This Tom Thumbnail rundown of the biggies of Western Philosophy is a work in progress, a massive undertaking requiring thimble loads of research and mega vats of conjecture. More philosophers will be added as the Muse inspires us to warp their contributions to Western Thought.
"Happiness runs in a circular motion
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea
Everything is a part of everything anyway
You can have everything if you let yourself be."
-- Donovan, a post-Socratic Hippie
THALES OF MILETUS 586 BCE Proposed theory that all is made of water. Unfortunately, he could not find anything on which to write his theory down.
ANAXIMANDER 610 - 546 BCE
Pre-Socratic, though he didn't know it at the time. Claimed that nature is ruled by laws, just like human society, only nature obeys hers much better. Posited that all natural phenomena manifest out of apeiron, a word which has been variously rendered in English as 'the indefinite', 'the boundless' and 'a covering worn by chefs to protect their clothes from food stains.'
PARMENIDES 5th Century BCE
Described two views of reality that bear an uncanny resemblance to the Buddha's depictions of Nirvana and Samsara. The guy was smart enough to point out that everything he had to say about the realm of appearances could only be opinion and not truth, because the realm of appearances was just that, appearance only.
PROTAGORAS 490 -420 BCE
Plato credits him with having created the role of the professional Sophist, which fellow thinkers promptly unionized as the International Brotherhood of Cogitators Local 3.14159. Created controversy with his statement "Man is the measure of all things." Detractors pointed out that the measuring tape was the measure of all things.
ZENO OF THE ELEATICS b. 445 BCE famous for his theory of Zeno’s paradox, which means that no referee in NFL history has ever been able to move the ball exactly half the distance to the goal line.
DIOGENES OF SINOPE b. 412 BCE
Son of a banker, exiled for defacing coins. He lived in a large clay jar, a model of austerity and voluntary poverty. Famous for wandering in broad daylight with a lit lamp. When asked what he was doing, he replied, "I'm looking for an honest man." Being the son of a banker must have really warped this guy but good.
EPICURUS (c. 341 – 270 BCE). Materialist, Atomist, Hedonist. This guy was here for the steaks and the sex.
ANAXIMENES OF MILETUS (c. 585 – 525 BCE). Believed that all was made of air. His colleagues agreed that his theory provided a very warm example of same.
PYTHAGORAS of Samos (c. 580 – c. 500 BCE).Proposed that the deepest reality is composed of numbers. Unfortunately, died 700 years before the first lottery.
HERACLITUS of Ephesus (c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) Best known for flux, fragments, fire and a mysterious river that was stepped into but once.
EMPEDOCLES of Acragas (c. 490 – 430 BCE). Advocate of ethical vegetarianism. Opposed by his carnivore brothers, Testicles and Follicles.
ION OF CHIOS 490 - 420 BCE
Contemporary of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. Like them he wrote many plays, most of which were considered so bleak as to earn him the nickname 'Negative Ion.'
HIPPIAS (middle of the 5th century BCE). Sophist, possible Solipsist. Said to be lazy and indolent as a youth, his mother often yelled, 'Get your Hippias out of here and find some work!'
SOCRATES of Athens (c. 470 – 399 BCE). One of the wisest men who ever lived; forced to drink poison by his colleagues because he liked boys. The colleagues went on to form the Klu Klux Flux School of Backward Eddying Recidivism.
ANTISTHENES (c. 444 – 365 BCE), not to be confused with ANTIFREEZE. Founder of Cynicism, the philosophy that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
ARISTIPPUS of Cyrene (c. 435 – 366 BCE). Advocate of ethical hedonism; asked females for permission before he jumped them.
PLATO (c. 427 – 347 BCE). Famed for notion of transcendental forms, a sublimation of temporal forms wrongly viewed as inadequate. He thought philosophers would make the best political leaders. Scumbags, thieves, manipulators, sociopaths, dictators and support teams of crooked lawyers made sure that would never happen.
"Happiness runs in a circular motion
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea
Everything is a part of everything anyway
You can have everything if you let yourself be."
-- Donovan, a post-Socratic Hippie
THALES OF MILETUS 586 BCE Proposed theory that all is made of water. Unfortunately, he could not find anything on which to write his theory down.
ANAXIMANDER 610 - 546 BCE
Pre-Socratic, though he didn't know it at the time. Claimed that nature is ruled by laws, just like human society, only nature obeys hers much better. Posited that all natural phenomena manifest out of apeiron, a word which has been variously rendered in English as 'the indefinite', 'the boundless' and 'a covering worn by chefs to protect their clothes from food stains.'
PARMENIDES 5th Century BCE
Described two views of reality that bear an uncanny resemblance to the Buddha's depictions of Nirvana and Samsara. The guy was smart enough to point out that everything he had to say about the realm of appearances could only be opinion and not truth, because the realm of appearances was just that, appearance only.
PROTAGORAS 490 -420 BCE
Plato credits him with having created the role of the professional Sophist, which fellow thinkers promptly unionized as the International Brotherhood of Cogitators Local 3.14159. Created controversy with his statement "Man is the measure of all things." Detractors pointed out that the measuring tape was the measure of all things.
ZENO OF THE ELEATICS b. 445 BCE famous for his theory of Zeno’s paradox, which means that no referee in NFL history has ever been able to move the ball exactly half the distance to the goal line.
