Philosophers Tier List | Marx, Foucault, Hegel, and More!
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- Опубликовано: 21 сен 2024
- This is a fun video ranking 20 philosophers from S to D tier. I'll take into consideration their contributions to a larger field of study, their individual thought, as well as their personalities and respectability as a thinker. Enjoy!
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/ @gavinyoung-philosophy
Why not mention Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party or the various other Heidegger affairs?
Because it’s inconsequential to his philosophy in general, especially his early thought in Being and Time. Heidegger’s thought is highly periodized, and we have good reason to assume that his Nazi affiliation was not 100% genuine. Especially in light of his comments regarding Das Man, it seems clear that his Nazi affiliation was at least partially reluctant, and likely not in line with his philosophical remarks. You’re right though, it slipped my mind to mention it at least.
Because he was disgusted with the metaphysical philosophy of the Nazi party
@@gavinyoung-philosophy read Heidegger in ruin, and the jargon of authenticity. and re-read those last parts if the being and time dude. If there’s any reluctance on his part, it had more so to do with the bureaucratic form that he was getting fed up with in the 30s towards the more esoteric Nazism that he would get wrapped up with toward the end of his career, it never goes away and Heidegger scholars who try to pretend like it does are trying to save face
@@tcmackgeorges12 I’m friends with a very good Heidegger scholar who has convincingly showed that Nazism was at odds with his thought in Being and Time.
because philosophy isn't virtue signaling
Nice video, it might be fun to work on more produced videos comparing philosophy with video game video tropes as a way to communicate to newbies.
Also Lol Slavoj in D tier
Fair list. Hegel and Marx go to S because they are too integral in the development from Kant to Foucault and his class to be anywhere else. Heraclitus goes to S (but I do read his Greek, so I am biased). Butler to A; their philosophy is too derivative of Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva for S. Said is well placed; he too gets a lot from Foucault especially. Sartre to D: he tried with Being and Nothingness but Heidegger and Husserl, and even maybe Bergson and Bachelard overshadow his work massively. Guattari to A; while generally underrated and overshadowed by Deleuze, he deserves some recognition although his influence is limited. Spot on with Foucault, besides his obvious intelligence, his prose-style and especially what I like to call a "syntax of negativity" makes reading him immensely enjoyable. Heidegger is the most important philosopher of the first half of the 20th century.
Couldn’t agree more! A very fair assessment.
Derrida enters the tiers, and then proceeds to rename S to Z in the process of abnegating his own development: Teers.
great list! I would promote Hegel to S and demote Foucault and Butler to A on mine
Fair enough!
Hegel on B tier is sacrilegious
Higher or lower?
@@gavinyoung-philosophy LOWER
@@gavinyoung-philosophy in a dialectical turn, both
The idea for this video is a brilliancy
I haven’t read the works of all of these thinkers, but Descartes, Marx, and Hume deserve to be in the S-tier.
I'm a layman, I try to get desent understanding of philosophy whenever I can. That said, I can comfortably say that whenever I try to understand many concepts specifically attributed to Guattari, I feel utterly lost lmao. Not sure what to do about that tbh.
Seeing as the Israel/Palestine conflict is getting much emphasis lately in public discourse, I wonder what your thoughts are on marxists' criticism of national liberation movements for being class collaborationist and abandoning international working class solidarity. Is this a showcasing of marxism's limitations/reductive tendencies, or is this a sobering reminder of what is ultimately most important?
No worries with Guattari lol. Reading his work with Deleuze I think helps get one comfortable with the more fettered version of his language.
With regard to the critique of national liberation movements as violating the international struggle, I think it’s one of the downfalls of Marx’s leftovers from Hegel. Hegel’s conception of history is structured around an approach to the individual only as an abstract moment of due Weltgeist [World-Spirit], meaning that the individual becomes an active agent in a larger conception of history. The only problem is, this totally disregards the genuine differences between peoples and cultures that should not be brushed over and subsumed under the label “Weltgeiet”. In fact, this justifies colonialism because the differences between cultures are then a result of being less rational or developed in their stage of history and in need of “assistance” by being “lifted out of” their lowly state. Interpolate this into Marx and there’s a conception of the proletariat as The Proletariat (a global class-consciousness whose being is accountable to each of its moments, regardless of where they are). As a result, Marxism totally misses the mark here because it subsumes all unique states of conflict under a global conflict which ignores the different idiosyncrasies of various national liberation movements in favor of an abstraction: the proletariat. The truth is, there are a bunch of little proletariats, and for some, nationalism is a helpful tool to maintain colonization-consciousness (consciousness as a colonized people), whereas for others it spills into sectarian and authoritarian conflict/rule.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy Hello! I'm also a layman... isn't nationality and a strive towards national liberation ALSO a fiction (like the 'proletariat' is?) A construct? I will give that it's more believable construct, cuz we humans are tribal and xenophobia comes to us organically... nevertheless it's a construct/fiction.
