You have made my life more difficult. And you should be proud. I'm 80 and might make it to 81, but not 82. So time, as I understand time, is a big deal. And you put so many wonderful things in front of me that I come closest to regret when I consider what I want to learn than for any other reason. Thank you.
I’m only 23 years old and I already feel like I’m running out of time to learn the things I want to and to enjoy the things I enjoy. What advice would you give to someone in my position?
If what you cannot learn feels bad to think about change your view, try to think about how to pass on your accumulated knowledge so others may learn from your experience. How we pass on knowledge is a primary purpose of philosophy. It's how we grow as a group over time.
@@harrison127 That's a kind question. Don't smoke. Brush your teeth regularly. I have a Post-it note on my display: "Don't worry about it." Sorry. That's all I know.
My mother understands very little English, and I do not believe she cares much for philosophy. I just put your video up on the television while I'm getting ready, and she thinks you have a fantastic voice! She doesn't know what you're talking about, but she still likes to listen to you 😊
That's wrong. Indeed there are a lot of people who have a very good grasping of Hegel. The problem with Hegel is that one of his very basic points is that abstractions are in themselves false. Therefore philosophy as the highest form of truth has to be as concrete as possible. But because Hegel is so insanely concrete, precise und crystal-clear, he becomes utterly incomprehensible for the average human mind which is not necessarily an intelligence issue but more due to lacking philosophical skill. Hegel is not for beginners and definitely hard. But there are people who have understood him very well. His philosophy is just impossible to summarize (that's kind of the whole point of it) which becomes a problem when communicating Hegel to an audience of layman.
Would love to see where you place Russell, Wittgenstein, de Beauvoir, Adorno, Fanon, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Zizek, Badiou, Byung-Chul Han, and Bruno Latour as well
Foucault was a hack. Levinas was not a good writer. And I say this as someone who actually found Derrida interesting. Maybe I was just too worn out from the effort of reading Derrida to have any energy left for Levinas? 😅
If Jared ever makes a sequel to this, the people not on the list I'd be most curious about include Montaigne, Leibniz, Rousseau, Bergson, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, Benjamin, Adorno, Deleuze, Habermas, and Nussbaum. I think it's kind of sad Jared doesn't discuss any philosophers outside the Western tradition. I have a special affinity for Zhuangzi. I really love Jared's videos. The recent one he did on the six central issues surrounding higher ed were spot on. (I'm an adjunct instructor in writing at three different colleges.)
Yeah, Wittgenstein really is missing. Along with Derrida (and possibly Foucault). Whereas someone like Frege seemed not totally like the others in terms of importance
I’m with you here. I’d like to see where Wittgenstein fits in here. There are also some “thinkers” (not necessarily philosophers) that I wish were discussed more: Leopardi, Cioran, and Zapffe.
maybe bad take but I wish he would include Jung, Freud and Lacan because they should really be approached as philosophy .. and I'm curious about his thoughts on Bataille. also wanna see Sartre, Beauvoir, Arendt, Derrida and Foucault
@@Lin-rs9pw I can see how he would forgo the big names of psychoanalysis on the same grounds as Peterson, though. But I am with you on Bataille if only to see his brain melt :D
The Aristotle take is so wild to me. Saying that basically the grandfather of science as he’s often characterised should go from S to A tier because of his science work for which he is at least in scientific and analytic circles most revered for is crazy to me. I don’t think the outdated nature of his work makes it less impressive, perhaps only more of a niche interest for history of science types. I guess if ur ranking them for what the viewer should read it could make sense. Anyway it’s your opinion, great video! I am enjoying all your content quite a lot, thx for making videos
Also, by that same token, why not lower Plato? He stated that there are no contemporary platonists and I doubt he thinks the theory of forms or of recollection are correct. Similarly, he states with Plotinus that historical importance was a key factor. Well, there is no philosopher who gets even close to Aristotle’s influence, not even Plato.
In complete agreement. Aristotle is the most impactful philosopher in the western tradition. A thorough study of Aristotle makes it so much easier to study ANY other philosopher that comes afterwards. He did way more than amend Platonism, he radically departed from it, which is why it’s theorized that Plato didn’t pass his school to him after he died. His biological and scientific observations are outdated, sure, but his metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, aesthetics, politics, and ethics are still extremely valuable today. I mean, he practically defined these areas of study. His achievements are incredible. Best CV of any intellectual I can think of.
@@m.b.crawford5464 totally agree on the fact that studying aristotle makes ANY other philosophy easy. He sure defined the logic of philosophical thought. From my experience i started to learn philosophy from his work, and I can say for sure his principles defined what philosophy is and isnt.
I did my undergraduate thesis on Plotinus’ Enneads and.. man.. that is a crazy sophisticated highly complex metaphysics. It was a delight to spend so much time with those writings
I love Pascal, he was so ahead of his time, he was my first philosophical crush when I was a teen lol and i still read it from time to time, he still speaks to me. He had such existentialistic thoughts and beautifully written.
He is the most underrated philosopher in these kinds of lists. A true philosopher of the heart, not the head. That’s probably why the nerds don’t give him his due.
@@m.b.crawford5464 well he was also a genius in math and physics and contributed greatly, he was a child prodigy and I think he turned to religious topics later on. Great head and big heart, which is rare. He also suffered a lot physically and died pretty young. Why do people overlook him 😔
@@padmeasmr I get the sense that he reached the pinnacle of rationality (for that time) and found it a fruitless exercise. He saw that language and mathematics are insufficient to fully describe reality and that these intellectual rabbit holes go on forever. I think that’s why he took a more spiritual and psychological approach. Most people never reach this level of intellectual maturity at all. Pascal reached it in his thirties. It’s crazy.
This video is epic on so many levels. It's alternately deep with a dash of silly, fun with streaks of meaningfulness. And yet helpful all around. Bravo, Jared, bravo!
For Butler, I highly recommend Giving an Account of Oneself. That book is, I think, at the core of their thinking and extrapolates out from Althusser’s writing on subjectivity, which I believe is central to understanding Butler’s work on gender, violence, and politics.
scholasticism is not for everyone, but that doesn't make Aquinas any less noteworthy for his achievements. His analysis of language is up there with that of Frege and Wittgenstein at having made an ostensible treatise on notions of sense and reference, interior propositions, and the epistemic limits of human language. All the more impressive that such ideas were even fathomed 700 years before being more thoroughly added onto by a more concisely formed philosophy of language. Even if there's an argument to be made about its format and accessibility, analytical thomism is goated imo
Extremely correct opinion, regardless it would've been honest for Jared to just say "I classify him as a theologian" because he's literally the greatest theologian of all time in my opinion and he really is very focused on Aristotle and that probably holds him back as a pure philosopher.
@@QuantumMag-u1l some philosophers say he is a theologian only and then never study him as a philosopher....and then such philosophers complain that he is cited mostly by theologians... The thing is...go there and get to know some of the guy's work...how can a guy who makes an original sinthesis of plato and aristotle is not a philosopher? Has the original actus essendi....and contributions in so many disciplines...it is just about making the effort to know at least a little bit about his work and about the structure of the summa
As Camus himself clarified, he wasn't an existentialist. It's more than mere quibbling that made him disavow the label; I think we should be charitable enough to consider the possible reasons (just as we should charitably consider, e.g., Derrida's rejection of the labels 'postmodern' and 'poststructuralist').
Nothing but the claim over Aristotle not being in the same tier as Plato seemed contestable to me. For the obvious reasons, just the blunt ones. The guy helped to spur on systematics and stratification into fields. His works were copied and written commentaries in the margins of for over a thousand years. Disagree or agree with him, he covered so much that it made a backdrop for people doing their own philosophy. Aristotle asked many questions. And we won.