DIOGENES OF SINOPE b. 412 BCE
Son of a banker, exiled for defacing coins. He lived in a large clay jar, a model of austerity and voluntary poverty. Famous for wandering in broad daylight with a lit lamp. When asked what he was doing, he replied, "I'm looking for an honest man." Being the son of a banker must have really warped this guy but good.
EPICURUS (c. 341 – 270 BCE). Materialist, Atomist, Hedonist. This guy was here for the steaks and the sex.
ANAXIMENES OF MILETUS (c. 585 – 525 BCE). Believed that all was made of air. His colleagues agreed that his theory provided a very warm example of same.
PYTHAGORAS of Samos (c. 580 – c. 500 BCE).Proposed that the deepest reality is composed of numbers. Unfortunately, died 700 years before the first lottery.
HERACLITUS of Ephesus (c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) Best known for flux, fragments, fire and a mysterious river that was stepped into but once.
EMPEDOCLES of Acragas (c. 490 – 430 BCE). Advocate of ethical vegetarianism. Opposed by his carnivore brothers, Testicles and Follicles.
ION OF CHIOS 490 - 420 BCE
Contemporary of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. Like them he wrote many plays, most of which were considered so bleak as to earn him the nickname 'Negative Ion.'
HIPPIAS (middle of the 5th century BCE). Sophist, possible Solipsist. Said to be lazy and indolent as a youth, his mother often yelled, 'Get your Hippias out of here and find some work!'
SOCRATES of Athens (c. 470 – 399 BCE). One of the wisest men who ever lived; forced to drink poison by his colleagues because he liked boys. The colleagues went on to form the Klu Klux Flux School of Backward Eddying Recidivism.
ANTISTHENES (c. 444 – 365 BCE), not to be confused with ANTIFREEZE. Founder of Cynicism, the philosophy that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
ARISTIPPUS of Cyrene (c. 435 – 366 BCE). Advocate of ethical hedonism; asked females for permission before he jumped them.
PLATO (c. 427 – 347 BCE). Famed for notion of transcendental forms, a sublimation of temporal forms wrongly viewed as inadequate. He thought philosophers would make the best political leaders. Scumbags, thieves, manipulators, sociopaths, dictators and support teams of crooked lawyers made sure that would never happen.
ARISTOTLE (c. 384 – 322 BCE). Prolific in all philosophical fields. If this dude had had a bath tub, he and his gay lover would have discovered the displacement principle long before Archimedes. My yoga teacher, Priscilla, thinks Leonardo Da Vinci was Aristotle's reincarnation.
EUCLID (c. 325 – 265 BCE). Founder of Euclidean geometry. Called one side of a triangle the hypotenuse, making it real easy for students to remember.
PLOTINUS (c. 205 – 270). Neoplatonist. His imaginal brilliance far outstrips the goofy limits of literal, mechanistic and purely mathematical formulations. Of course he will be forgotten.
ZENO OF CITIUM (c. 333 – 264 BCE). Founder of Stoicism. Held that the acceptance of objectivity allows the overcoming of passions. Killed while refusing to come in out of a downpour of hail stones.
CICERO (c. 106 BCE – 43 BCE) Roman statesman and orator, famous for his eloquent speeches. The one he made against Marc Anthony was so effective that Anthony had him assassinated.
PHILO (c. 20 BCE – 40 CE). Believed in the allegorical method of reading texts, a technique called Philo Poetry. Later, honey and sesame tahini were added to form Philo Pastry.
SENECA THE YOUNGER (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE). Stoic. His dad, Seneca the Elder, invented Senility.
SEXTUS EMPIRICUS (fl. in 2nd and 3rd centuries CE). Claims that he founded both Empiricism and a brothel have proven to be inaccurate. He subscribed to Pyrrhonism, a philosophy of skepticism so skeptical that it could not accept its own tenets long enough to formulate them.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (c. 354 – 430). Church father. Developed the doctrine of original sin after having an affair with an alien shape shifter from the Andromeda Galaxy.
al-RAZI (c. 865 – 925). Rationalist. Islamic philosopher. Claimed God created the universe by rearranging pre-existing laws. This would make God the first Lawyer.
ANSELM (c. 1034–1109). Christian philosopher. Produced ontological argument for the existence of God. God produced a good counterargument by removing him in 1109.
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI (c. 1182–1226). Ascetic. Popular at the Vatican where he made the Pope and Cardinals squirm in their finery, surrounded by art treasures worth more than the GDP of Europe.
ROGER BACON (c. 1214–1294). Empiricist, mathematician, named after his uncle, a notorious pig ravisher .
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
A fun loving guy who did his level best to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with faith in an invisible man in the sky. His favorite joke was:
Q: Why does the Ouroboros Snake eat its own tail?
A: It's trying to make ens meet.
MEISTER ECKHART (c. 1260 -1328) Mystic. So 'out there' that no one paid attention to his ramblings until Quantum Physics caught up with him 650 years later.
NICOLE ORESME (c. 1320 - 1382) Made contributions to economics, science, mathematics, theology and philosophy. Excelled at pottery, macrame, bear baiting and fence repair in his spare time.
WILLIAM OF OCKHAM (c. 1288-1348). Scholastic. Nominalist. Cut himself while shaving and changed the course of philosophy.
NICHOLAS OF CUSA (1401–1464). Christian philosopher. Formulated notion of the non-local nature of Presence (“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”) a mere twelve hundred years after Nagarjuna.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527). Political realist, protoype of the greedy,conniving, elected scumbag, meaning he has been more influential than all other philosophers on this list combined.
