What, if any, philosophers do you think are still useful today?

[Ostrinski]

We had a thread like this but I thought it was an interesting concept for a dialogue.

Do you think philosophy is still useful for understanding society, human relations, the human experience, the unfurling of historical events, etc. or have the sciences consumed the practicality of philosophy in this regard?

If philosophy is still useful in your opinion, which philosophers do you have in mind, what ideas in particular do you think are helpful, and how are they helpful in relation to society in its current state?

[Rafiq]

There are very few. What do you mean "today"? As in still living? Althusser is useful, in many respects (On Humanism, on Marx, on modern capitalism, etc.).

So few, that I really can't even think of any who are unequivocally useful. Zizek can be useful sometimes, specifically in regards to Religion, on modern Ideology (sometimes) but he's an opportunist. Alain Badieu is a vulgarist. I don't know.

[Ostrinski]

By today i was referring to the usefulness of any philosopher in regard to society in its current state. Not just philosophers living today.

Sorry for the confusion.

[JPSartre12]

I would have to side (surprisingly!) with Sartre. I think that we live in an age of such appalling psychological dishonesty that his we need a pretty big dose of his existential self-accoutability

[Beeth]

Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Sartre. I like Plato's idealism even though I am not an idealist myself. It gives us something to fight for. Also the others I mentioned ... They are relevant because existentialism is always relevant. It is realistic.

[The Jay]

Yes, philosophy is always useful. I don't see how it can't be to be honest. That said, I tend to side with Existentialism and think that Virtue Ethics is silly.

[JPSartre12]

Yes, philosophy is always useful. I don't see how it can't be to be honest. That said, I tend to side with Existentialism and think that Virtue Ethics is silly.

What makes you think existentialism is silly? :lol:

[o well this is ok I guess]

What makes you think existentialism is silly? :lol: No, he said that virtue ethics is silly.

[Magón]

Immanuel Kant and David Hume, are two interesting philosophers I think, who still have some relevance today.

Irony is, Kant didn't like Hume's whole Skepticism bit.

[Rafiq]

By today i was referring to the usefulness of any philosopher in regard to society in its current state. Not just philosophers living today.

Sorry for the confusion.

Ah, I see. I'd say that Althusser, and the rest of the Freudo-Marxian camp.

[JPSartre12]

No, he said that virtue ethics is silly.

You're right :tt2:

[Ostrinski]

Immanuel Kant and David Hume, are two interesting philosophers I think, who still have some relevance today.

Irony is, Kant didn't like Hume's whole Skepticism bit.i figured someone would say Kant. Do you think his views on ethics and anthropology are what are relevant? If so, in what concrete way?

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Sometimes Sartre, definitely Nietzsche and always Foucault (not necessarily a philosopher but certainly necessary in the context of social theory). Others like Althusser are interesting/relevant.

I like Zizek but don't understand where he is useful outside of his entertainment value. He says that people see him as a funny man so that they can refuse to take him seriously and it's a funny joke, until you realize that it might, in fact, be true. I've read some of his stuff and seen a couple of his documentaries and it seems that he is, while great at examining pop-culture phenomena through Lacanian spectacles, a pop-culture phenomena in himself. He's like a more 'fun' Chomsky but with less to say about actual affairs as opposed to matters of pop-culture. Always a pleasure to watch/read though.

[L.A.P.]

Felix Guttari, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida :rolleyes:

[Os Cangaceiros]

Felix Guttari, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida :rolleyes:

The thread was about useful philosophers, not brain aneurysm-inducing ones. :lol:

[Lynx]

RevLeft's Rosa Lichtenstein

[Ostrinski]

Felix Guttari, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida :rolleyes:Why (not contesting your input, but I know pretty much next to nothing with regard to philosophy)?

[L.A.P.]

Why (not contesting your input, but I know pretty much next to nothing with regard to philosophy)?

They are three 20th-century French philosophers known to be incredibly obscure and complex, they are of similar schools of thought as philosophers like Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. I posted that sarcastically because they epitomize ,for a lot of people, useless philosophy. I mean, their stuff is whatever. I think the whole trying to decipher philosophy into "what is useful" and "what is useless" thing is kind of silly anyways. But Anti-Oedipus by Felix Guttari & Gilles Deleuze and Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida are probably the most opaque texts ever written in philosophy.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Karl Pinkerton.

http://www.finger-jam.co.uk/fjw/wp-content/uploads/karl-pilkington-by-richard-castle1.jpg

[Magón]

i figured someone would say Kant. Do you think his views on ethics and anthropology are what are relevant? If so, in what concrete way?