Great video. It hurts me that Wittgenstein isn't here (though I'm sure lots of folks will yell "why not so-and-so!?"). And I definitely think Aristotle is S-Tier. But this is your list and it's awesome, and I really appreciated the thoughts you gave for each choice. Kudos!
I wanted to comment almost the same. Great choices, most picks kind of fit for me. Hoewever, Aristoteles is underestimated. Hegel might be overestimated a bit. And that Wittgenstein is missing almost necessarily leads to the Freudian suspicion that the obvious lack of someone like Wittgenstein is a sign of displacement.
With regards to Butler, I think you'd do yourself a favor to start with their 1988 essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution", since it's way shorter and easier to read (imo) than Gender Trouble. Would also recommend to read their later work (later Butler is way easier to read, as a rule), for example the second essay titled Violence, Mourning, Politics of the 2004 book Precarious Life. They've also done very noteworthy work on Hegel which was quite innovative in the '80s.
Amazinf Video, Jared! Reallt enjoyed it. Just wanted to point something out though. Most of the philosophers we know as existentialist were really just given this label later on, and they don't necessarily espouse the fundamentals of existentialism. Camus, in fact, categorically refused being an existentialist, which was a part of the Sartre Camus rift. The only true existential philosophers are actually just Sartre and Simone de Bouvoire.
Hey Jared, could you do a video about the greatest papers in philosophy? Videos about works of philosophy tend to focus on books, but that misses the fact perhaps that a lot of work is being done by papers. Also i dont read papers as much, so i would love to get some recomendations on that front from someone who's been more deeply into academia than I have.
I disagreed with a lot of this list but it is a good video. Good balance of not taking too long or being too brief over the reasons why you ranked them where you did.
Jared, if there is a part two, consider mainly showing the tier list page. I feel that would fair better with the algorithm. Could also be cool to do subsections versions (i.e. political philosophy theories TL, philosophy of religion TL, etc.)
I agree. I would like to have seen him rank Foucault given he is one of the more controversial philosophers (Foucault, and most postmodernists, belongs in F if you ask me).
I do wonder about your overall opinion of Schopenhauer; not as influential as any of the people mentioned, but his ideas were significant in many ways.
This is a really charitable and balanced perspective! Your comments on Nietzsche surprised me a bit since I honestly thought you were quite a bit more averse to him, but I’m pleasantly surprised. You assessment of Heidegger’s style was very true to life and well put!
As someone who enjoys analytic philosophy, I was little sad to only see Frege being mentioned. I'd implore you to make another tier list of analytic philosophers and contemporary philosophers like Alexander Pruss, Richard Swinburne, Timothy Williamson etc. Have a great day!
Make a list with contemporary philosophers, thinkers, philo-posing-influencers etc. It could be a great way to have a discussion about how to gauge the arguments validity and depth of all the many voices.
He was a religious propagandist. He should not even be considered a 'philosopher'. Much like almost all Catholic 'philosophy' it is just pseudo intellectual dogma masquerading as logic.
Why? Aquinas is only useful for religious people, mainly Catholics. He didn't contribute a lot to human knowledge, I would even say that he should be behind Descartes.
@@QuantumMag-u1l I'm not sure how you can read Aquinas and think he is only useful for religious people...which is why I doubt you've even read him. A man who synthesizes two of the greatest intellectual traditions in human history(the Greeks and Christians) does not deserve C tier. The Summa alone is A tier philosophy, never mind the copious amounts of other philosophical writing he created.
Aquinas' impact on western philosophy and civilization as well as Catholic doctrine will last for thousands of years to come while Marx's 19th century economic writings and the political wars he inspired in the 20th century, will remain a tragic fact of the past. Aquinas' fusion of Aristotle's metaphysics into a Christian matrix alone makes "dialectical materialism" seem like child's play.
On Ayn Rand: You've mentioned you've read Rand's Atlas Shrugged, her writings on capitalism and a biography on her. What is absolutely essential to read, to get a full view of het philosophy, is both her most important writings on epistemology: 'Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology' and ethics: 'the Objectivist Ethics'. Her philosophy is an accumulative system: premises accepted in metaphyics work all the way through to politics and esthetics. A lot of philosophical commentators see similarities between Nietzsche and Rand. Although they look alike on the surface, they both ground their egoism in a different way and with a different result. The interview with miss Rand called ''Ayn Rand, What is the Difference Between Objectivism and Nietzsche's Philosophy?'' is a great interview in which she herself distances her own philosophy (justly or unjustly) from that of Nietzsche. I haven't really scrolled through the comments, but I know Objectivists have the habit of being condescending about critique on Rand. I think you're quite honest in your judgement, so I look forward to your video on Rand. I hope my suggestions have been of any help😃
It is a bummer one paragraph debunking your ideas, but the way frege did philosophy is what made this possible, the clarity that analytic philosophy strives is exactly that, to reason things and make statements that could be more easily provable or disprovable. Having your ideas been disproved, its just part of the advancement of knowledge, his contributions are still there. In other hand statung your ideas to make thie possible, when you were the first to do that is remarkable. It is kind of rare to happen this in philosophy.
Since you really love Aristotle, particularly his Ethical works, I’m interested in your thoughts on Alasdair MacItnyre. Would love to see you cover him in the future!
I understand your response to Rand's writing and philosophy as Nietzschean but there is no dishonesty there. Ayn Rand gave credit to Nietzsche in which she said Nietzsche had influenced a lot of her early writings and The Fountainhead. Overall Rand liked him. What separates the two is that before Rand thinks of selfishness or greatness she thinks of reason. It's the human mind that she upholds that Nietzsche misses. She upholds the mind where he upholds might. Her other beliefs, which are adjacent to Nietzsche, follow logically from her appraisal of reason. Nietzsche rejected objective morality, Ayn Rand embraced it. From a glance it is easy to think that their ideas are the same but it would have to be a very quick glance. And if you have read Atlas Shrugged I think you would see the important distinction. The theme of Atlas Shrugged isn't "what if you remove heroes from society" but "what if you remove the mind from the world". Would love to see a video on Ayn Rand
Do you remember the source in which she states she has been influenced a lot by Nietzsche in the past? I know she said she is intellectually only in debt to Aristotle so at the surface this seems like a contradiction on her side.
@@leeuwbama9433 In “Journals of Ayn Rand” she referred to Nietzsche plenty while taking notes on The Fountainhead. But she did not quote Nietzsche in intellectual terms but poetic terms. She doesn’t feel indebted to Nietzsche because, although she was artistically influenced by him, she had profound quarrels with his actual ideas. Her ‘official’ estimate of Nietzsche is in the introduction to “The Fountainhead”. So she admired his prose, but their philosophies are distinct. To her, Aristotle was the only philosopher who really laid the foundation of her philosophy. I haven’t read Aristotle so I can’t attest to that but he’s next on my reading list.
@@leeuwbama9433 “Nietzsche’s rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself… that the ‘superman’ is ‘beyond good and evil’, that he is a ‘beast of prey’ whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim.” Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, 39
34:17 I disagree with Huemer, the objectivist view of selfishness is that he who acquires the values deserves to benefit from them. The gist of the objectivist politics is that reason is the more valuable way to live with other men rather than force, egoism comes into play when you are permitted to benefit from living with humanity with their consent and co-operation.
I don't think that is Rand's argument for the initiation of force as being anti-egoism. I thought that the initiation of force was evil solely because it flies in the face of the virtue of honesty. An honest man would recognize that every human being is an end in himself. By initiating force you're embodying that you don't regard that principle as truth.