There are also 'little nationalities', the places that someone is emotionally connected to because they were born and/or raised there, or live there. Existance of bunch of little proletariats doesn't negate existance of a world-wide proletariat just like loving your city doesn't forbid you to love your country.
Also, only Left-communists like Rosa Luxemburg would critique national liberation movements as such as far as I can tell. Lenin literally wrote "Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation (...) but must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their rebellion (...)" - 1916
I'm sorry for the long comment. I hope you will correct my bigger misunderstandings/recommend a book to read, cheers!
@@piotr_jurkiewicz Yes, all identify is a construct of sorts, but especially national identities are an abstraction.
You are very right that not all communists would critique national liberation movements. I just addressed such a stance with the opposition.
I think some of Deleuze and Guattari’s work in A Thousand Plateaus is helpful, for example the chapters Micropolitics and Segmentarity and Faciality, are helpful for disentangling identity.
i agree so much with your considerations of Sartre esp re: Heidegger and La Nausée. but we differ on Žižek :) thank you for this. it was enjoyable and really helpful!
I’m about to read Žižek’s book on violence, so I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I’ll admit, my perceptions are tainted by the optics of his career more than they should be, so here’s to the ever-changing nature of interests!
@@gavinyoung-philosophy it’s actually the only book i’ve finished of his so far (the rest i’m only 100 pages or so in before my mind drifts). i’m not sure if i would say that it was mind blowing tho. but! it was definitely insightful and there are certain terms that he defines or shift in my perspective that he’s created in me that i find indispensable when writing and analyzing what is in front of me. i actually enjoy his ‘non-serious’ character, which i believe is what’s needed in relation to the gravity of his discourse. i actually saw him live at an event. the solemn respect from the room was palpable but him on the other hand was just giggling to himself and freaking out his publisher, not talking about the book they were meant to sell but instead politics.
@@woanologue I do like that he doesn’t take himself too seriously in that regard. I feel like all good art must know how to call itself into question and thereby call into question the absolute/universal nature of its project (same goes for artists).
I give Cody here a break cause he placed Zizek at the bottom
Thoughts on Albert Camus?
@@drewsimone100 He’s cool. I haven’t read enough of him to give an informed assessment, but I like how brutally honest he is about the state of existence.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy So true. Love your tier list btw! Would totally take your class as an elective if I was still in college.
@@drewsimone100 What a high compliment! Thanks my friend
Everything you said about Sartre (and Beauvoir) really proves to me that you have not read his work closely. Are there a lot of moments in being and nothingness where he is incorrectly reading Heidegger sure but goes for majority of figures in the history of philosophy (including people you have in S). but there are some extremely original moments of philosophy in being and nothingness. While Heidegger does have an account of others in being and time it is so brief. In chapter 4 he just runs by what it means for me to have a relationships to other people because he’s so obsessed with calling public life inauthentic. Whereas Sartre is able to arrive at the same conclusions that husserl does about other (without even having access to Ideas II) and spends multiple chapters on the relationships with others, which is much more exhaustive than Heidegger. The description about how the other can either break my sense of self or my sense of world through looking-at at or being-looked-at consciousness is new. I just read finish being and time cover to cover and there is nothing like that in it. There’s definitely nothing like the chapter on concrete relations to others where he goes onto to show how projects of love and sexuality are always a matter managing this conflict between looking and looked at. Your commentary on Beauvoir similarly misses this point when you just simply reduce the interesting fact about them being that they had a relationship to each other and not that the two of them are responding to each other’s philosophies and shaping a whole generation! But more than that, the claim that his ethical work is derivative, when it’s the most severe break from Heidger’s thought and politics. It really shows that you haven’t read colonialism and colonialism or antisemite and Jew, not only are these text extremely original but they are extremely formative for one of the thinkers that you have an a like Fanon. And to that point a point, which is critical for the writing of the wretched of the earth by the way, if you think that Sarra is a pop philosopher or an easy to read philosopher or someone who is just popular because of his fame, then I employ you to try and read the critique of dialectical reason and come back and tell me that that is pop philosophy Fanon sure didn’t think when he cited in WOTE and taught lectures on this text when he was an active revolutionary. This is absolutely pathetic. Oh my goodness. What is unoriginal are these tired old criticisms of his work that always show to me that the person saying it have not read it at all.