SIR THOMAS MORE (1478–1535). Humanist, coined the term "Utopia" which literally means "nowhere," making More quite the pessimist. Executed by Henry VIII for denying that Henry was the Chief Christian in all the land, a point that Henry validated by executing him.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483–1546). Major revolutionary Protestant Christian theologian. On his deathbed he said, "I hope what I've done is not going to cause problems in Ireland."
GIORDANO BRUNO (1548–1600). Philosopher and scientist, burned at the stake by Pope Clement VIII for daring to propose that the sun is the center of our solar system. Over 400 years later, the church has shifted its position to assert that the Vatican is the center of a tax exempt billionaire's club
RENE DESCARTES (1596 -1650) Formulated the famous axiom, "I think, therefore I am", apparently unaware that the night before, in deep sleep, he was still there.
ARNOLD GEULINCX (1624–1669). Important Occasionalist Theorist. Developed theories, but not often enough to be taken seriously.
BLAISE PASCAL (1623–1662).
Physicist, scientist. In 1634, borrowed five francs to place a bet that survives to this day. Nailed something key about the human condition when he wrote, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."
BARUCH SPINOZA (1632– 1677) Brilliant Spanish philosopher. Lousy bullfighter. Posited that the substance of absolutely everything that exists is God and is in God -- a concept of God that is still a concept and not the thing-itself-beyond-thingness (How's that for a concept?). Famous psychic, Madam Zostra, says Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Baruch Spinoza, though no one has a clue what would give her such an idea.
ISAAC NEWTON (1643–1727). Totally famous physicist who cribbed most of his good stuff from Jakob Boehme. History almost entirely ignores the fact that he was fascinated by the study of Alchemy most of his adult life, perhaps because Alchemy seems so non-Newtonian.
JOHN LOCKE (1632– 1704). Major Empiricist. Had no idea his senses were delivering no more than interpretations
of so called empirical data, but then, who does? When five senses are all you have, it's easy to mistake parts for the whole, or, as modern string theorists know, ports for the hole.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (1646–1716). Co-inventor of calculus, for which he will be forever loathed by math students.
GEORGE BERKELEY (1685–1753). Idealist, empiricist, perception buff. Had a hippie university named after him.
DAVID HUME (1711–1776). Empiricist and skeptic, a combination that led to constantly doubting hard evidence to the point of missing the obvious altogether.
VOLTAIRE (1694–1778). Inventor of something to do with electricity I think.
ADAM SMITH (1723–1790). Economic theorist, member of Scottish Enlightenment, which is not an oxymoron.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743–1826). Liberal political philosopher, best known for an affair with teenage slave, Sally Hemings, that lasted 38 years. Instrumental in drafting the Second Amendment of the Constitution which many Americans believe in with the same fervor that they believe in the doctrine that the world is 6,000 years old.
IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804). Deontologist, proponent of synthetic a priori truths. To this day, no one has a clue what those things mean. Some eco-activists argue that organic a priori truths are far preferable to synthetic, hence all truths should be labeled so that consumers know which is which.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860). Pessimist.
Hegel once tried to cheer him up by dropping a water filled condom on him from the roof of his Tubingen apartment. This only made Arthur more morose.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803– 1882). Trancendentalist, proto-Hippie, nature mystic. Spent so much time in the woods that the 'Where's Waldo?' thing was based on friends who went looking for him.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855). Existentialist. Together with Schopenhauer, responsible for taking the fun out of life for entire generations of philosophy students.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862). Trancendentalist, Pacifist. Found Emerson at Waldo's Pond. Best known for nature based idealism with hints of being a self-righteous prick.
KARL MARX (1818–1883). Socialist, formulated historical materialist theories about the means of production
in society, but seems to have overlooked those other two equally important
components, the means of seduction and the means of deception.
J. S. MILL (1806–1873). Utilitarian. Does NOT mean that he worked for a Utility company. Reputed to possess an I.Q. of 200, one of the highest recorded. Much difference of opinion exists concerning the enduring relevance of his views, perhaps because he was far too ethical for the rest of us.
HERBERT SPENCER (1820–1903). Nativist, Libertarian, Social Darwinist. Taught that societies progress through evolutionary phases just as do reptiles, primates and visiting aliens. If Spencer were alive today and living in Alabama or Arkansas he would seriously consider that Darwinian evolution might be reversible.
WILLIAM JAMES (1842–1910). Pragmatist. Psychologist. The Religious Experience. Experimenting with nitrous oxide, James had a cosmic revelation that resulted in a single sentence that he wrote down on a piece of paper, "Overall a smell of fried onions" -- a sentence that inspired an entire book by the British writer, Douglas Adams.
SIGMUND FREUD (1856–1939). Creator of the psycho-dynamic philosophy of mind. Well known for his competition with Sherlock Holmes to see who could snort more cocaine per annum. Responsible for the phrase "Freudian Slip" which is when you say one thing and mean your mother.
MAX WEBER (1864–1920). Social philosopher.