Aristotle should go in the S tier. Your rationale was that his biology wasn't great. Well, this is a philosopher tier list, and not a scientist tier list. He still made great contributions in that field, especially as a thinker working thousands of years before the advent of modern science. He invented logic, the very foundation on which all of philosophy lies. The Nicomachean Ethics is really THE seminal work in virtue ethics, and is still enormously influential even today. HIs work in metaphysics and political science, including as the first thinker to systematically collect constitutions from different states and compare them, were second to none in the ancient world, and influenced thousands of years of thought. All of this influence, and only off of his lecture notes. Imagine if we had his dialogues. Please reconsider! Any argument you would cast for your reasoning would surely be based off of...well...logic.
Overall I would rate your tier list as fine. I agree with some of your assessments while I vehemently disagree with others. I understand that this is a very difficult task and completely avoiding subjective analysis is impossible, but I feel you tend inconsistently weigh how impactful and compelling each philosopher is. Plato and Kant definitely belong in S tier so no arguments there. I am not super familiar with Hegel but I am well aware of his impact. I would probably have switched Aristotle and Hegel just given Aristotle's over all influence. Yet putting Aristotle on the same level of Plato seems wrong, and I agree that S tier should remain for and elite few so maybe A for both Aristotle and Hegel. My first real disagreement is your placement of Spinoza. Personally, I kind of despise modern philosophy, especially early modern philosophy. I find it incredibly dull and not very inspiring. This does not mean I have no appreciation for modern philosophy and its influence on history, science, religion, and the advancement of philosophical thought, nor do I under appreciate the level of brilliance displayed by these thinkers. I just tend not to enjoy reading modern philosophers as much of others. Given this fact, you can probably guess that I abhor Spinoza's writings. I view him as a nihilist in pure logical form where as Camus was at least poetic (loose use of the word nihilist here). I think Spinoza's pantheistic view of God removes any power or inspiration derived from the idea of God and his conception tends to fade into the cosmic background where it becomes a useless conception. If God is everything, God becomes nothing. I could go more into this argument but I don't want to take too much of my critique of your tier list with my analysis of Spinoza. I will conclude by saying that Spinoza's works succeed in their critique of religious dogmatism and there are clear parallels between his ethics and Hume, and even Sam Harris. Overall I would have put Spinoza in C or B. Nietzsche is one of my favorite philosophers to read and also one of the most influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. I might have even place him as an S tier. I think he will be looked at as one of the those landmark philosophers that marked a major shift in western thought centuries into the future. We are living in a post Nietzschean world. The "death of God" and science/logic as an insufficient framework for value and meaning arguments would surely have been made at some point if Nietzsche had not. But, he levied such a devastating critique against Christianity and rationalism that he deserves to be lauded. He directly influences existentialism post modernism, and society and history in the 20th and 21st centuries. Because of all of this I might put him in S tier. I would put Camus in C his insights into existentialism. Aquinas and Descartes deserve to be in higher tiers, in B probably. Marx is difficult to evaluate because if you analyze his impact from a neutral and object viewpoint he definitely deserves A. However, I find his philosophy intellectually and conceptually questionable. Of course Marx would have objected to how his communist philosophy was implemented, yet I have a hard time separating the two. In my opinion communism requires immense top-down control and it is quite difficult if not impossible to redistribute wealth without developing authoritarianism. Merit does not allow for equal distribution. You cannot reduce humanity to a completely equal state without ridding a society of the economically and intellectually successful. Everywhere communism has been attempted there has been massive human rights violation and death. Even as a philosophy communism fails. Therefore, Marx belongs in C and is nor any lower simply by dint of his impact. Lastly, I have a much more favorable view of Rand than you do. I agree that she is almost a direct intellectual descendant of Nietzsche's and it is a shame that they are not referenced together more frequently. Rand attempts to create a complete conception of the individual that has achieved Nietzsche's super morality, individuals that have moved beyond conventional morality and reached a state of complete self-containment. I thoroughly enjoyed Atlas both for its romantic appeals and its sense of supreme individual agency. With that being said, I think her project fails but not for lack of trying. Rand's attempt to justify complete individualism and egoism earns her a C in my opinion. Even if objectivism fails the attempt warrants a place in philosophical history. Also, I appreciate and enjoy her defense of capitalism, of which you could have guessed I am a fan given my critique of Marx. I apologize for such a long winded review but philosophy is my passion and I do not get to talk about it often. Thank you for your video, certainly provided food for thought.
Nice list, but Ariatotle and Nietzsche are S tier. Only Plato and Kant along with Aristotle and Nietzsche on this list have a thoroughgoing impact on Western thought and culture.
Maybe Aristotle, but putting Nietzche on the same tier as titanic system builders like Plato, Kant, and Hegel doesn't make sense. Nietzche is a great writer, but borderline not even a philosopher because he never presents systematic treatments of metaphysics, ethics, or aesthetics
Like many commenters, I wholeheartedly disagree with Camus in D tier, but every other rating, I agreed within +/- one level. Satre had some genius work, but as a person (from what I've read), he doesn't hold a candle to anyone on this list, so I am not mad he was left off. As you said, Camus does resonate with a lot of people, but I think he's sorely misunderstood by most. The idea of the absurd can be very uncomfortable for people, so I suspect it isn't explored as deeply as other, more optimistic philosophies. I am glad you did give him credit as a novelist. Great video, as always!!
What does that have to do with anything? Nietzsche also criticized socialism. So what? Philosophers can be wrong about almost anything. It's about asking the right questions. Sometimes their mistakes are the most important things that made us look into reality and reevaluate it. Also, tier lists are just caricatures, they shouldn't be taken seriously
@@asgmto He was not an economist. His writings can easily lead to the interpretation that he was more critical of capitalism. Nietzsche critiqued the bourgeoisie and the effects of capitalism on human values. Capitalism led to more decay in his eyes. Philosophers don't just "ask the right questions." They help us answer them. QED.
Great video, Jared. I'm glad you mentioned Nagel's paper on the absurd. His concluding insight -- that if nothing matters, then the fact that nothing matters also doesn't matter -- is one of those rare sucker punches that made me instantly start viewing my life differently. (And for the better!)
I have never read the paper (I will see if I can find it soon) so I could be misunderstanding but I don't really understand this point as it relates to Camus's philosophy. Camus never argued that nothing matters, he simply believed that the universe has no inherent meaning. He said you should be open "to the gentle indifference of the world” and through that you achieve happiness. This is not despair but liberation. By accepting that the universe doesn't care about us, we're freed from the burden of cosmic expectations. None of this suggests "nothing matters," it suggests simply that the universe is absurd, and we shall revel in its absurdity.
Tbh i didn't watch that video yet, but i just wanted you to know that your work is very helpful and i am grateful for your will to share knowledge with us.
I would have put Camus above Aquinas and Aurelius, at least C or B tier. Using just some of his fiction alone (his fiction was philosophical), like The Plague or Exile and the Kingdom, I think he could be a contender for top humanitarian philosopher of the 20th century, better than Singer, sorry. Just my opinion though lol.
For Descartes I'm hoping to get Passions of The Soul as well as Meditations on First Philosophy in the future. You never see my comments for some reason not sure why but I appreciate this helpful list. We definitely discussed Plato often during my Philosophy course in College.
agree on Hegel...! extremely compelling writer. Also agree on Camus (and the exclusion altogether of Sartre), and certainly on Rand. you are also correct on Butler and "gender theory" overall for that matter: sleight of hand is spot on with all of that, because they have to make stuff up and obfuscate because so much of it is clearly B.S.
I like your channel Dr. Henderson. I personally would put Thomas Aquinas on the highest rung, but that is probably the result of my Catholic education.
looking at the timelines is funny - when you compare Nietzsche with Ayn Rand. Also mentioning Butler is like "walking through a swamp" - very entertaining .. .
Pascal's concept of entertainment and emptiness is very modern, I consider him the first modern Christian but above all one of the first great psychologists. He should be ahead of Kierkegaard.
