The Gist Of Western Philosophy
The entire history of Western Philosophy. Or at least, a summary of the story that it tells, and an exploration of the power of historical narratives.
Comments (7)
Is it possible we could get a list of the books you read?
I thought you'd never ask! 1. Socrates (470 BC – 399 BC) 2. Plato (428 BC - 348 BC) 3. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) 4. Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC) 5. Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC) 6. Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) 7. Lucretius (99 BC – 55 BC) 8. Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180) 9. St. Augustine Of Hippo (354 – 430) 10. St. Francis Of Assisi (1182 – 1226) 11. St Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) 12. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527 13. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) 14. Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) 15. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) 16. Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) 17. Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) 18. René Descartes (1596 – 1650) 19. Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) 20. John Locke (1632 – 1704) 21. Spinoza (1632 – 1677) 22. Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) 23. Voltaire (1694 – 1778) 24. David Hume (1711 – 1776) 25. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) 26. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) 27. Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) 28. Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) 29. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) 30. Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831) 31. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) 32. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) 33. John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) 34. Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) 35. Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) 36. Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) 37. Susan B. Anthony (1820 – 1906) 38. Frederick Douglass (1817 – 1895) 39. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) 40. Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) 41. Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970) 42. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) 43. Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) 44. Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981) 45. Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) 46. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) 47. Simone De Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) 48. Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) 49. Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) 50. Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007) 51. Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004) 52. Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996)
It's very cool that you tried something like this, especially considering the pace. I managed something similar in 5 years of uni :D. I wouldn't worry about Derrida, no one who reads him understands him. He's using obscure language and lanaguge structure, and it's incomprehensible by design. Sometimes people put him and Foucault into one basket as those crazy French philosphers muttering complete nonsense. That is unfair to Foucault who is bending over backwards for you to understand him and get the ideas, while Derrida is doing the exact opposite. Which sucks for him, because Foucault will stay with us much longer, while Derrida is already a purely academic topic. Anyway, very cool, I hope you are at least as enlightened as I was when reading those. btw who was your favorite? My favorite was Nietzsche, mainly because I think he is still the most relevant and the challenges he proposed for humans in the early 20th century, well, we haven't overcome them at all :D, and he would absolutely hate the modern society :D.
Hi Martin, honestly my favourite philosopher to read was Marcus Aurelius. I know he's become of a pop-psychology icon, but I found his Meditations to be a very enjoyable read. Maybe it's because he was the most powerful man in Europe, so he actually had to make hard decisions and grapple with actual moral challenges. I also enjoyed Schopenhauer for some reason lol. And I'd also say Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" was a good read.
I also want to come back here and add that all my favorite videos of yours are the ones that don't seem to be popular on YouTube, so thank you for continuing to give the bird to the algorithm and do what (seems to) move you
Thanks! Yeah, if it was only about views I would just content about LOTR, Star Wars, and TNG forever. I'm hoping the channel will be a little more expansive in its subject matter, so I think it's important to make videos that are low performers too. No point in having a channel I don't enjoy making content for, and being captive to an audience. Thanks for acknowledging it - you are exactly the type of viewer I'm hoping to attract!
Perhaps this would be a George Lucas level of post editing a finished product but something at the depths of my humanity says that stack of books should have an edition of Calvin and Hobbes snuck in.