I'm not too familiar with Kant's take on anthropology, so I can't speak on that, but I find that his ideas on ethics with their obvious moral tilt, are relevant because whether they realize it or not, liberals today basically hold the same opinions somewhat when it comes to things like experience or knowing certain things.

Personally I'm not a fan of Kant, but find him relevant because I've met so many liberals who share some of what he was saying, and it's easier to debate with them when having an idea of where they're coming from.

[Philo]

I think philosophy is absolutely still useful and necessary, but that it, in a Kantian vein, cannot be "dogmatic." It does not posit its own theories about what sorts of things exist and the like - that is the terrain of the particular sciences. Rather, philosophy is continuous with (there is no hard line between "science" and "philosophy") but distinguishable from the particular sciences, as a kind of "metascience." It is a reflective, critical attempt at understanding our place in the world and how to navigate between the various first-order disciplines. It is, to use Wilfrid Sellars' phrase:

"The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term."

Philosophy is not the "ground of all knowledge" or the "queen of the sciences," partly because it presupposes a world in which we act and of which we have some knowledge (not to mention a social context for philosophy as an activity to take place in) on which to reflect, so it always engages in media res. But on the other hand, no part of our framework is beyond criticism. This conception of philosophy is "dialectical" in the proper sense of the term rather than the common Marxist* use of "dialectical" (which is essentially just to paper over any holes). Philosophy is critical in the Kantian sense, and this is fitting because I don't think the radical leftist politic of liberation of humanity and the creation of socialism makes sense except as the apotheosis of the Enlightenment project. The Enlightenment taken to its rational conclusion ends up rejecting liberalism, capitalism, abstract humanism etc. as not radical enough.

I would also add that in my conception, philosophy does not aim at "purely theoretical" knowledge. In other words, philosophy "knows how" and does not "know that." The pronouncements of philosophy must be a guide to our activity, whether that be having consequences for political action, or guiding further inquiry (say, by making sense of the relationship between two related theories in two different special sciences). This is why philosophy is not only useful, but necessary today; without critical reflection, we simply cannot hope to navigate the various domains of knowledge and practice.

As for which philosophers are useful, I would like to start, somewhat ironically given the last post, with Kant. First, Kant's approach to philosophy as Kritik. Second, his radical moving-beyond of the "empiricism-rationalism" divide. Fourth, his defense of natural science in the face of radical skepticism (postmodernism today anyone?) And fifth, his metaphysics of morality and understanding of morality as intersubjective. We can, and should I think, reject some specific conclusions, such as his liberalism, his abstract humanism, his maintaining God as "transcendentally ideal," etc., but I think many basic aspects of his approach to philosophy are just as timely today as they were at his own time.

Second, some of the "masters of suspicion," Nietzsche and Stirner. They are useful for putting most philosophy, especially morality, in their place, and Nietzsche's understanding of language was a crucial precursor to modern biological theories of language. Nietzsche and Stirner's obliteration of asceticism is also politically relevant in fighting a resurgent conservatism, and Stirner's anti-capitalist egoism is, I think, crucial for making sense of why we would want/why we should have a revolution (in my opinion, an anarcho-syndicalist/socialist one) in the first place. I think we would all agree that appealing to some vacuous abstract "altruism" is ineffectual at best, downright repressive liberal ideology at worst, and the orthodox Marxist approach of it being the objective movement of history lies somewhere between laughable, incoherent, and idiotic. I therefore think it is important to develop an understanding of what exactly we mean when we talk about a revolution "being in the workers' interest," and I think a form of sophisticated egoism that does not conflict with but in fact is in a relationship of mutual presupposition and support with altruism, but that is psychologically egoist "in the last instance," to use Engels' phrase.

For more core philosophy, returning to my points about science, I think the various non-reductive naturalists are the shit. I have already mentioned Wilfrid Sellars, who is my biggest influence, but also folks like Ruth Garrett Millikan, Philip Kitcher, James Ladyman, Eliot Sober, Daniel Dennett, Massimo Pigliucci, David Albert, Ned Block (who is actually one of my professors), Owen Flanagan, etc. as well as philosophers who focus on the "Kantian" aspect of Sellarsian naturalism (which is a big part) like Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Finally, there are philosopher-physicists like Einstein, Lee Smolin, Carlo Rovelli, Heisenberg, etc., who often have far more radical and piercing insights than "professional" philosophers.