Would have loved to see your opinions on some postmodern thinkers, foucault, derrida, deleuze... Especially given your background in the analytic tradition.
Based take on Rand, Peterson, and Singer. Though I would have liked to see Singer a bit higher, if only because of how much his work has personally affected me. Also, like you, have been quite taken aback by the profiling of JP as a philosopher. Edit: my only critique of this video is the lack of a recap at the end. There was no opportunity to see the full tier list, except for the few seconds as you dropped Singer into place.
I gotta say if you want to get a good picture of petersons main work and ideas you gotta read Maps of meaning. It was written in the 90s so there's no reactionary stuff in there and I gotta say it's one of those very rare 5 star reads for me. It's not really so much his original thoughts, it's more so like he is taking what some of the brightest minds in history came up with and putting the pieces together in a way that works. He's also not Randian or an objectivist. I read Atlas shrugged and the fountain before Finishing the second half of Maps of meaning and Maps of meaning felt like a natural antitode to Rands strong objectivist worldview. I can highly recommend it and I'm disappointed that its so overlooked in all the discussion because it didn't sell as much.
just so my rating is maybe put into perspective: my other 5 star reviews (excluding one poetry book) are the road less traveled, crime and punishment, the unbearable lightness of being and the art spirit by robert henri (impressionist painter) If one of those is something you really like I think there's value in maps of meaning if one can look beyond the controversy and different takes on him as a person
Damn putting Aristotle on the A-list instead of the S-list destroyed my trust in your judgement, yet fueled my fire to view your other designations 😂 Well done Edit: not disappointed. Must start reading Hume and Hegel
philosophy always reminds be of this verse from Acts....especially the last line that's kind of comical: Acts 17:16-21 16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
@@socialswine3656 I can't speak to the particulars with great accuracy, because I studied philosophy under a professor that emphasized the canon, but as I understand it, most philosophy programs are stuck in a tangential eddy of analytic philosophy. This niche treats linguistic epistemology as if it were the whole ball game and disregards pretty much everything else. Now, they may be right, fwiw. In fact, I think there's a real sense in which they are. Kant put capital-P philosophy to bed, and from the corpse grew psychology, linguistics, economics, and political theory. Of those, linguistics, which is really epistemology, is the closest remining field to old-fashioned philosophy, and it's not really an area with deep roots in the canon. As a result, many philosophy students do not, to be a bit flip, get any education in philosophy. It appears as if Mr. Henderson here was one such, until he took up philosophy *after* leaving a philosophy PhD program.
Just a note from a psychotherapist - all mental health issues that are not of organic/genetic source has the base of anxiety. Depression, compulsion, OCD, PTSD, eating disorders, etc, all have their bases in anxiety. For that reason people who are interested in the human condition, Kierkegaard should be an S.
If I remade the video, I'd bump Aristotle to S tier.
@@_jared the only correct edit, don’t listen to these crybabies
@@xWingzTV I stand by everything else.
@@_jaredyou stand by Marx in the A tier? Preposterous.
You're a cuck, and you look like one. And sound too.
I wonder how much Aristotle might care.
You have made my life more difficult. And you should be proud. I'm 80 and might make it to 81, but not 82. So time, as I understand time, is a big deal. And you put so many wonderful things in front of me that I come closest to regret when I consider what I want to learn than for any other reason. Thank you.
Why not 82?
I’m only 23 years old and I already feel like I’m running out of time to learn the things I want to and to enjoy the things I enjoy. What advice would you give to someone in my position?
If what you cannot learn feels bad to think about change your view, try to think about how to pass on your accumulated knowledge so others may learn from your experience. How we pass on knowledge is a primary purpose of philosophy. It's how we grow as a group over time.
@@AA_Warlok Standing on the shoulders of giants.
@@harrison127 That's a kind question. Don't smoke. Brush your teeth regularly. I have a Post-it note on my display: "Don't worry about it." Sorry. That's all I know.
I welcome you to the world of humanities meme-format content
It is, the way of judging tells me if philosophy departments still teaches logic or ways or limits of judging
it's a good place to be
Yes Jared get the bag!!!!! Make a tier list!!
Lol
Why not?
I see tier list I click
"People who seek money are the worst part of human kind" mfs when RUclips ad revenue just pays 3$ 🗣️:
@@Wulkthe ones who say such stuff usually aren't competent enough to make money and appreciate other people's effort.
My mother understands very little English, and I do not believe she cares much for philosophy. I just put your video up on the television while I'm getting ready, and she thinks you have a fantastic voice! She doesn't know what you're talking about, but she still likes to listen to you 😊
seeing Aquinas next to Peter Singer just killed off a part of my soul.
... and below Marx and Mill ... yikes.
Based and Summa Contra Gentiles piled
@@AutumnRide86 All four should be tossed in the trash.
Singer is good but he will be forgotten as time marches on.
@@AutumnRide86 All four should tossed in the trash can.
Hegel is only S because nobody has understood anything he wrote yet
thats a you problem
Based and Schopenhauerpilled
I think Kierkegaard did, and he repudiated it quite quickly.
Hegel is good actually. He was just a bit overly flowery and liked to hear himself talk a bit. Also his bootlicking of Napoleon was pure cringe.
That's wrong. Indeed there are a lot of people who have a very good grasping of Hegel. The problem with Hegel is that one of his very basic points is that abstractions are in themselves false. Therefore philosophy as the highest form of truth has to be as concrete as possible. But because Hegel is so insanely concrete, precise und crystal-clear, he becomes utterly incomprehensible for the average human mind which is not necessarily an intelligence issue but more due to lacking philosophical skill. Hegel is not for beginners and definitely hard. But there are people who have understood him very well. His philosophy is just impossible to summarize (that's kind of the whole point of it) which becomes a problem when communicating Hegel to an audience of layman.
The exclusion of Russel and Wittgenstein is criminal
Absolutely. Both incredibly influential.
And Zizek, and a mention to Freud. And Presocratics! Like Heraclitus or Parmenides. But I think, in general, he puts a good mix.
@@germantanco3523 zizek shouldve been S tier
@@davidddd2001 Is he really producing anything original though?
mid
Would love to see where you place Russell, Wittgenstein, de Beauvoir, Adorno, Fanon, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Zizek, Badiou, Byung-Chul Han, and Bruno Latour as well
Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Boethius, Montaigne, Emerson, and Lacan
Levinas, Habbermas, Said..
Foucault was a hack. Levinas was not a good writer. And I say this as someone who actually found Derrida interesting. Maybe I was just too worn out from the effort of reading Derrida to have any energy left for Levinas? 😅
If Jared ever makes a sequel to this, the people not on the list I'd be most curious about include Montaigne, Leibniz, Rousseau, Bergson, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, Benjamin, Adorno, Deleuze, Habermas, and Nussbaum. I think it's kind of sad Jared doesn't discuss any philosophers outside the Western tradition. I have a special affinity for Zhuangzi. I really love Jared's videos. The recent one he did on the six central issues surrounding higher ed were spot on. (I'm an adjunct instructor in writing at three different colleges.)
This is a great comment. I agree!
