re ausser

helloo,

reply to ausser,

first of all, concerning Melvyn: Although i do not have the Theses on Feuerbach to hand i am pretty sure that the quote begins with a "Hitherto", in which case, Marx would be positively affirming his status as a philosopher and simply critizing previous philosophers for this uniting tednacy toward interpretation from ivory towers, condeming them for missing one (among many, i might add) of the key elements of being a philosopher.

Furthermore, to strip Marx of even later Marxist theory (including, i presume, denying him any claim at all as a partial instigator for existentialism, deconstruction, the Frankfurt school to name but a few) is as ridiculous as to strip Plato of Platonism, or Kant of Kantianism. These Philosophers' names are given to these groups of theory because of the formative, instigational role they play. As such, a great, influential philosopher never stops being a philosopher, at least not just because he is dead anyhow.

But we have diverged onto great philosophers, whereas i think the original point was more general.

Concerning: "The vast majority of people just go about their lives oblivious of any contribution from philosophers, "
If this is to claim that philosophy has had no effect then i think this is simply not the case. This to me would be analogous to claiming that a person living in mainstream Britain who is not a christian can have nothing to do with christianity. Christianity and its influence on the morals, politics etc therefore holds influence over the most ardent atheist (such as myself). Moreover, "The vast majority of people" Are not oblivious to maths, or science, or even pyschology, or argument, ...

My argument was that philosophy studies and partly constitutes the very conditions of possibility for 'human' thought, as such, to be truely oblivious to it would be to deny sapience.

Of course, all this only stands if we go beyond simple empirical investigation into what most people think philosophy is or philosophers do. But i argue from a continental base, where i do not think that empiricism is 'first philosophy'.

i would also briefly suggest that poles like that are just a bit useless, worthless, arbitrary, confused, misleading, local (in a sense) and generally just not worth even thinking about, not to mention in fact completely void of semantic value or content. That is, they would not stand up to philosophical rigour.p.s. The pole should simply have been either 'most influential' or 'most famous'.

cheers,

andy.

I wonder if it is really only those who either study or aspire to be philosophers that are concerned whether someone calls themselves a philosopher or not. The vast majority of people just go about their lives oblivious of any contribution from philosophers, or current philosophers at least.

It may be telling that the winner of the BBC radio 4 In Out Time 'Greatest Philosopher' vote was Karl Marx.  I have no idea how he might feel about being so popularly acclaimed if he were alive. In the vote he romped way ahead of Hume, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Kant, not to mention the ancients., and I don't think any living philosophers even got a mention. This is surprising because as I understand it most postgrad studies and current philosophical debates is on the work of philosophers who were not high in the popularity pole.

Melvyn comments are equalling telling:

So, when you strip away the Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet era and later Marxist theory, who was Karl Marx? Where does he stand in the history of philosophy? He wrote in his Theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it" - which begs the question, is he really a philosopher at all?

So, is a basis upon which we can assess the contribution that philosophers make when they do what they do? Whether they really are what they might claim to be?

Perhaps, for the general public (or BBC 4 listeners at least) Marx was the last great philosopher because they cannot see the impact of the work of more recent philosophers such as Russell's logic, Ryle's non-ghostly machine, Ayer's verificationism, Poppers falsification principle, even though all of this work has had an impact on the world and some very far reaching.

Rgds

Ausser