Modern Philosophy

Harry Frankfurt.

Thomas Metzinger, Hubert Dreyfus. I've been on a David Graeber binge since he died, though he's more of an anthropologist.

Graeber is great, but yeah not really philosophy exactly. Very informative for political philosophy, though.

My favorite philosophers are

1. Pyrrho
2. Zeno of Elea
3. Epimenedes
4. Nagarjuna
5. Descartes
6. Hume
7. Graham Priest

The most general and omnipresent feature of modern philosophy is the confusion between the order of being and the order of knowing. Defining an object by the way we know it is like defining an elephant by the properties of the lens with which we photograph it. The final scheme may be similar, but the material presence of the elephant will always be lacking. In modern times, all tigers are made of paper until the day they eat the philosopher. This error is endemic. It is present in Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Hegel and all of his heirs.

Reply to Rafaella Leon The typical conflation-confusion, by idealists (e.g. Plato's misplaced concreteness - reification - of "forms" ... or Berkeley's compositional fallacy of "ideas, perceptions" ... etc), of ontology with epistemology — I agree with, for the most part, except for Spinoza (vide Ethics, part one). An example of his "error"?

*

Some (indispensable yet underapprecated) 'moderns' in my canon:

Peter Wessel Zapffe
Emil Cioran
Nelson Goodman
Clément Rosset
Philippa Foot
Albert Murray
Susan Haack
David Schweickart
David Deutsch
Ray Brassier

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Reply to tim wood My top three "Spinoza" recommendations (frankly, not academically fashionable - more philosophical studies than applied uses of / deconstructive polemics for-against, S):

• A Spinoza Reader, ed. & trans. by Edwin Curley*
• Spinoza and Spinozism, Stuart Hampshire
• Spinoza and Other Heretics, Vol. 2, Yirmiyahu Yovel

edit:

Also, as a companion to the Reader*, Edwin Curley's excellent interpretative study

• Behind The Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics

Reply to dan0mac Curious, why would you want to solicit opinions from a few random people on the Internet? If you want to know who the best known or most influential modern philosophers are, you will do much better with Google.

The best modern philosophers are Louis Lavelle, Leibniz, Eric Voeglin, however, the best one by far, and very underestimated is Mário Ferreira dos Santos, I don't think there is someone better than him in the last centuries.

Reply to SophistiCat Because I value people's opinions. I can learn who the most influential modern philosophers are, but I may miss someone who is not necessarily well known. I consider it 'consulting the experts' in a way.

Reply to Rafaella Leon I'll look them up. Thank you!

Reply to dan0mac
I think the forefront of modern analytic philosophy (not discussing social topics) is Ordinary Language Philisophy, which was reacting to Positivism (among other things), first with Wittgenstein and then J.L. Austin's response to A.J. Ayer. The current proponent is Stanley Cavell, who is ground breaking in his methods of changing our perspectives, and the breadth of its application, though there are others, Cora Diamond, Mulhall. Try an essay from Must We Mean What We Say.

Reply to dan0mac Well, this place may be slightly more expert than the general population, on average, but only slightly. There are hardly any professionals here, a few well-read dilettantes, but most aren't very knowledgeable.

Quoting dan0mac

I consider it 'consulting the experts' in a way.

Quoting SophistiCat

There are hardly any professionals here, a few well-read dilettantes,

Well they did put scare quotes and say "in a way".

Philosophy
the rules of debate
Methods of reasoning

Reply to Rafaella Leon Reply to Rafaella Leon I love all of these responses- 'the only thing I know is I know nothing' etc. I've gotten exactly what I wanted- way too many books and authors to read. Thank you y'all so much, I'll get cracking!

Reply to fdrake I have noticed nowadays there is a very tangible intersection of anthropology/archaeology/philosophy I find very interesting

Quoting 180 Proof

Some (indispensable yet underapprecated) 'moderns' in my canon:

[i]Peter Wessel Zapffe
Emil Cioran
Nelson Goodman
Clément Rosset
Philippa Foot
Albert Murray
Susan Haack
David Schweickart
David Deutsch
Ray Brassier[/i]

Also ...

Quentin Meillassoux
R.S. Bakker
Victor Stenger
Walter Kaufmann
Martha Nussbaum
Thomas Metzinger
Max Scheler (new to me!)