Yeah, Wittgenstein really is missing. Along with Derrida (and possibly Foucault). Whereas someone like Frege seemed not totally like the others in terms of importance
I’m with you here. I’d like to see where Wittgenstein fits in here. There are also some “thinkers” (not necessarily philosophers) that I wish were discussed more: Leopardi, Cioran, and Zapffe.
maybe bad take but I wish he would include Jung, Freud and Lacan because they should really be approached as philosophy .. and I'm curious about his thoughts on Bataille. also wanna see Sartre, Beauvoir, Arendt, Derrida and Foucault
@@Lin-rs9pw I can see how he would forgo the big names of psychoanalysis on the same grounds as Peterson, though. But I am with you on Bataille if only to see his brain melt :D
The Aristotle take is so wild to me. Saying that basically the grandfather of science as he’s often characterised should go from S to A tier because of his science work for which he is at least in scientific and analytic circles most revered for is crazy to me. I don’t think the outdated nature of his work makes it less impressive, perhaps only more of a niche interest for history of science types. I guess if ur ranking them for what the viewer should read it could make sense. Anyway it’s your opinion, great video! I am enjoying all your content quite a lot, thx for making videos
I agree completely
I agree. Without Aristotle, medieval and modern philosophy are impossible.
Also, by that same token, why not lower Plato? He stated that there are no contemporary platonists and I doubt he thinks the theory of forms or of recollection are correct.
Similarly, he states with Plotinus that historical importance was a key factor. Well, there is no philosopher who gets even close to Aristotle’s influence, not even Plato.
In complete agreement. Aristotle is the most impactful philosopher in the western tradition. A thorough study of Aristotle makes it so much easier to study ANY other philosopher that comes afterwards. He did way more than amend Platonism, he radically departed from it, which is why it’s theorized that Plato didn’t pass his school to him after he died. His biological and scientific observations are outdated, sure, but his metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, aesthetics, politics, and ethics are still extremely valuable today. I mean, he practically defined these areas of study. His achievements are incredible. Best CV of any intellectual I can think of.
@@m.b.crawford5464 totally agree on the fact that studying aristotle makes ANY other philosophy easy. He sure defined the logic of philosophical thought. From my experience i started to learn philosophy from his work, and I can say for sure his principles defined what philosophy is and isnt.
No Schopenhauer? :(
What did ou expect from a list that has Hegel at S? :D
too much testosterone for this soy philosopher
S like Schopenhauer
easy A tier
I saw someone make an attractiveness list of philosophers. It was funny that Schopenhauer had his original category below G called Schopenhauer.
I did my undergraduate thesis on Plotinus’ Enneads and.. man.. that is a crazy sophisticated highly complex metaphysics. It was a delight to spend so much time with those writings
I love Pascal, he was so ahead of his time, he was my first philosophical crush when I was a teen lol and i still read it from time to time, he still speaks to me. He had such existentialistic thoughts and beautifully written.
He is the most underrated philosopher in these kinds of lists. A true philosopher of the heart, not the head. That’s probably why the nerds don’t give him his due.
@@m.b.crawford5464 well he was also a genius in math and physics and contributed greatly, he was a child prodigy and I think he turned to religious topics later on. Great head and big heart, which is rare. He also suffered a lot physically and died pretty young. Why do people overlook him 😔
@@padmeasmr I get the sense that he reached the pinnacle of rationality (for that time) and found it a fruitless exercise. He saw that language and mathematics are insufficient to fully describe reality and that these intellectual rabbit holes go on forever. I think that’s why he took a more spiritual and psychological approach. Most people never reach this level of intellectual maturity at all. Pascal reached it in his thirties. It’s crazy.
These are great takes. Pascal was awesome.
Pascal lovers should all see the film "My Night at Mauds."
This video is epic on so many levels. It's alternately deep with a dash of silly, fun with streaks of meaningfulness. And yet helpful all around. Bravo, Jared, bravo!
where's zizik and so on and so on
Sniff sniff im actually more of a hegelian than marxist but sniff i ask myself what happened to freud? sniff snif and so on
@@waffle.23 yeah there are also three top philosophers not mentioned here BUT I guess it's just a one person's subjective list so we can't complain.
@@waffle.23 LMFAO
@@waffle.23😂
@@kiloub maybe take it up with the people that compiled this list for him instead of into the ether
For Butler, I highly recommend Giving an Account of Oneself. That book is, I think, at the core of their thinking and extrapolates out from Althusser’s writing on subjectivity, which I believe is central to understanding Butler’s work on gender, violence, and politics.
This will blow up
Yep. Here I am in the first 1k views.
scholasticism is not for everyone, but that doesn't make Aquinas any less noteworthy for his achievements. His analysis of language is up there with that of Frege and Wittgenstein at having made an ostensible treatise on notions of sense and reference, interior propositions, and the epistemic limits of human language.
All the more impressive that such ideas were even fathomed 700 years before being more thoroughly added onto by a more concisely formed philosophy of language.
Even if there's an argument to be made about its format and accessibility, analytical thomism is goated imo
Extremely correct opinion, regardless it would've been honest for Jared to just say "I classify him as a theologian" because he's literally the greatest theologian of all time in my opinion and he really is very focused on Aristotle and that probably holds him back as a pure philosopher.
Scholasticism is a displaced discourse. The whole idea of such a list is in disfavor of the way how scholastic philosophy works, I would assume.
@@parkermcginley3708 neoplatonism is a great influence...if i'm not mistaken he cites dyonisus more than aristotle
Sorry but no, he didn't contribute a lot to human knowledge and he's mostly cited by theologians. The list is fine.
@@QuantumMag-u1l some philosophers say he is a theologian only and then never study him as a philosopher....and then such philosophers complain that he is cited mostly by theologians...
The thing is...go there and get to know some of the guy's work...how can a guy who makes an original sinthesis of plato and aristotle is not a philosopher? Has the original actus essendi....and contributions in so many disciplines...it is just about making the effort to know at least a little bit about his work and about the structure of the summa
Nice video. But I have to say, Aristotle in anything other than S is absolute insanity
As Camus himself clarified, he wasn't an existentialist. It's more than mere quibbling that made him disavow the label; I think we should be charitable enough to consider the possible reasons (just as we should charitably consider, e.g., Derrida's rejection of the labels 'postmodern' and 'poststructuralist').
Nothing but the claim over Aristotle not being in the same tier as Plato seemed contestable to me.
For the obvious reasons, just the blunt ones. The guy helped to spur on systematics and stratification into fields. His works were copied and written commentaries in the margins of for over a thousand years.
Disagree or agree with him, he covered so much that it made a backdrop for people doing their own philosophy.
Aristotle asked many questions. And we won.
Looking forward to your "Eastern Philosopher Tier List", brother
Ok Jared but when will you put yourself on the list?!
Would a philosopher make a tierlist?
No ? ... Philosopher wouldn't care about this nonsense of comparison at all ... because it's a ( polchat) @@putinstea
Someone didn't watch till the end
This is excellent. I'd really like an even more expansive list or just an entirely new selection of philosophers.
Great video. It hurts me that Wittgenstein isn't here (though I'm sure lots of folks will yell "why not so-and-so!?"). And I definitely think Aristotle is S-Tier. But this is your list and it's awesome, and I really appreciated the thoughts you gave for each choice. Kudos!
I wanted to comment almost the same. Great choices, most picks kind of fit for me. Hoewever, Aristoteles is underestimated. Hegel might be overestimated a bit. And that Wittgenstein is missing almost necessarily leads to the Freudian suspicion that the obvious lack of someone like Wittgenstein is a sign of displacement.
100% agree. Wittgenstein & Kripke not S-tier is criminal. Neitzsche is S-tier also
With regards to Butler, I think you'd do yourself a favor to start with their 1988 essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution", since it's way shorter and easier to read (imo) than Gender Trouble. Would also recommend to read their later work (later Butler is way easier to read, as a rule), for example the second essay titled Violence, Mourning, Politics of the 2004 book Precarious Life. They've also done very noteworthy work on Hegel which was quite innovative in the '80s.
Hegel over Aristotle? Really?
Not a particularly controversial take
That's quite evident
@@manucao8594 Schopenhauer would give Hegel an F tier and I have no reason to doubt him.
