The Most Influential Philosophers Defined in 26 Minutes: From Socrates to Wittgenstein

The ques­tion of who’re the fif­teen most influ­en­tial philoso­phers of all time might not come up at each con­ver­sa­tion down on the pub — not out­facet the cir­cle of Open Cul­ture learn­ers, in any case. However even amongst non-spe­cial­ists, it may spark a dwell­li­er debate than you would possibly imag­ine. Names like Socrates, Aris­to­tle, Descartes, and Marx are recognized, in spite of everything, even among the many gen­er­al pub­lic who’ve nev­er learn a web page of philo­soph­i­cal textual content. All of them seem in the mil­lion-viewed video from Jay­carried out His­to­ry above, which takes its personal crack at nam­ing a high fif­teen. Its 26 min­utes additionally professional­vide a short bio­graph­i­cal sketch of every one, infor­ma­tive if lit­tered with odd mis­professional­nun­ci­a­tions, plus a cap­sulized sense of those philoso­phers’ final­ing concepts.

In pur­go well with of fact, Socrates cre­at­ed the ques­tion­ing methodology of dia­logue that bears his title. Pla­to, Socrates’ stu­dent, advo­cat­ed for rule by the enlight­ened and the pur­go well with of knowl­edge by way of the con­tem­pla­tion of pure kinds. Reject­ing Pla­to’s methodology, Aris­to­tle ded­i­cat­ed him­self to sys­tem­at­ic empir­i­cal obser­va­tion. On the oth­er facet of the world, Con­fu­cius unfold educate­ings concerning the cul­ti­va­tion of ethical advantage to fundamental­tain the social rela­tion­ships he noticed as the essential construct­ing blocks of civ­i­liza­tion­al order, which Chi­na even­tu­al­ly undertake­ed as its state phi­los­o­phy. Again in Europe, Augus­tine syn­the­sized Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and clas­si­cal phi­los­o­phy, lay­ing the bottom­work for medieval thought. Thomas Aquinas, too, ded­i­cat­ed him­self to a com­bi­na­tion of religion and rea­son, mak­ing a set of oft-cit­ed argu­ments for the exis­tence of God.

Search­ing a foun­da­tion of absolute­ly cer­tain knowl­edge, René Descartes arrived at self-aware­ness, well-known­ly declar­ing, “I feel, there­fore I’m” and artic­u­lat­ing his epony­mous twin­is­tic world­view. Even aside from his work on the character of knowl­edge, John Locke’s ideas on social orga­ni­za­tion and gov­ern­ment dwell on in Enlight­en­ment-influ­enced mod­ern democ­ra­cies even at the moment. David Hume mount­ed enjoyable­da­males­tal chal­lenges to estab­lished concepts of empiri­cism, ques­tion­ing our very notion that future occasions will mir­ror previous expe­ri­ence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau intro­duced the con­cep­tion of legit­i­mate polit­i­cal creator­i­ty as aris­ing from the “gen­er­al will,” a social agree­ment amongst free and equal indi­vid­u­als, which turned out to be cen­tral to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of the French Rev­o­lu­tion. Immanuel Kant labored to bridge the hole between ratio­nal­ism and empiri­cism, rec­on­cil­ing the position of each expe­ri­ence and the thoughts’s phys­i­cal struc­ture to the for­ma­tion of knowl­edge.

Amongst oth­er con­cepts, Georg Wil­helm Friedrich Hegel outlined that of dasein, which encap­su­lates the human mode of being (and which requires a life­time spent together with his writ­ings to know, if even then). A professional­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an, Karl Marx described human his­to­ry by way of eco­nom­ic struc­tures and sophistication strug­gle, and his imaginative and prescient of a per­fect­ly equal soci­ety forward nonetheless stays com­pelling to many. Friedrich Niet­zsche declared that “God is lifeless,” plac­ing the bur­den of defin­ing ethical­i­ty on man, and specif­i­cal­ly a fig­ure he referred to as the Über­males­sch. Lud­wig Wittgen­stein took it upon him­self to clarify the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage and actual­i­ty with the excessive­est rig­or. Within the com­ments, the video’s cre­ator teas­es an element two, which makes one received­der which philoso­phers might be includ­ed: Spin­oza? Hei­deg­ger? Sartre? The yr and a half it’s tak­en to date is certain­ly lengthy sufficient for the nar­ra­tor to have discovered to professional­nounce them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free On-line Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to 35 Philoso­phers by The College of Life: From Pla­to to Kant and Fou­cault

Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Con­ver­sa­tions With Well-known Philoso­phers (1978–87)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers Checklist the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

The Dai­ly Habits of Excessive­ly Professional­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

The 20 Most Influ­en­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Books of All Time: No Spoil­ers

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the creator of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.