The Philosophy Thread

[The Unseen]

Originally Posted by Paranoidmoonduck

Favorite philosophers everybody?

I still haven't read enough philosophy, but from what I can tell I'd like the ordinary language philosophers like later Wittgenstein, JL Austin, Grice, and Searle. If we're talking about Ancient Greek philosophy, I like what I've heard about Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus but not Plato. I've read up a little on existentialism which thus would describe guys like Sartre, Paul Tillich, and Heidegger; it's very interesting and it says some good things but I wouldn't consider myself one.

Oh, and I think what Renji is getting at is about how concepts don't really have a solid definition. Things like "charisma," "liberalism," "love," etc are so screwy in scope that it may lead people to think that they don't exist because they are used so differently. The best we can do is define them for a discussion, finding the necessary and sufficient conditions of the definition and recognizing the differences in use and definition between people, and see what we can agree upon that it refers to.