His wide ranging contributions led to the development of sociology as a modern academic discipline, which came as a blessed relief to millions of college students seeking something easier than physics, math and engineering.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820–1895). German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx, who was also the father of Marxist theory, so they might have been a gay couple. In 1848 Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, which Marx wanted to call the Manifest Communisto, but fortunately Engels won the coin toss. Lucky for Engels and Marx, they both died long before they could behold the disastrous implementation of their theories in the real world.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY (1820–1906). Feminist. Courageous woman who fueled the movement for women's suffrage. To this day, the majority of males in positions of power seem to think the term means that women want to suffer more.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN (1814–1876). Revolutionary anarchist. Tried time and again to rouse like minded colleagues to join the revolution but they refused to join anything because they were anarchists.
W. K. CLIFFORD (1845–1879). Evidentialist. Promoted the theory that it's just plain wrong to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Fundamentalists have interpreted this to mean that dinosaur bones are evidence of Satan trying to fool us into thinking that the world is more than 6,000 years old.
ERNST MACH (1838–1916). Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves. An 8th Century Tibetan sutra prophesies, "When the iron bird flies, Mach will be there with his number."
GOTTLOB FREGE (1848–1925). Influential analytic philosopher.
Frege's revolutionary new logic contributed to the development of modern mathematical logic and computer science. However, Frege's attempts to show that mathematics is reducible to logic did not wholly succeed. And if math is not so reducible, how much less so animal husbandry, Morris Dancing and tenesmus.
JOHN DEWEY (1859–1952). Pragmatist, Busy Beaver.
A blatant over achiever, Dewey wrote about psychology, philosophy, educational reform, nature, art, logic, inquiry, democracy, empiricism, humanism, naturalism, contextualism, pedagogy, epistemology, science, social and political theory. Published more than 700 articles in 140 journals and approximately 40 books in his lifetime -- a volume of work so enormous that, to keep track of it all, archivists developed the Dewey Decimal System.
EDMUND HUSSERL (1859–1938). Founder of phenomenology, no relation to the sport of Husserling. Formulated a method of “transcendental phenomenology” that employed a truckload of brilliant, complex, convoluted terminologies for trying to get at what the Buddha meant by “beginner’s mind” while stumbling over the oxymoron of a personal "transcendental subject."
SAMUEL ALEXANDER (1859–1938). Perceptual realist.
Blissfully unaware of the Copenhagen Interpretation and of the impossibility of perceiving reality sans our built-in observational filters.
CARL JUNG (1875–1961). Founded analytical psychology.
Swiss psychiatrist who annoyed Freud with his vision of psychology as encompassing far more than sexual determinism. Jung’s interests in Eastern philosophies, dream symbolism and the occult would have had him dismissed as a mystic, save for the fact that he wore natty three piece suits, wire rimmed glasses and knew a hundred times as much about everything as did his detractors.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO (1864–1936).
A contender in the Schopenhauer pessimism sweepstakes, Unamuno's philosophy was a negation of all systems and an affirmation that faith just might work even if it has only itself to believe in.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861–1947). Logician.
Winner of an award when he was 15 for having the most Caucasian sounding name in his boarding school, ANW went on to develop a Process oriented view of reality that is kind of like a quantum wave looking for a shore upon which to crash.
MARTIN BUBER (1878–1965). Jewish philosopher, existentialist.
Changed the spelling of his surname from Boober to Buber due to constant razzing by school chums. Possibly as a consequence of this unwarranted abuse, he developed a philosophy focused on the education of character, something the aforementioned chums clearly needed .
GEORGE SANTAYANA (1863–1952). Pragmatist, naturalist.
Spanish American, Harvard Ph.D. philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist who wrote tons of aphorisms, a literary form preferred by those who enjoy sounding like incontestable fonts of wisdom. See also: any 7 out of 10 Facebook posts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872–1970). British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, anti-war, anti-nuclear pacifist and social critic; recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950. Fondly remembered for his astute observation, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951). Analytic philosopher. Logician superordinaire. Austrian philosopher who contributed to a great 20th Century philosophical movement — Logical Positivism, a discipline swamped by the Illogical Negativism currently practiced by 89.3% of the global poplation.
PIERRE TEILHARD de CHARDIN (1881–1955). Christian Evolutionist (a term considered a moron des oxen by the French) .
French philosopher, Jesuit priest, paleontologist and geologist. The Catholic church tried its best to shut him up for daring to offer a view of creation filled with science. Known for his Omega Point vision which asserted that all creation was somehow lumbering toward a cosmic awakening. Some 60 years after his death, we’re still in deep lumber.
NIKOLAI BERDDYAEV (1874–1948). Existentialist.
Christian Existentialist, which means he believed in a God who created a confusing, meaningless and absurd world, a God referred to by Woody Allen as ‘an underachiever’ and by George Carlin as ‘an office temp with a bad attitude.’ Berdyaev championed creativity and was rebellious to all authority, which might refine the descriptor to ‘Christian Existentialist Teenager.’
ERNST CASSIRER (1874–1945).
As the artichoke is a plant so impossibly ponderous and ornate that it just has to be a French vegetable, so is Cassirer unique among twentieth-century philosophers. At once analytic, rational, mytho-poetic and existential-hermeneutical, generations of English Lit and Philosophy profs have found his work to be just the ticket to sink undergrads in way over their heads.
ANDRE BRETON (1896-1966)
French guy. Founder of Surrealism, which he defined as 'pure psychic automatism.' Unfortunate that he did not live long to enough to see the absolute triumph of automatism with the advent of 'Honey Boo Boo', 'Duck Dynasty' and FOX News. He implemented the principle of 'automatic writing', a free form skill that quickly led Paris book publishers to implement the principle of automatic rejection.
