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10 Most Influential Thinkers

In early December, El Pais, named a list of "the 10 most influential thinkers in the world."  One of my church members sent me the link.  As I read through the article I was excited to discover that I had read nine of the ten thinkers.  And, in an amusing coincidence, the only one I hadn't read, Byung-Chul Han, that very day I had added his latest book The Spirit of Hope to my t0-read list after reading a review.  So it floated to the top of said list, and I read it shortly after, rounding out all ten on the list.

The ten are: Judith Butler, Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, Jürgen Habermas, Yuval Noah Harari, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, Slavoj Zižek, Byung-Chul Han, and Peter Singer.

Let me take them in the order I encountered them.

Martha Nussbaum lectured at the University of Oklahoma when I was still an undergrad philosophy major at Oklahoma Baptist University.  Her topic in that series was the emotions and how emotions have rational content.  It was some years later before I read any of her books, the first one being one she wrote on religious freedom in America (I highly recommend).  Since then I've read many of her books, and she's become one of the thinkers influential in my own thinking.  If you're a non-academic reader looking for a good place to begin, I recommend The Monarchy of Fear.  Much of her best work is on better understanding our emotions, while her justice work has focused on what capabilities all humans need in order to live well.

Jürgen Habermas was one of those names you learned in a survey of the history of philosophy for his contributions to how the public uses reason to make decisions and solve problems.  I probably first read an excerpt in my history of contemporary philosophy class as an undergrad.  While in graduate school I did read his book Justification and Application, though I really don't remember anything from it.  Last year I read volume one of his current project (he's 95 and wrapping things up), which is a history of philosophy explaining how our use of reason has emerged and developed.  

In graduate school I enrolled in one of those intersession courses where you cram a semester's worth of reading and essay writing in about two weeks.  This particular course was on the philosophy of language, using Noam Chomsky as our main text and other thinkers in dialogue with him.  I came to the course initially with a view of language acquisition that believed we start with a blank slate and have to learn everything as children.  Chomsky argued that we are born already wired with the capacity to learn language, that the slate is far from blank.  This course was one of the few times I could point to such a sudden shift of opinion on my part, brought on my reading convincing arguments of one thinker.

Peter Singer and Michael Sandel are two contemporary philosophers I first read in excerpts while in graduate school and only in the last fifteen years finally read one of their books, particularly when I was teaching philosophy myself at Creighton University.  Singer is a utilitarian ethicist who has followed his convictions to make bold statements on animal rights and alleviating the suffering of newborn humans.  In this century he was the source of what became the effective altruism movement (which was until a few years ago quite trendy) in which one determines the most good one can do with one's resources.  One outcome of this was changing how philanthropy worked, with folks maximizing the life-saving potential of their donations--anti-malaria nets, for instance, are one of the most cost effective ways.  His The Most Good You Can Do outlines this perspective.

Sandel taught a course on Justice that became the most popular course at Harvard.  He later turned it into a very good book, that surveys the major approaches to creating a just society.  The book seriously needs an updated version, as the final chapter waxes euphoric about the election of Barack Obama and all the good that portends for the country.  Sandel believes that a society must have some vision of the good life and what it means to be a flourishing person and create the institutions that will help to further these goals, if we are to achieve justice.

I read Judith Butler's Gender Trouble after I came out as a gay man and was in a period of reading queer classics in various genres and fields.  Butler's work was seminal in our contemporary understanding of gender.  Gender is culturally constructed and is performed.  She was one of the key figures in the development of queer theory then.  As gender has become a hot-button topic in recent years, Butler's old work has come under increasing fire.  She's written a newer book trying to understand what has caused all the trouble.  I haven't read that one yet, but do intend to at some point.  

I'd been hearing about Slavoj Zižek but didn't know much, when I was browsing through Powell's, the great Portland, Oregon bookstore, with my friend Dan Morrow and came across a copy of Zižek's Violence, which explores all the various ways violence and our perception of it permeates contemporary culture and economics.  Zižek is a fascinating provocateur, and much of his work as a public intellectual has been online.  A video I enjoyed using in my philosophy courses was his takedown of philanthropy.

Thomas Piketty's Capital I read during my paternity leave in 2015.  Often with sleeping newborn in one arm and the heavy economic tome in the other.  Piketty's book galvanized folks a decade ago as it explained the deep inequalities of the global economy that helped to explain what had happened in the Great Recession.  And it seems that the things Piketty warned about have only gotten worse in subsequent years.