Hegel is entirely skippable. He is entirely skippable. You get bogged and become dogmatic if you get wrapped up in Hegel's nonsense.
@@HeelPower200 no way Hegel is skippable lmao go read him
Amazinf Video, Jared! Reallt enjoyed it. Just wanted to point something out though. Most of the philosophers we know as existentialist were really just given this label later on, and they don't necessarily espouse the fundamentals of existentialism. Camus, in fact, categorically refused being an existentialist, which was a part of the Sartre Camus rift. The only true existential philosophers are actually just Sartre and Simone de Bouvoire.
Hey Jared, could you do a video about the greatest papers in philosophy? Videos about works of philosophy tend to focus on books, but that misses the fact perhaps that a lot of work is being done by papers. Also i dont read papers as much, so i would love to get some recomendations on that front from someone who's been more deeply into academia than I have.
This video annoyed so many of my friends and created many great conversations, so thank you from the bottom of my heart ❤
I disagreed with a lot of this list but it is a good video. Good balance of not taking too long or being too brief over the reasons why you ranked them where you did.
Which did you disagree with most?
@@colinwithrow1083 all of it
Great content. Thanks. Watched quite a few now.
Merleau-ponty is never talked about...
I'm curious as to where you'd put him on a tierlist.
thank god someone mentions it!!
I think he is going to become more popular than Heidegger eventually
Jared, if there is a part two, consider mainly showing the tier list page. I feel that would fair better with the algorithm. Could also be cool to do subsections versions (i.e. political philosophy theories TL, philosophy of religion TL, etc.)
I'm curious to know where you would have ranked Foucault and Baudrillard because if you like one you usually dislike the other.
I agree. I would like to have seen him rank Foucault given he is one of the more controversial philosophers (Foucault, and most postmodernists, belongs in F if you ask me).
Foucault is a fraud who made up "case studies" to bolster his positions. Likewise did Marx: fake "history" ...
I thoroughly enjoyed your video and found a lot of stuff relatable. You’ve also given me some books to explore and really enjoyed your insights
I do wonder about your overall opinion of Schopenhauer; not as influential as any of the people mentioned, but his ideas were significant in many ways.
This is a really charitable and balanced perspective! Your comments on Nietzsche surprised me a bit since I honestly thought you were quite a bit more averse to him, but I’m pleasantly surprised. You assessment of Heidegger’s style was very true to life and well put!
You can’t begin a discussion of philosophy without Socrates.
Who ? I only know Jordan Peterson, greatest philosopher the Earth graces
Socrates is essentially only significant as a character in Plato
As someone who enjoys analytic philosophy, I was little sad to only see Frege being mentioned. I'd implore you to make another tier list of analytic philosophers and contemporary philosophers like Alexander Pruss, Richard Swinburne, Timothy Williamson etc.
Have a great day!
Make a list with contemporary philosophers, thinkers, philo-posing-influencers etc. It could be a great way to have a discussion about how to gauge the arguments validity and depth of all the many voices.
Placing Aristotle in A tier and Aquinas in C tier is ridiculous. The two should not be more than one grade apart.
Thanks for confirming the connection between Nietzsche and Rand. I’ve been making that connection for quite a while.
C tier for Aquinas is pure coal.
Absolute garbage tier list. I'm wondering if he really thinks that or was this made purely as rage bait. Bizarre.
He was a religious propagandist. He should not even be considered a 'philosopher'. Much like almost all Catholic 'philosophy' it is just pseudo intellectual dogma masquerading as logic.
Cry about it
Why? Aquinas is only useful for religious people, mainly Catholics. He didn't contribute a lot to human knowledge, I would even say that he should be behind Descartes.
@@QuantumMag-u1l I'm not sure how you can read Aquinas and think he is only useful for religious people...which is why I doubt you've even read him. A man who synthesizes two of the greatest intellectual traditions in human history(the Greeks and Christians) does not deserve C tier. The Summa alone is A tier philosophy, never mind the copious amounts of other philosophical writing he created.
This is an awesome list. We all are biased in our world views but can still acknowledge philosophers we don't agree with can still great philosophers
Wittgenstein?
Omg how is he missing
He's my pookie
@@M0ONCommander he is my love
He probably would make the same case for Wittgenstein as he did on Frege.
he's a bum
I’ve been loving your videos - glad I discovered you. This looks to be another excellent one - excited!
Putting Marx two tiers above Aquinas when Aquinas should be one of the easiest S tiers ever is wild 😭
Aquinas' impact on western philosophy and civilization as well as Catholic doctrine will last for thousands of years to come while Marx's 19th century economic writings and the political wars he inspired in the 20th century, will remain a tragic fact of the past. Aquinas' fusion of Aristotle's metaphysics into a Christian matrix alone makes "dialectical materialism" seem like child's play.
Great video Jared! Keep them coming!
No Schopenhauer?
A tier.
@@tangerinesarebetterthanora7060 No. just No. S tier
Me: "Jeez, a tier list, how original and not clickbaity at all." Also me: * pours cup of coffee and clicks to watch and see Jared's rankings *
thank you
Was just going to watch a couple minutes worth tonight; ended up watching the whole thing. Adding Plotinus to the TBR.
On Ayn Rand:
You've mentioned you've read Rand's Atlas Shrugged, her writings on capitalism and a biography on her. What is absolutely essential to read, to get a full view of het philosophy, is both her most important writings on epistemology: 'Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology' and ethics: 'the Objectivist Ethics'. Her philosophy is an accumulative system: premises accepted in metaphyics work all the way through to politics and esthetics.
A lot of philosophical commentators see similarities between Nietzsche and Rand. Although they look alike on the surface, they both ground their egoism in a different way and with a different result. The interview with miss Rand called ''Ayn Rand, What is the Difference Between Objectivism and Nietzsche's Philosophy?'' is a great interview in which she herself distances her own philosophy (justly or unjustly) from that of Nietzsche.
I haven't really scrolled through the comments, but I know Objectivists have the habit of being condescending about critique on Rand. I think you're quite honest in your judgement, so I look forward to your video on Rand. I hope my suggestions have been of any help😃
Reading We the Living gave me a good insight into her thinking and also history itself.
@@doomstarks182 I haven't yet read that book, mainly because I think it will read much like 1984, a book which I've already read.
It is a bummer one paragraph debunking your ideas, but the way frege did philosophy is what made this possible, the clarity that analytic philosophy strives is exactly that, to reason things and make statements that could be more easily provable or disprovable.
Having your ideas been disproved, its just part of the advancement of knowledge, his contributions are still there.
In other hand statung your ideas to make thie possible, when you were the first to do that is remarkable.
It is kind of rare to happen this in philosophy.
Oh, please make the Ayn Rand video. That would be great.
Since you really love Aristotle, particularly his Ethical works, I’m interested in your thoughts on Alasdair MacItnyre. Would love to see you cover him in the future!
I understand your response to Rand's writing and philosophy as Nietzschean but there is no dishonesty there. Ayn Rand gave credit to Nietzsche in which she said Nietzsche had influenced a lot of her early writings and The Fountainhead. Overall Rand liked him. What separates the two is that before Rand thinks of selfishness or greatness she thinks of reason. It's the human mind that she upholds that Nietzsche misses. She upholds the mind where he upholds might. Her other beliefs, which are adjacent to Nietzsche, follow logically from her appraisal of reason. Nietzsche rejected objective morality, Ayn Rand embraced it. From a glance it is easy to think that their ideas are the same but it would have to be a very quick glance. And if you have read Atlas Shrugged I think you would see the important distinction. The theme of Atlas Shrugged isn't "what if you remove heroes from society" but "what if you remove the mind from the world". Would love to see a video on Ayn Rand
Do you remember the source in which she states she has been influenced a lot by Nietzsche in the past? I know she said she is intellectually only in debt to Aristotle so at the surface this seems like a contradiction on her side.