this feels an impossible challenge. I was wondering if you could help me figure out a good place to start in relation to consciousness in the philosophical domain, on my own I keep coming across terms like the cartesian theatre and cartesian dualism, any recommendation by you would be helpful
Definitely read Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. Cartesian- is denoting a relationship to Descartes and refers to Descartes’ belief that ontology is split between two domains: the res cogitans (thinking things) and res extensia (extended things). Basically, there are two types of things, ontologically: those which think (aka the mind, or the internal Cartesian “theatre”) and those which are extended in space (everything else in the world outside the mind). This sets up the split between mind and body that is known as mind-body dualism or Cartesian dualism. Reading the Meditations will help you see how he develops these ideas in a very clear and concise way and would be a great introduction to the study of consciousness, since Descartes is a staple for the mind-body problem.
@@gavinyoung-philosophythank you so much, not only for the book recommendation but also for the brief description of the terms. its interactions like this that makes this social media platform special
happy to see Deleuze on top, and lol'd at Zizek at the bottom. I do think Zizek is an great entry point between pop-philosophy and non-pop.
I agree. He was also instrumental for making Marxism seem less taboo.
No mention on Schopenhauer? I would put him in A tier. He is a father for any aspiring philosopher.
I quite like On the Sufferings of the World and his essay on suicide, but I’ve only read his minor works (as in, not The World as Will and Representation) so I’m not sure I could give a fair assessment. From what I’ve read though, you’re right, A tier.
So where would you put Kant? Why Kant you find a minute to at least give him an honorable mention?
Haven’t read him aside from some short ethics passages :)
What are your thoughts on Kierkegaard and William James?
Kierkegaard seems fine from what I know about him. I like that he doesn’t try to “rationalize” religious faith; he just admits it’s a choice one makes. I haven’t read him nor James, but I’m taking a pragmatist philosophy class this fall so I will! I consider myself a pragmatist, so I’m sure I’d like him.
My issue with Zizek is that he's too close to liberal centrism, surprised someone thinks the opposite.
Liberal as in left-wing or liberal as in classical liberalism/neoliberalism?
He's a Liberal; He's a Totalitarian; He's a theorist's that's function is to recuprate radical theory to maintain the status quo, and who knows, he could even be a fascist!
@@theory175 Couldn’t agree more. He knows how to say a lot without saying much.
Oh, the irony. Besides that, if you want an introduction to Zizek's thought without having to deal with his admittely difficult structure, either you can read "for they know not what they do" or Adrian Johnston's "Zizek's ontology". In the former, he gives lectures on his thoughts regarding deconstruction, Hegel's philosophy, and his understanding of Lacan; I will say that he does repeat a few examples, but he consistently adds another layer to it. With regards to Johnston's book, it is one of the greatest resources to understand the conceptual edifice that Zizek works with; A comment to be had is that it only covers Zizek's writings up until 2006, so if you want a book that covers his two lastest theortical developments (less then nothing and absolute recoil) you would want to go to a new german idealism by johnston. Besides that, the joke was that Zizek's name has become a master-signifier. If my syntax is horrific, I'm using my phone to make this comment, so, hopefully this is readable.
@@theory175 Preach, theory, preach!
Does knowing the dangers of being a cyclops free you from it's grasp
Knowledge is only partial freedom; imminent risk is never nullified.
Great video, thank you for sharing your personal opinion that I don't agree with.
Thank you for being content to witness my opinion and agree to disagree! Somehow this comment is more significant than all those that largely or mostly agreed with me :)
Kant, Nozick, Rawls, Russel, Locke (Gödel if you count logicians), all s tiers if you're actually into logic and not just meaningless blabber thats incoherent (coherent means abiding to the rules of deductive logic so no contradictions, and arguments that actually follow from each other)
There are more ways to be logical and coherent than syllogistically. I simply prefer more eloquent and literary styles. I was going to put Rawls on here because I quite like his political theory in many regards, but I wasn’t sure if he was too niche. I was also going to include Kant and Locke. As hard as it is to believe, just because you can’t understand something or it appears incoherent doesn’t mean it’s bs, it might just mean you can’t understand it (no personal attack intended).