After it was a major global bestseller, I read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, but frankly didn't care for it at all.  So I've never understood his popularity or influence in how we understand human history and use that to anticipate our future.

Which brings me finally to Byung-Chul Han.  I had missed any familiarity with him until the end of this last year and have since seen a few friends commenting on him and his books.  I do plan to go back and read earlier works that I missed, but I have now read his latest book translated into English, The Spirit of Hope in which he writes about the fear that arises in our current moment of history because of all the crises we encounter.  In this period he encourages us to hope, for "It is hope that opens up a meaningful horizon that reinvigorates and inspires life.  Hope presents us with a future."  


The Spirit of Hope

The Spirit of HopeThe Spirit of Hope by Byung-Chul Han
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

He was recently listed by El Pais as one of the top ten intellectuals in the world. And, he was the only one on the list I had not read. But, ironically, the day before I had put this book on my to read list after seeing it in an end-of-year best-of list.

I really enjoyed the beginning and the idea of hope as "searching movement." There are definitely sentences I'll be quoting in sermons in years ahead.

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Left is not Woke

Left Is Not WokeLeft Is Not Woke by Susan Neiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've often returned to Neiman's Evil in Modern Philosophy and so was intrigued when I saw this new publication. In it Neiman stands up for four values of the left--universalism, justice, progress, and doubt--against their critics, especially those on the left itself who critique these values. It's a good read to help us philosophically understand our moment.

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Emerson's Essays

Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo EmersonSelected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first read a few of these essays when I was a sophomore, which seems like the perfect age to do so. When life is full of newness and potential, and we are making choices as to who we are going to become.

I read a little Emerson again a few years later during one of the anniversaries, when there was some Emerson focused events go on.

This reading comes in my very long project of re-reading through the canon in chronological order. And, this time, some resonated and some didn't. You can't accuse him of consistency. Some ideas seemed immature or disproven by the subsequent centuries, while others remain intoxicating. Clearly reading Emerson is still essential to understanding the American character.

One line that really resonated in my reading today was that there are always folks who think they know better how to do your job. Since he was clergy, that really connected with my own experience.

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The World As Will and Idea

The World as Will and Idea: Abridged in 1 VolThe World as Will and Idea: Abridged in 1 Vol by Arthur Schopenhauer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thirty years ago as an undergrad in a modern philosophy class, I first read some Schopenhauer. And despite him being a pessimist, I find the writing beautiful and the ideas exhilarating, even if I didn't fully agree with them.

All these decades later, I feel the same, now having read more fully his major work.

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Essay on the Freedom of the Will

Essay on the Freedom of the WillEssay on the Freedom of the Will by Arthur Schopenhauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though I disagree with Schopenhauer's position on the freedom of the will (basically, that there isn't any), I recommend this essay as a model of fine philosophical writing. Well structured, clearly written, with cogent arguments, and reflecting an incredible breadth of scholarship and reading.

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Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion

Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient EmotionLove: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion by Simon May
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Love is "the joy inspired by whomever or whatever we experience as rooting, or as promising to root, our life."

May has numerous goals in this book. He reviews the traditional accounts of love in Western culture and finds them to be incoherent or inadequate to our time. He also shows how the modern development of romantic love tried to turn that love into a secularized version of divine love in a way that is impossible for humans and could only lead to disappointment.

He then develops his own rich account of love, as this idea of someone who roots us in life. 21 short chapters develop this idea fully. He then demonstrates how he arises in foundational texts of the Western tradition--Genesis and the Odyssey.

He also describes how Western culture has shifted to the child being the supreme object of love (instead of beauty, God, or our romantic partner). He argues that this is the first truly modern love and that parental love as developing seems free of the expectations of divine love, and thus has the chance to truly transform human loving in good ways.

There is so much in this book that one could spend years pondering and exploring it all.

On personal note: I did not read it for self-help purposes, but I found that the book was deeply revelatory, helping me to better understand myself, my former marriage, how it ended, developments in my divorce, experiences and emotions I've grappled with the last few years, including resentment, and also how I was able to finally let go and begin moving in directions. These theories gave new perspectives and language to my experiences.

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