EUCLID (c. 325 – 265 BCE). Founder of Euclidean geometry. Called one side of a triangle the hypotenuse, making it real easy for students to remember.
PLOTINUS (c. 205 – 270). Neoplatonist. His imaginal brilliance far outstrips the goofy limits of literal, mechanistic and purely mathematical formulations. Of course he will be forgotten.
ZENO OF CITIUM (c. 333 – 264 BCE). Founder of Stoicism. Held that the acceptance of objectivity allows the overcoming of passions. Killed while refusing to come in out of a downpour of hail stones.
CICERO (c. 106 BCE – 43 BCE) Roman statesman and orator, famous for his eloquent speeches. The one he made against Marc Anthony was so effective that Anthony had him assassinated.
PHILO (c. 20 BCE – 40 CE). Believed in the allegorical method of reading texts, a technique called Philo Poetry. Later, honey and sesame tahini were added to form Philo Pastry.
SENECA THE YOUNGER (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE). Stoic. His dad, Seneca the Elder, invented Senility.
SEXTUS EMPIRICUS (fl. in 2nd and 3rd centuries CE). Claims that he founded both Empiricism and a brothel have proven to be inaccurate. He subscribed to Pyrrhonism, a philosophy of skepticism so skeptical that it could not accept its own tenets long enough to formulate them.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (c. 354 – 430). Church father. Developed the doctrine of original sin after having an affair with an alien shape shifter from the Andromeda Galaxy.
al-RAZI (c. 865 – 925). Rationalist. Islamic philosopher. Claimed God created the universe by rearranging pre-existing laws. This would make God the first Lawyer.
ANSELM (c. 1034–1109). Christian philosopher. Produced ontological argument for the existence of God. God produced a good counterargument by removing him in 1109.
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI (c. 1182–1226). Ascetic. Popular at the Vatican where he made the Pope and Cardinals squirm in their finery, surrounded by art treasures worth more than the GDP of Europe.
ROGER BACON (c. 1214–1294). Empiricist, mathematician, named after his uncle, a notorious pig ravisher .
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
A fun loving guy who did his level best to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with faith in an invisible man in the sky. His favorite joke was:
Q: Why does the Ouroboros Snake eat its own tail?
A: It's trying to make ens meet.
MEISTER ECKHART (c. 1260 -1328) Mystic. So 'out there' that no one paid attention to his ramblings until Quantum Physics caught up with him 650 years later.
NICOLE ORESME (c. 1320 - 1382) Made contributions to economics, science, mathematics, theology and philosophy. Excelled at pottery, macrame, bear baiting and fence repair in his spare time.
WILLIAM OF OCKHAM (c. 1288-1348). Scholastic. Nominalist. Cut himself while shaving and changed the course of philosophy.
NICHOLAS OF CUSA (1401–1464). Christian philosopher. Formulated notion of the non-local nature of Presence (“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”) a mere twelve hundred years after Nagarjuna.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527). Political realist, protoype of the greedy,conniving, elected scumbag, meaning he has been more influential than all other philosophers on this list combined.
SIR THOMAS MORE (1478–1535). Humanist, coined the term "Utopia" which literally means "nowhere," making More quite the pessimist. Executed by Henry VIII for denying that Henry was the Chief Christian in all the land, a point that Henry validated by executing him.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483–1546). Major revolutionary Protestant Christian theologian. On his deathbed he said, "I hope what I've done is not going to cause problems in Ireland."
GIORDANO BRUNO (1548–1600). Philosopher and scientist, burned at the stake by Pope Clement VIII for daring to propose that the sun is the center of our solar system. Over 400 years later, the church has shifted its position to assert that the Vatican is the center of a tax exempt billionaire's club
RENE DESCARTES (1596 -1650) Formulated the famous axiom, "I think, therefore I am", apparently unaware that the night before, in deep sleep, he was still there.
ARNOLD GEULINCX (1624–1669). Important Occasionalist Theorist. Developed theories, but not often enough to be taken seriously.
BLAISE PASCAL (1623–1662).
Physicist, scientist. In 1634, borrowed five francs to place a bet that survives to this day. Nailed something key about the human condition when he wrote, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."
BARUCH SPINOZA (1632– 1677) Brilliant Spanish philosopher. Lousy bullfighter. Posited that the substance of absolutely everything that exists is God and is in God -- a concept of God that is still a concept and not the thing-itself-beyond-thingness (How's that for a concept?). Famous psychic, Madam Zostra, says Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Baruch Spinoza, though no one has a clue what would give her such an idea.
ISAAC NEWTON (1643–1727). Totally famous physicist who cribbed most of his good stuff from Jakob Boehme. History almost entirely ignores the fact that he was fascinated by the study of Alchemy most of his adult life, perhaps because Alchemy seems so non-Newtonian.
JOHN LOCKE (1632– 1704). Major Empiricist. Had no idea his senses were delivering no more than interpretations
of so called empirical data, but then, who does? When five senses are all you have, it's easy to mistake parts for the whole, or, as modern string theorists know, ports for the hole.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (1646–1716). Co-inventor of calculus, for which he will be forever loathed by math students.
GEORGE BERKELEY (1685–1753). Idealist, empiricist, perception buff. Had a hippie university named after him.