@@gavinyoung-philosophy It's not that I don't understand it. I actually branched out into mathematics (uni), since I viewed it as the most proper form of philosophy. But I genuinely feel like with a lot of the old philosophy I liked, it's similar to liking Alan Watts or some form of buddhism. The real mathematicians punch of truth was missing for me. But as I see you're not a teen existentialist, which is basically the type of unphilosophical thinking I rebel against (being an existentialist myself that is). I'll give you an example of what argumentation I like, this is a argument for self-ownership: Imagine A says they don't own themselves, then A also doesn't own their own words making them incapable of owning/making the argument that they don't own themselves. The Idea happening here is basically we are saying self-ownership is a necessary condition for being able to argue/debate/say truth, that's the only statement/ proposed axiom here. the arguement in the way I said it mixes meanings and things to hijack our brain into believing it. And then you have to think what does self-ownership mean (in these texts it was a form of responsibility for your own actions no matter the external pressure, so internal self-ownership).
Also Judith is awesome.
@@Vfdking Yeah I like that stuff too. I mean Descartes is one of the quintessential modern continental philosophers and his argumentation is very logical. You’ll get a range of styles of course, with some like Foucault being more clearly coherent and clear, whereas you’ll also get people like Baudrillard or Virilio who seem to intentionally obfuscate. Different strokes for different folks I suppose🤷♂️
Descartes in B tier I can’t believe this. I will now reduce you to atoms
Hahaha
Young dude here never gonna hear about Franz Brentano or Leo Strauss in the college classes that hes paying to learn the basics.
I haven’t learned any of these thinkers in university; all of my own volition. Strauss is mid.
Dugin where ?
Dugin is awful
I'm a logical positivist... So yeah...
Haha yeah, not much analytic stuff on my channel
The worst tier list ever
I know, right?
The S tier its a joke with exception of Heidegger.
No love for Nietzsche or Deleuze?
@@ivan_ivankovich not for top tier in my view. This dude is clearly a product of postmodern culture.
Or somebody who just likes different thinkers than you🤷♂️Not everything has to be indoctrination
makes me sad, when people try to give an overview of philosophy, and it appears they are unaware that analytic philosophy is a thing.
It’s just not my thing. I find analytic philosophy to often be an abstraction, and my personal tastes are more favorable to literary-esque thinkers 🤷♂️
@@gavinyoung-philosophy Can I please ask that anyone thinking about the analytic-contential divide look into how important it is that Russell and Moore stepped away from McTaggart. And that Carnap stepped away from Cassirer-Heidegger debate.
Please read Carnap on anything.
@@RyanReece Sure! I don’t even consider it a debate or divide: I’m just not interested in the problems analytic philosophers talk about. Decolonial struggles, philosophy of identity, semiotics, etc are much more applicable to life and changing the world.
Urgh. You put dirty fraud Frenchie Foucault at S and Marx at A!
Karl Marx was not a philosopher, read Marx.
His thought is very philosophical in its essence and has spawned a lot of important philosophical projects, so I thought it was fairly uncontroversial to place him here.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy What philosophy deals with are principles, formal tenets derived from thought and not from the external world, which are to be applied to nature and the realm of man, and to which therefore nature and man have to conform. If we deduce world schematism not from our minds, but only through our minds from the real world, if we deduce principles of being from what is, we need no philosophy for this purpose, but positive knowledge of the world and of what happens in it; and what this yields is also not philosophy, but positive science. Further: if no philosophy as such is any longer required, then also there is no more need of any system, not even of any natural system of philosophy. The perception that all the processes of nature are systematically connected drives science on to prove this systematic connection throughout, both in general and in particular. But an adequate, exhaustive scientific exposition of this interconnection, the formation of an exact mental image of the world system in which we live, is impossible for us, and will always remain impossible. The proof must be derived from history itself; and, in this regard, it may be permitted to say that is has been sufficiently furnished in other writings. This conception, however, puts an end to philosophy in the realm of history, just as the dialectical conception of nature makes all natural philosophy both unnecessary and impossible. It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts. For philosophy, which has been expelled from nature and history, there remains only the realm of pure thought, so far as it is left: the theory of the laws of the thought process itself, logic and dialectics.
He was a very poor attempt at a politician
@@rod6189 He never attempted to hold political office. He was a political theorist of anything.
Let's face it, Marx was just a latent Hegelian. All his rumbling about materialism is just a joke or an attempt to not cause much of an outcry in times of widespread positivism. The worst part is that this moment was dogmatically recycled by generations of Marxists who built an entire ideology out of it. In short, Marxism is true to an extent to which it is dialectical.