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Who is the most brilliant philosopher of all time?

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Steve Turnbull
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Stephen Mumford is professor of metaphysics at Durham University. On Twitter he is...  · 16 февр 2017

There are some philosophers I really love to read, such as David Hume or Bertrand Russell. There are others who capture the romantic ideal of the philosopher, and I could name Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Albert Camus. Still more I find enthralling simply because they offer very different ways of seeing the world from their predecessors: innovators such as Søren Kierkegaard or Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, if it’s a question of simply who is the greatest, most brilliant philosopher of all time, it is really hard to look beyond Aristotle.

I don’t see how anyone following could possibly match the size of his contribution to philosophical advancement. Yet he did this all 2,500 years ago, with virtually no resources by modern standards. He simply thought it all through.

Aristotle’s philosophical achievements are hard to overstate. It sometimes boggles my mind to think of how much he accomplished, given what he was building upon. What is so stunning is how much he got right. His work, I am sure, represents the greatest leap forward – the biggest addition to philosophical understanding – that we have ever had. I don’t see how anyone following could possibly match the size of his contribution to philosophical advancement. Yet he did this all 2,500 years ago, with virtually no resources by modern standards. He simply thought it all through.

As far as we know, based on the surviving fragments, his predecessors offered philosophical thinking of a rather different kind. It was poetic and unsystematic, as we find even in Plato’s dialogues. Plato did not attempt a consistent account of everything. He wrote different characters developing different ideas, with new presentations of the theory of forms from dialogue to dialogue. 

I do love to read Plato, while Aristotle’s surviving work has fewer literary merits. But Aristotle added systematicity with an approach we find recognizably analytic. He covered so much: almost everything we now count as a branch of Western philosophy is to be found somewhere in his work. And, what is equally remarkable is how much truth he uncovered. 

Of course, it’s never easy to say with certainty that philosophical ideas are correct, but, as I’ve found confirmed in the contemporary commentaries, Aristotle’s work stands the test of time. Many of his ideas are still viable. It remains worthwhile to look at his work such as the Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, On the Soul, Generation and Corruption, Rhetoric, Categories, Prior and Posterior Analytics, and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/csIW4W_DYX4?wmode=opaque

Naturally, some philosophers have made progress since Aristotle. His logic was shown to have only limited application, for instance, given that it was restricted to syllogistic arguments: those with strictly two premises and a conclusion, where each is from one of only four possible forms. We now know that there can be many more arguments than those. 

But even in this field, he has useful things to say. It is in metaphysics and philosophy of mind that I find him most inspirational, however. My own work can be placed in the Aristotelian tradition as I think that British empiricism involved many wrong turns. Even if you don’t agree with that, I think everyone has to acknowledge that the precision and subtlety of argument in Aristotle is something to which we should all aspire.

For more on Aristotle, see his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

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Philosopher at the University of Cambridge. Writes in the newspapers and goes on the...  · 26 янв 2017
What an interesting question! It invites us to wonder what constitutes brilliance in this regard. For me, philosophical brilliance comes down to a certain kind of audacity, to a philosopher’s daring to know. To dare to know is to challenge the philosophic tradition, and with it the common thought of one’s own time, including one’s own. On this conception there have been... Читать далее
The duck/rabbit is always taken in the wrong way as are most Wittgenstein ideas. It's strange therefore why he... Читать дальше
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Writer, philosopher, co-founding editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. www.microphilosophy...  · 16 янв 2017
This is a bit of a silly question as obviously there is no factual answer. However, in a major survey of living philosophers, people were asked to name the non-living philosophers with whom they most identified. Hume came first, Aristotle second and Kant third. I would expect a similar result for "greatest philosopher" but it wouldn't be exactly thee same. Many see... Читать далее
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Wittgenstein certainly, and I am particularly interested in his intellectual influence on John M. Keynes. i.e. elimination of gold standard and other concerns about money. Is there a good reference for this?