DAVID HUME (1711–1776). Empiricist and skeptic, a combination that led to constantly doubting hard evidence to the point of missing the obvious altogether.
VOLTAIRE (1694–1778). Inventor of something to do with electricity I think.
ADAM SMITH (1723–1790). Economic theorist, member of Scottish Enlightenment, which is not an oxymoron.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743–1826). Liberal political philosopher, best known for an affair with teenage slave, Sally Hemings, that lasted 38 years. Instrumental in drafting the Second Amendment of the Constitution which many Americans believe in with the same fervor that they believe in the doctrine that the world is 6,000 years old.
IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804). Deontologist, proponent of synthetic a priori truths. To this day, no one has a clue what those things mean. Some eco-activists argue that organic a priori truths are far preferable to synthetic, hence all truths should be labeled so that consumers know which is which.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860). Pessimist.
Hegel once tried to cheer him up by dropping a water filled condom on him from the roof of his Tubingen apartment. This only made Arthur more morose.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803– 1882). Trancendentalist, proto-Hippie, nature mystic. Spent so much time in the woods that the 'Where's Waldo?' thing was based on friends who went looking for him.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855). Existentialist. Together with Schopenhauer, responsible for taking the fun out of life for entire generations of philosophy students.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862). Trancendentalist, Pacifist. Found Emerson at Waldo's Pond. Best known for nature based idealism with hints of being a self-righteous prick.
KARL MARX (1818–1883). Socialist, formulated historical materialist theories about the means of production
in society, but seems to have overlooked those other two equally important
components, the means of seduction and the means of deception.
J. S. MILL (1806–1873). Utilitarian. Does NOT mean that he worked for a Utility company. Reputed to possess an I.Q. of 200, one of the highest recorded. Much difference of opinion exists concerning the enduring relevance of his views, perhaps because he was far too ethical for the rest of us.
HERBERT SPENCER (1820–1903). Nativist, Libertarian, Social Darwinist. Taught that societies progress through evolutionary phases just as do reptiles, primates and visiting aliens. If Spencer were alive today and living in Alabama or Arkansas he would seriously consider that Darwinian evolution might be reversible.
WILLIAM JAMES (1842–1910). Pragmatist. Psychologist. The Religious Experience. Experimenting with nitrous oxide, James had a cosmic revelation that resulted in a single sentence that he wrote down on a piece of paper, "Overall a smell of fried onions" -- a sentence that inspired an entire book by the British writer, Douglas Adams.
SIGMUND FREUD (1856–1939). Creator of the psycho-dynamic philosophy of mind. Well known for his competition with Sherlock Holmes to see who could snort more cocaine per annum. Responsible for the phrase "Freudian Slip" which is when you say one thing and mean your mother.
MAX WEBER (1864–1920). Social philosopher.
His wide ranging contributions led to the development of sociology as a modern academic discipline, which came as a blessed relief to millions of college students seeking something easier than physics, math and engineering.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820–1895). German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx, who was also the father of Marxist theory, so they might have been a gay couple. In 1848 Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, which Marx wanted to call the Manifest Communisto, but fortunately Engels won the coin toss. Lucky for Engels and Marx, they both died long before they could behold the disastrous implementation of their theories in the real world.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY (1820–1906). Feminist. Courageous woman who fueled the movement for women's suffrage. To this day, the majority of males in positions of power seem to think the term means that women want to suffer more.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN (1814–1876). Revolutionary anarchist. Tried time and again to rouse like minded colleagues to join the revolution but they refused to join anything because they were anarchists.
W. K. CLIFFORD (1845–1879). Evidentialist. Promoted the theory that it's just plain wrong to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Fundamentalists have interpreted this to mean that dinosaur bones are evidence of Satan trying to fool us into thinking that the world is more than 6,000 years old.
ERNST MACH (1838–1916). Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves. An 8th Century Tibetan sutra prophesies, "When the iron bird flies, Mach will be there with his number."
GOTTLOB FREGE (1848–1925). Influential analytic philosopher.
Frege's revolutionary new logic contributed to the development of modern mathematical logic and computer science. However, Frege's attempts to show that mathematics is reducible to logic did not wholly succeed. And if math is not so reducible, how much less so animal husbandry, Morris Dancing and tenesmus.
JOHN DEWEY (1859–1952). Pragmatist, Busy Beaver.
A blatant over achiever, Dewey wrote about psychology, philosophy, educational reform, nature, art, logic, inquiry, democracy, empiricism, humanism, naturalism, contextualism, pedagogy, epistemology, science, social and political theory. Published more than 700 articles in 140 journals and approximately 40 books in his lifetime -- a volume of work so enormous that, to keep track of it all, archivists developed the Dewey Decimal System.
EDMUND HUSSERL (1859–1938). Founder of phenomenology, no relation to the sport of Husserling. Formulated a method of “transcendental phenomenology” that employed a truckload of brilliant, complex, convoluted terminologies for trying to get at what the Buddha meant by “beginner’s mind” while stumbling over the oxymoron of a personal "transcendental subject."
SAMUEL ALEXANDER (1859–1938). Perceptual realist.
Blissfully unaware of the Copenhagen Interpretation and of the impossibility of perceiving reality sans our built-in observational filters.
CARL JUNG (1875–1961). Founded analytical psychology.
