scientist, and not a philosopher.



maybe it's just me?