@@leeuwbama9433 In “Journals of Ayn Rand” she referred to Nietzsche plenty while taking notes on The Fountainhead. But she did not quote Nietzsche in intellectual terms but poetic terms. She doesn’t feel indebted to Nietzsche because, although she was artistically influenced by him, she had profound quarrels with his actual ideas. Her ‘official’ estimate of Nietzsche is in the introduction to “The Fountainhead”. So she admired his prose, but their philosophies are distinct. To her, Aristotle was the only philosopher who really laid the foundation of her philosophy. I haven’t read Aristotle so I can’t attest to that but he’s next on my reading list.
@@leeuwbama9433 “Nietzsche’s rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself… that the ‘superman’ is ‘beyond good and evil’, that he is a ‘beast of prey’ whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim.” Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, 39
Been waiting for this for so long!
34:17 I disagree with Huemer, the objectivist view of selfishness is that he who acquires the values deserves to benefit from them. The gist of the objectivist politics is that reason is the more valuable way to live with other men rather than force, egoism comes into play when you are permitted to benefit from living with humanity with their consent and co-operation.
I don't think that is Rand's argument for the initiation of force as being anti-egoism.
I thought that the initiation of force was evil solely because it flies in the face of the virtue of honesty. An honest man would recognize that every human being is an end in himself. By initiating force you're embodying that you don't regard that principle as truth.
@@leeuwbama9433 Yeah, it's what I am kind of saying; egoism is an answer to the question who ought benefit from values, not what are values
Personally, I'd love to see a video on Rand.
Aristotle should go in the S tier. Your rationale was that his biology wasn't great. Well, this is a philosopher tier list, and not a scientist tier list. He still made great contributions in that field, especially as a thinker working thousands of years before the advent of modern science.
He invented logic, the very foundation on which all of philosophy lies.
The Nicomachean Ethics is really THE seminal work in virtue ethics, and is still enormously influential even today.
HIs work in metaphysics and political science, including as the first thinker to systematically collect constitutions from different states and compare them, were second to none in the ancient world, and influenced thousands of years of thought.
All of this influence, and only off of his lecture notes. Imagine if we had his dialogues.
Please reconsider! Any argument you would cast for your reasoning would surely be based off of...well...logic.
Absolutely do a video on Ayn Rand. Would be fascinating.
No Wendell Berry? America’s great agrarian mystic!!
Maybe the most underrated writer. I read the world ending fire and I almost want to write his name in for president
I hope we get to see more fun tier lists. I've yet to see anyone to a ranking of the Platonic dialogues, for example.
Overall I would rate your tier list as fine. I agree with some of your assessments while I vehemently disagree with others. I understand that this is a very difficult task and completely avoiding subjective analysis is impossible, but I feel you tend inconsistently weigh how impactful and compelling each philosopher is. Plato and Kant definitely belong in S tier so no arguments there. I am not super familiar with Hegel but I am well aware of his impact. I would probably have switched Aristotle and Hegel just given Aristotle's over all influence. Yet putting Aristotle on the same level of Plato seems wrong, and I agree that S tier should remain for and elite few so maybe A for both Aristotle and Hegel. My first real disagreement is your placement of Spinoza. Personally, I kind of despise modern philosophy, especially early modern philosophy. I find it incredibly dull and not very inspiring. This does not mean I have no appreciation for modern philosophy and its influence on history, science, religion, and the advancement of philosophical thought, nor do I under appreciate the level of brilliance displayed by these thinkers. I just tend not to enjoy reading modern philosophers as much of others. Given this fact, you can probably guess that I abhor Spinoza's writings. I view him as a nihilist in pure logical form where as Camus was at least poetic (loose use of the word nihilist here). I think Spinoza's pantheistic view of God removes any power or inspiration derived from the idea of God and his conception tends to fade into the cosmic background where it becomes a useless conception. If God is everything, God becomes nothing. I could go more into this argument but I don't want to take too much of my critique of your tier list with my analysis of Spinoza. I will conclude by saying that Spinoza's works succeed in their critique of religious dogmatism and there are clear parallels between his ethics and Hume, and even Sam Harris. Overall I would have put Spinoza in C or B. Nietzsche is one of my favorite philosophers to read and also one of the most influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. I might have even place him as an S tier. I think he will be looked at as one of the those landmark philosophers that marked a major shift in western thought centuries into the future. We are living in a post Nietzschean world. The "death of God" and science/logic as an insufficient framework for value and meaning arguments would surely have been made at some point if Nietzsche had not. But, he levied such a devastating critique against Christianity and rationalism that he deserves to be lauded. He directly influences existentialism post modernism, and society and history in the 20th and 21st centuries. Because of all of this I might put him in S tier. I would put Camus in C his insights into existentialism. Aquinas and Descartes deserve to be in higher tiers, in B probably. Marx is difficult to evaluate because if you analyze his impact from a neutral and object viewpoint he definitely deserves A. However, I find his philosophy intellectually and conceptually questionable. Of course Marx would have objected to how his communist philosophy was implemented, yet I have a hard time separating the two. In my opinion communism requires immense top-down control and it is quite difficult if not impossible to redistribute wealth without developing authoritarianism. Merit does not allow for equal distribution. You cannot reduce humanity to a completely equal state without ridding a society of the economically and intellectually successful. Everywhere communism has been attempted there has been massive human rights violation and death. Even as a philosophy communism fails. Therefore, Marx belongs in C and is nor any lower simply by dint of his impact. Lastly, I have a much more favorable view of Rand than you do. I agree that she is almost a direct intellectual descendant of Nietzsche's and it is a shame that they are not referenced together more frequently. Rand attempts to create a complete conception of the individual that has achieved Nietzsche's super morality, individuals that have moved beyond conventional morality and reached a state of complete self-containment. I thoroughly enjoyed Atlas both for its romantic appeals and its sense of supreme individual agency. With that being said, I think her project fails but not for lack of trying. Rand's attempt to justify complete individualism and egoism earns her a C in my opinion. Even if objectivism fails the attempt warrants a place in philosophical history. Also, I appreciate and enjoy her defense of capitalism, of which you could have guessed I am a fan given my critique of Marx. I apologize for such a long winded review but philosophy is my passion and I do not get to talk about it often. Thank you for your video, certainly provided food for thought.
Fun experiment, thanks! Shame about that bad fumble on Aquinas, but otherwise hilarious and edifying in equal measure.
Nice list, but Ariatotle and Nietzsche are S tier. Only Plato and Kant along with Aristotle and Nietzsche on this list have a thoroughgoing impact on Western thought and culture.
Maybe Aristotle, but putting Nietzche on the same tier as titanic system builders like Plato, Kant, and Hegel doesn't make sense. Nietzche is a great writer, but borderline not even a philosopher because he never presents systematic treatments of metaphysics, ethics, or aesthetics
Like many commenters, I wholeheartedly disagree with Camus in D tier, but every other rating, I agreed within +/- one level. Satre had some genius work, but as a person (from what I've read), he doesn't hold a candle to anyone on this list, so I am not mad he was left off. As you said, Camus does resonate with a lot of people, but I think he's sorely misunderstood by most. The idea of the absurd can be very uncomfortable for people, so I suspect it isn't explored as deeply as other, more optimistic philosophies. I am glad you did give him credit as a novelist. Great video, as always!!
Bro didn’t even include Wittgenstein.
You earned my like with what you said at 26:47. J.S. Mill is under-appreciated.
Nietzsche was critical of capitalism, whereas Rand saw it as the ideal economic system. Nietzsche is "S" tier. What about the cult of Zizek?
