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Friday, June 03, 2011

Top Ten Ideas in the History of Philosophy (according to me)

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Top Ten Ideas in the History of Philosophy

1. Human beings make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing - Karl Marx

2. The starting point of any ethical system should be suffering - Jeremy Bentham

3. Disbelief in God does not mean Evil does not exist - Alan Badiou

4. The problem with pragmatism is that it is inherently tautological - Max Horkheimer

5. Gender is not biologically determined; it is socially performed - Judith Butler

6. Art's purpose is to break the spell cast by the commodity fetish - Theodore Adorno

7. There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a documentation of barbarism - Walter Benjamin

8. Know Thyself - Socrates (via Plato?)

9. Philosophy's job is not finished until its utopian promise is fulfilled - Herbert Marcuse

10. There is nothing outside the text - Jacques Derrida

*Note: many of these are not direct quotes, but paraphrases.


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