Your Favorite Philosophers that No One Else Has Heard Of?

I doubt that this guy is not heard of by anyone, but I quite enjoy Alain de Botton.

Since I don't really read (dyslexia), I tend to listen. I can't say I agree with everything he offers, but if I did agree with it all it would be boring. Why? It appeals to me and is nice to play in the background.

I can give a few examples for what it's worth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I08u0eKvwUY (the media)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe6HUgrRlQ (new approach to atheism)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCTzbc76WXY (history of manners)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqhUHyVpAwE (impostor syndrome)

Meow!

GREG

Peter Zapffe and Julio Cabrera. Also Philipp Mainlander.

I find Rudolf Steiner very interesting as a philosopher. I am thinking in particular of his Philosophy of Freedom in the context of German Idealism (of which he had a profound grasp, and about which he expressed highly original ideas). Most everyone has heard of him since he has had a pretty much unparalleled influence on education, he originated biodynamics, anthroposophy and so on, but very few consider him to be a serious philosopher (quite likely precisely because of biodynamics, anthroposophy and so on).

John Fowles, the novelist, published an excellent book of philosophical aphorisms, called The Arisotos, largely inspired by Heraclitus.

The Road Less Travelled M. Scott Peck - psychology rather than philosophy but well worth the read.

Simon Frank, Russian Orthodox, philosopher of religion, The Unknowable. (I found that book groping around on the high shelves at the University library; it had fallen behind the other books. I noticed it didn't have the borrowing slip pasted into it, or its Dewey number on the back. The Librarian was pleased when I brought it to the front desk as it otherwise might never have been found. How apt, I thought.)

G.K. Chesterton - his writtings are philosophical but very practical. He knows and understands the value of humor - which is rare for anyone dabbling in philosophy.
Johann Georg Hamann - again, someone who loves humor and rhetoric - arguably known as the most intelligent man of his time by figures such as the great Kant.
Eric Voegelin - political philosopher largely forgotten today, even though judging purely by his work he should probably be one of the greatest philosophers of last century.
Ivan Ilyin - Right Hegelian Russian philosopher, very influential for my understanding and interpretation of Hegel
Nicholas Berdyaev - Russian Christian existentialist philosopher.
Rene Girard - among the best philosophy of cultural anthropology and religion
Mircea Eliade - same as above.

Reply to Agustino Hamann seems a very interesting and strangely post-modernist thinker, considering his times.

Hamann used the notion of ‘Prosopopoeia’, or personification, as an image of what can happen in philosophical reflection. In a medieval morality or mystery play, the experience of being chaste or being lustful is transformed from a way of acting or feeling into a dramatic character who then speaks and acts as a personification of that quality.

I wonder how much of that underlies 'identity politics'?

Reply to Wayfarer Hamann is the theist's David Hume, although unlike Mr. Hume, religion and morality were quite significant to him - he was no moral relativist, and unlike Mr. Hume he had a sense of humor. The notion of prosopopoeia was used by Hamann to dismantle the "Critique of Pure Reason" of Kant - to dismantle the whole edifice, by showing that in philosophy the same mistake is committed as in mystery plays - we break up experience into pieces, and call this piece "the faculty of the imagination", and that piece "the faculty of judgement", that "reason", and the other "emotion", and so forth. But in reality - there is no east, and no west - those are our fictive distinctions, which distort reality, and we end up taking them to be actual reality. Hamann says it like Buddha - no East, no West, just the sky. There is no "reason" devoid of "emotion", and no "faculty of judgement", devoid of sensibility... We take our multi-faceted and varied experience, and break it up - we personify it - now this part of it is all "reason", and the other is all "emotion". Hamann is one of the greatest philosophers who have ever lived - perhaps even the greatest - easily. He's there before Ludwig - and goes deeper than him. If you go to my profile, you will see this quote:

Johann Georg Hamann:Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself

Quoting Wayfarer

I wonder how much of that underlies 'identity politics'?

Far from being an endorsement of identity politics, this is its humiliation. Hamann mocks - he doesn't argue.

G. Spencer-Brown, he wrote Laws of Form, a book that seeks to derive foundational principles of form.
http://www.manuelugarte.org/modulos/biblioteca/b/G-Spencer-Brown-Laws-of-Form.pdf

I might as well add:

Max Picard - modern mystic author of the Flight from God - a significant philosophical and Platonic diagnosis of modernity
Michael Polanyi - scientist and philosopher, author of Personal Knowledge, description and tackling of the manner in which knowledge becomes objective - building on post-Kantian philosophy

Julius Evola (not sure if he qualifies) - author of Ride the Tiger, Man Amongst the Ruins, Revolt Against the Modern World, and The Doctrine of Awakening, just to name a few. Was a follower of the Perennialist School, but with Nietzschean undertones.

None other than yours truly. ;)

Nobody's ever heard of me and I'm rather partial to my own philosophy while, most other philosophers tend to bore me to death.

Reply to wuliheron

Ha ha. Aren't we all our favorite phylosophers?

One of the reasons I didn't study philosophy formally is that I had a problem trusting us humans (including myself). I thought we seem more obsessed with our ego's than finding the truth.

:)

Reply to bassplayer My own philosophy is based on primitive tribal potty humor where each word is treated as a variable with no intrinsic value. If you attempt to make the poems say anything they will mess with your head, sort of a mental-judo, and my friends who write the same kind of poetry treat it like a beloved pet perfectly capable of defending itself. Being mathematical, the poetry writes itself and we just do the footwork. :)

Reply to wuliheron

Anything which is fun is good. We don't have to analyse the #%÷$ out of it...but that can be fun too.

Reply to bassplayer The Philosophy of Fun is Good... Sounds like a Hollywood comedy!

In some alternative reality Wankerz: Philosobabble and the Critique of Faux-Comedic Unreason was a great film about post-sense 'philosophers', their 'philosophies' and its detractors!

-Wunengzi. This guy: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Daoists/wunengzi.html
-Carneades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carneades
-Leonard Nelson: http://www.friesian.com/method.htm