2 thinkers i look forward to being more familiar with

Isaiah Berlin


Hannah Arendt



When i say i love philosophy, a better term would be social/cultural criticism with maybe a healthy or egregious amount of psychology. Philosophy proper has been over for a long time some say it ended with Hegel, fewer still with Stirner, i have yet to come across Marx's convincing rebuke of Max though.

The applicable and the graspable, the Ancient Greek and Roman guys who weren't all gabbing about math and astronomy are good for a basic grounding, the early church fathers engaged wonderfully in that climate. The devotional mystical writings are rich too for a contemplative, you can discard the religious baggage if it doesn't really jive with you, which is how i treat Eastern religions and philosophies, they are the sultans of calm tranquility, and who doesn't want a bit of that.

The French moralists of course and those like them like the Spaniard Balthazar Gracian, who is much utilized in Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power.

And then post philosophy proper is where my favorites are Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Cioran and Shestov. These guys reflect on the history of philosophy and provide takes on them which i find refreshing, not necessarily true, at best they have a force to them, i feel that force and i go "Cooool again again!!" Like it was a ride. Thinking ought to be like this, not technical and dry and abstract like Kant and Hegel, they may be doling out a lot of important things for other people, but i've not once for any time been one of them. I will try still to come to grips with them, but all it looks like is nothing that concerns me, which is how for the most part science is for yours truly.

So the thinkers above Isaiah and Hannah are imo reflectors of the past and coming up with takes on it, but the juicy stuff i feel will be what they have to say about the world they lived in, for it is not so different from now, all past ages offer a unique vantage point if studied these days for a particular aspect of what's happening now. I encourage those who are reading to consider not being so sure about everything, and explore the familiar terrain, and see if you can pick up on something you didn't know was there.