So? Rand can still be influenced by Nietzsche even if your remark were true (it is probably more difficult than that)
@@FlosBlog Lots of people were influenced by Nietsche. That's why he is "S" tier. It's not more difficult than that
What does that have to do with anything? Nietzsche also criticized socialism. So what? Philosophers can be wrong about almost anything. It's about asking the right questions. Sometimes their mistakes are the most important things that made us look into reality and reevaluate it. Also, tier lists are just caricatures, they shouldn't be taken seriously
@@asgmto He was not an economist. His writings can easily lead to the interpretation that he was more critical of capitalism. Nietzsche critiqued the bourgeoisie and the effects of capitalism on human values. Capitalism led to more decay in his eyes. Philosophers don't just "ask the right questions." They help us answer them. QED.
I LOVE THIS. S+tier content going on over here.
No Arthur Schopenhauer. Absurd
Unimportant
@@ilyassbouioitlan7701 that’s retarded
@@ilyassbouioitlan7701 without Schopenhauer, there would be no Nietzsche which you sweaty nerds glaze so much
This make me think that the author of this video has no real understanding of philosophy. Not putting Schopenhauer in the list is really ignorant.
@@ilyassbouioitlan7701 I disagree. Schopenhauer was credited big time with philosophy on the Will and psychology.
Great video, Jared. I'm glad you mentioned Nagel's paper on the absurd. His concluding insight -- that if nothing matters, then the fact that nothing matters also doesn't matter -- is one of those rare sucker punches that made me instantly start viewing my life differently. (And for the better!)
I have never read the paper (I will see if I can find it soon) so I could be misunderstanding but I don't really understand this point as it relates to Camus's philosophy. Camus never argued that nothing matters, he simply believed that the universe has no inherent meaning. He said you should be open "to the gentle indifference of the world” and through that you achieve happiness. This is not despair but liberation. By accepting that the universe doesn't care about us, we're freed from the burden of cosmic expectations. None of this suggests "nothing matters," it suggests simply that the universe is absurd, and we shall revel in its absurdity.
Surprised not to see Wittgenstein or Quine.
Tbh i didn't watch that video yet, but i just wanted you to know that your work is very helpful and i am grateful for your will to share knowledge with us.
I would have put Camus above Aquinas and Aurelius, at least C or B tier. Using just some of his fiction alone (his fiction was philosophical), like The Plague or Exile and the Kingdom, I think he could be a contender for top humanitarian philosopher of the 20th century, better than Singer, sorry. Just my opinion though lol.
For Descartes I'm hoping to get Passions of The Soul as well as Meditations on First Philosophy in the future. You never see my comments for some reason not sure why but I appreciate this helpful list. We definitely discussed Plato often during my Philosophy course in College.
I think Schopenhauer deserved to be on the list
agree on Hegel...! extremely compelling writer. Also agree on Camus (and the exclusion altogether of Sartre), and certainly on Rand. you are also correct on Butler and "gender theory" overall for that matter: sleight of hand is spot on with all of that, because they have to make stuff up and obfuscate because so much of it is clearly B.S.
*So very regularly I get asked questions, like, what do you think of Shopenhauer?*
And in the end no ranking of Shopenhauer anyway :)
I had him in the video, but the audio was weird and I had to cut it. (He was C tier, FYI)
What of Wittgenstein?
Same thing happened with that audio, but he was B tier.
You nailed the S tier! Glad your conscience let you reconsider.
So a science fiction writer tier list!
Yes!
Jared do some current stuff, 90s onward, and the people who's writing about it that would be a interesting video.
The fact that you read Rand makes me want to compliment you on your patience and your contempt for your free time. Cheers.
I like your channel Dr. Henderson. I personally would put Thomas Aquinas on the highest rung, but that is probably the result of my Catholic education.
Yeah, "probably"
Where the hell is Schopenhauer???????? Definitely S tier.
looking at the timelines is funny - when you compare Nietzsche with Ayn Rand. Also mentioning Butler is like "walking through a swamp" - very entertaining ..
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No Wittgenstein? Damn….
Pascal's concept of entertainment and emptiness is very modern, I consider him the first modern Christian but above all one of the first great psychologists. He should be ahead of Kierkegaard.
You left out Winnie The Pooh.
Would have loved to see your opinions on some postmodern thinkers, foucault, derrida, deleuze... Especially given your background in the analytic tradition.
Based take on Rand, Peterson, and Singer. Though I would have liked to see Singer a bit higher, if only because of how much his work has personally affected me.
Also, like you, have been quite taken aback by the profiling of JP as a philosopher.
Edit: my only critique of this video is the lack of a recap at the end. There was no opportunity to see the full tier list, except for the few seconds as you dropped Singer into place.
It’s probably not long enough, but I added it at the very end while I fade to black. Should make it a little easier to view the whole thing.
@@_jared thanks :)
I gotta say if you want to get a good picture of petersons main work and ideas you gotta read Maps of meaning. It was written in the 90s so there's no reactionary stuff in there and I gotta say it's one of those very rare 5 star reads for me. It's not really so much his original thoughts, it's more so like he is taking what some of the brightest minds in history came up with and putting the pieces together in a way that works.
He's also not Randian or an objectivist. I read Atlas shrugged and the fountain before Finishing the second half of Maps of meaning and Maps of meaning felt like a natural antitode to Rands strong objectivist worldview. I can highly recommend it and I'm disappointed that its so overlooked in all the discussion because it didn't sell as much.
just so my rating is maybe put into perspective: my other 5 star reviews (excluding one poetry book) are the road less traveled, crime and punishment, the unbearable lightness of being and the art spirit by robert henri (impressionist painter)
If one of those is something you really like I think there's value in maps of meaning if one can look beyond the controversy and different takes on him as a person
Damn putting Aristotle on the A-list instead of the S-list destroyed my trust in your judgement, yet fueled my fire to view your other designations 😂 Well done
Edit: not disappointed. Must start reading Hume and Hegel
Ooh my, the salt in the wound of libertarians with Marx on A and Rand on F lol
i dont think a libertarian has ever seriously worked through the works of marx with intellectual honesty
@@theyescapedtheweightofdarkness and what pearls of wisdom has Marx provided? Aside from showing the world he was allergic to work?
philosophy always reminds be of this verse from Acts....especially the last line that's kind of comical:
Acts 17:16-21
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Bro what modern academia does to perception of philosophy is crazy smh
I agree. Most collegiate philosophy programs are butchering the subject. I was lucky enough to attend a college with a more classical approach.
In what sense? I'm genuinely asking
@@jonatandec7083 same
@@socialswine3656 I can't speak to the particulars with great accuracy, because I studied philosophy under a professor that emphasized the canon, but as I understand it, most philosophy programs are stuck in a tangential eddy of analytic philosophy. This niche treats linguistic epistemology as if it were the whole ball game and disregards pretty much everything else.
Now, they may be right, fwiw. In fact, I think there's a real sense in which they are. Kant put capital-P philosophy to bed, and from the corpse grew psychology, linguistics, economics, and political theory. Of those, linguistics, which is really epistemology, is the closest remining field to old-fashioned philosophy, and it's not really an area with deep roots in the canon. As a result, many philosophy students do not, to be a bit flip, get any education in philosophy. It appears as if Mr. Henderson here was one such, until he took up philosophy *after* leaving a philosophy PhD program.
Just a note from a psychotherapist - all mental health issues that are not of organic/genetic source has the base of anxiety. Depression, compulsion, OCD, PTSD, eating disorders, etc, all have their bases in anxiety. For that reason people who are interested in the human condition, Kierkegaard should be an S.
Any books written by (or about) him that you reccomend? You have piqued my interest.
@@keekeejenkins6162 Fear & Trembling, Either/Or. Irvin Yalom: Existential psychotherapy. Rollo May: The meaning of anxiety.