Swiss psychiatrist who annoyed Freud with his vision of psychology as encompassing far more than sexual determinism. Jung’s interests in Eastern philosophies, dream symbolism and the occult would have had him dismissed as a mystic, save for the fact that he wore natty three piece suits, wire rimmed glasses and knew a hundred times as much about everything as did his detractors.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO (1864–1936).
A contender in the Schopenhauer pessimism sweepstakes, Unamuno's philosophy was a negation of all systems and an affirmation that faith just might work even if it has only itself to believe in.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861–1947). Logician.
Winner of an award when he was 15 for having the most Caucasian sounding name in his boarding school, ANW went on to develop a Process oriented view of reality that is kind of like a quantum wave looking for a shore upon which to crash.
MARTIN BUBER (1878–1965). Jewish philosopher, existentialist.
Changed the spelling of his surname from Boober to Buber due to constant razzing by school chums. Possibly as a consequence of this unwarranted abuse, he developed a philosophy focused on the education of character, something the aforementioned chums clearly needed .
GEORGE SANTAYANA (1863–1952). Pragmatist, naturalist.
Spanish American, Harvard Ph.D. philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist who wrote tons of aphorisms, a literary form preferred by those who enjoy sounding like incontestable fonts of wisdom. See also: any 7 out of 10 Facebook posts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872–1970). British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, anti-war, anti-nuclear pacifist and social critic; recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950. Fondly remembered for his astute observation, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951). Analytic philosopher. Logician superordinaire. Austrian philosopher who contributed to a great 20th Century philosophical movement — Logical Positivism, a discipline swamped by the Illogical Negativism currently practiced by 89.3% of the global poplation.
PIERRE TEILHARD de CHARDIN (1881–1955). Christian Evolutionist (a term considered a moron des oxen by the French) .
French philosopher, Jesuit priest, paleontologist and geologist. The Catholic church tried its best to shut him up for daring to offer a view of creation filled with science. Known for his Omega Point vision which asserted that all creation was somehow lumbering toward a cosmic awakening. Some 60 years after his death, we’re still in deep lumber.
NIKOLAI BERDDYAEV (1874–1948). Existentialist.
Christian Existentialist, which means he believed in a God who created a confusing, meaningless and absurd world, a God referred to by Woody Allen as ‘an underachiever’ and by George Carlin as ‘an office temp with a bad attitude.’ Berdyaev championed creativity and was rebellious to all authority, which might refine the descriptor to ‘Christian Existentialist Teenager.’
ERNST CASSIRER (1874–1945).
As the artichoke is a plant so impossibly ponderous and ornate that it just has to be a French vegetable, so is Cassirer unique among twentieth-century philosophers. At once analytic, rational, mytho-poetic and existential-hermeneutical, generations of English Lit and Philosophy profs have found his work to be just the ticket to sink undergrads in way over their heads.
ANDRE BRETON (1896-1966)
French guy. Founder of Surrealism, which he defined as 'pure psychic automatism.' Unfortunate that he did not live long to enough to see the absolute triumph of automatism with the advent of 'Honey Boo Boo', 'Duck Dynasty' and FOX News. He implemented the principle of 'automatic writing', a free form skill that quickly led Paris book publishers to implement the principle of automatic rejection.
Andre Breton Self-Portrait 1936
MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889–1976). Phenomenologist.
German philosopher who has been conveniently popped into the baskets of phenomenology and existentialism by Encyclopedia writers too uncomfortable with his Nagarjunian brilliance to get where he is really coming from. Most of these writers probably think Dasein is a river in Paris.
KURT GöDEL (1906–1978). Vienna Circle.
Called by many of the few math geeks who understand him, “the most important logician of our times.” Took meta-mathematics to a level that would make John Von Neumann reach for an abacus. Foresaw the importance of large cardinals in set theory long before the Vatican discovered their all too human foibles.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905–1980). Humanist, Existentialist Philosopher, Vivant Agités.
Regularly drank strong coffee at the restaurant Les Deux Magots in Paris. His 'existential dread' was probably caffeine nerves. If he had lived on brown rice, tofu and Hatha Yoga he would have 'existed' totally differently. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, but turned it down, declaring that a prize given by old Norwegian farts who never accomplished anything noteworthy filled him with nausea. Despite his constant whining about the absurdity of being, Sartre managed to saw off a polyamorous relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. His novel, 'Au Revoir Beauvoir Boudoir' was never published.
ALBERT CAMUS (1913–1960). Absurdist.
Another Nobel Prize laureate, Camus was a French Algerian philosopher and novelist whose principal work 'The Outsider' gave Absurdism the respect it has no doubt always obscenely craved. Odd though it may seem, Camus opposed some of the ideas of the Surrealist movement of Andre Breton, while being himself an Absurdist, which is sort of like the pot calling the kettle a cuisinart lemming herder.
AYN RAND (1905-1882) Objectivist, Individualist. Dropped middle initial 'L.' on the advice of publishers.
Promulgated the view that only what exists out there in the quantifiable, objective world is worthy of our attention. We have to learn how to turn a profit on all that quantifiable stuff and teach bums and free loaders how to do likewise or, at the very least, show 'em how to follow our heroic, captain-of-industry lead. Her only regret in life was that she was born too soon to be Mrs. Donald Trump.
MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926 - 1984)
French historian and philosopher. Wrote extensively on the histories of madness and medicine making the two ever more indistinguishable as he proceeded. In ‘The Order of Things', Foucault dared to point out the Emperor’s New Clothes of language based thought. We claim that ideas represent objects. Truth is, ideas don’t resemble objects at all. Is the idea of an elephant larger than the idea of a mouse? Thanks to what he gathered from Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Kant and Husserl, Foucault offered a vision of language riddled man as a schizoid amalgam of transcendental subjectivity and a groveling, word wielding thingness stuck in history.
JACQUES LACAN (1901-1981) Structuralism
Lacan started out as a structuralist, searching for the structures and meta-structures that underlie everything humans do; a quest that he gave up when he found the definitive underlying structure to be the Rube Goldberg Device. Lacan became a post-structuralist, proposing the radical idea that it is impossible to capture reality in language, going on to language over two dozen books on the subject.
NOAM CHOMSKY (b.1928) linguist, philosopher, activist, logician, manufactured consent deconstructionist.
Out-languaged Lacan by a country mile, authoring over 100 books. In his own words, 'a fairly traditional anarchist' Chomsky has been recognized by at least four U.S. Presidents as way too smart to pay any attention to. Mainstream news media will never forgive him for pointing out the Grand Canyon sized gap that exists between what they report and something called reality.
JACQUES DERRIDA (1930-2004). Deconstructionist. French philosopher.
Derrida set out to tease apart all binary oppositions that constitute the semiotic warp and woof of meaning itself. This grand 'neti,neti' enterprise made sense for a while as scores of European Deconstructionists meticulously dismantled all possibility of saying anything conclusive about anything, ever. However, as with Sartre and shiploads of continental existentialists before Derrida, all this abstruse intellectual labor seemed to produce nada in the happiness dept. Derrida wrote, "Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety." Who wouldn't want to deconstruct that?
HILARY PUTNAM (b.1926)
American philosopher who often said he felt like a man trapped in a Hilary's body. Famous for scrutinizing and critiquing his own work as vigorously as he tackled the work of others. This resulted in frequent changes in his own philosophical positions, royally annoying his critics who couldn't pin anything on him and make it stick. Developed the Twin Earth thought experiment based on the Shakespeare line, "A rose by any other name would be a jug of XYZ.'
FROM HERE TO THE PRESENT DAY UNDER CONSTRUCTION PLEASE STAY TUNED... it's not easy mocking all these giants.
THEORETICAL PHYSICISTS and PHYSIRETICAL THEORISTS
ERWIN SCHRODINGER (1887-1961) Austrian physicist, closet Bodhisattva.
Formulated equations which remain, to this day, hallmarks of Quantum Wave Mechanics. Versed in Asian philosophies, Schrodinger created brilliant syntheses of western logic and Advaitan non-dualist insight. He is best remembered for something about a cat.
stay tuned for...
EINSTEIN, BOHR, de BROGLIE, PAULI, FERMI, HEISENBERG, WHEELER, BOHM, EVERETT, FEYNMAN, SARFATTI, etc., etc.
Called 'mystics' by some for pointing out the obvious -- that matter does not at all exist in the way it appears to exist to our five senses.
HAWKING
Not a mystic. Believes aliens exist.
Yardarm Economics
R u l e s t h e B i g B o y s L i v e B y
The greater the concentration of wealth, the more invisible it must be made.
Do your utmost to obscure the truth that those who work for money should not have to pay interest to those who print it out of thin air, instantly creating debt for all who borrow it. In any fair society, of course, those who print the money would have to work for it just like everyone else, making a reasonable living wage, not immense windfall profits at the expense of everyone else. There would be no interest levy, unless the interest accrued was shared by all who actively participated in making and spending money.
Unfairness must remain invisible. Did we say that already?
Control and manipulate every aspect of money flow while making it appear that the government is in charge of doing so. If you can't win government complicity in maintaining this illusion through lobbying and bribes, play the fear card, "The economy will collapse if people find out they're being debted-to-death by a private corporation that calls itself "The Federal Reserve." (It is neither Federal, nor does it reserve anything).
When absolutely necessary, put your job at Goldman Sachs on hold and step in as a high ranking Washington bureacrat to secure government bailouts to keep those unearned bonuses topped up.
Buy newspapers, television and internet media to skew news reporting in the general direction of maintaining invisibility .
Count on the public being dumb enough not to know that the Fed has shareholders, meaning it is a private corporation (shamelessly repeating this, because no one ever seems to get what such an outrageously unethical setup MEANS!) . Above all, strive to maintain the illusion that it is the government that issues money, when it is actually the Fed, which pays its shareholders a dividend of 6% per annum for producing absolutely nothing that anyone can eat, drive or wear. As a big boy shareholder, you don't even have to get off your Corinthian leather couch print the money. Leave that to the wage slaves who pay taxes to pay off debt which you imposed on them in the first place by loaning them money at interest through fractional reserve banking. Does that give you a power hardon or what?
If anyone criticizes you for being a selfish 1% pig, fall back on the old saw that as a captain of industry you are creating thousands of jobs via trickle down effects in the economy. Pray that your critics are too inept to notice that all the trickle has been siphoning UP into your pockets for decades, all the jobs have been outsourced to India, Taiwan and Indonesia and your hefty eight figure corporate profit has been squirreled away in the Emerald Isles, tax free. God bless the Irish.
Did we mention the importance of invisibility? Are you even aware of those money exchange offices adjacent to half a dozen airport terminals in Switzerland; the ones regularly visited by very rich people who fly in, hide more money and fly out?