[Rafiq]

Anarcho Fox, to pressupose that we need to know what it "means" when we say a revolution is in the proletarian classes interest misses the point. We already know what it means, and it's only this "Orthodox Marxist" (of which you attribute with idiocy and incoherency) that can substantiate a real explanation, or even allow us to come to that conclusion. When non Marxists say a revolution is in the interests of a proletarian, they merely mean that their ideologically-driven revolution is in the interests of a proletarian because apparently they'd be better off in the society they devised. In the most elementary sense, it becomes quite apparent to anyone that those who adhere to such a conviction are no better than the rest of the rabble, claiming the masses for their own.

In truth, a revolution is not merely in the interest of a proletarian. A revolution is not something external from the existence of a proletarian. We Marxists do not seek a revolution. We seek the revolution, the only possible revolution that can exist that is constrained by capitalist social relations (as in, the only revolution possible within our current state of affairs). The interests of the proletarian class are antithetical to that of the bourgeois class. This is apparent to even the most Utopian of socialists. The problem resides with the fact that, if we resort to assumptions, assumptions that we can call spontaneity, we fall on our asses. Why can proletarians not achieve a strict, revolutionary-scientific form of class consciousness? Excluding "scientific", proletarians do not have to be convinced to struggle against the bourgeois class. They just lack the required linguistic mechanisms to articulate the path in which they must take. So, again, what you speak of is more or less true one way or another, and your attacks on altruist-moralism as our only purpose as revolutionaries is spot on and unquestionable. However your keenness in dismissing Marxian class analysis is nothing short of a mistake. Doubtless, teleology is garbage. But it is we Orthodox Marxists who formulated a break from this ever so popular teleology, which lived off of the rotten remnants of young, naive Marx. An objective movement of history... What exactly does this mean to you? Why must it be so difficult for critics of Marxism to articulate a very simple fact: To recognize any class based movement as an objective movement of it's according mode of production, rather than history as a whole, is not teleology and does indeed exist as a concept. Why should we have a revolution? It's not up to us, intellectuals. Why must we? Capitalism carries the seeds of it's own destruction, and as I've said, the proletarian classes interests are antithetical to that of the bourgeoisie, class war is inevitable, but successful revolution is not. Indeed, your proposition regarding "sophisticated" egoism is spot on in a way I do not think even you can fully understand. It's precisely this reason why the proletarian movement is an objective movement of the capitalist mode of production, and as I've said, one of the greatest sociological breakthroughs we learned from Marxism is that collective interests do exist. Only by for filling the interests of your class-collective can your class based self interest, your egoism, be for filled. This does not have to be explained to anyone, it exists by default, sociologically.

[black magick hustla]

me im useful

[cantwealljustgetalong]

there are loads of 'useful' philosophers
hint: most of them aren't critical theorists or die-hard metaphysicians

[Mr. Natural]

Shocking but typical! Lefties have ignored Karl Marx in their listing of currently useful philosophers.

There seems to be a left dogma that Marx was not a philosopher. Bullshit! Of course he engaged the deep meaning of life, humanity, labor, revolution, capitalism, etc., etc., etc. Doesn't historical materialism, to provide one prominent example, explore the meaning and consequences of the human labor process?

Didn't the young Marx thoroughly explore the meaning of human existence, write the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and launch his revolutionary theory from his early investigations of the "meaning" of life and labor, and the capture of human life and labor by capitalism? Did Marx throw Hegel and philosophy away or internalize them into his radical worldview?

Only the most degraded person is not a "philosopher" and merely reacts to life.

Marx's "Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex" (German Ideology) is often considered proof of his mature rejection of philosophy, but here Marx was denouncing idealist philosophies that were not materially rooted. Thus Marx "materialized" Hegel. Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach also expresses his philosophic materialism: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

Marx's theories arose from his philosophical concerns, and Marx philosophically united theory and practice into praxis. Comrades who actually believe Marx was not a philosopher are taking the meaning out of Marxism.

My red-green best.

[Ocean Seal]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels maybe? I noticed that we went an entire page without mentioning them.
Kant to understand western morality, Hume and Russel to have a good impression of the deconstruction of metaphysics, Voltaire, Russo, and co, because it is important to understand the bourgeois liberal method of thought, and validity it might still hold. It seems that we give philosophers the short end of the stick really.

[Human Lefts]

This may sound childish, but I'm bringing it back all the way to Thales of Miletus. Thales said that he learned that there was something more important than just knowing for personal gain. He said that we should know what truth is if something is just. Personally, I feel like I'm surrounded by people that all they do is eat and shit: a life based on consumption. They don't find value in thinking and developing opinions, perspectives, and expressing their ideas in objective and understandable fashions.