10 Philosophers summarized into one sentence
Philosophy can be the most interesting topic in the world.
The problem? These books are so dense, and you need to really slave away to find the nuggets of wisdom.
I want to break down 10 philosophers into one sentence.
While every philosopher has sought to explore reality, they really are just a confession of their inners fears and desires. Reality can be viewed in so many ways. Let’s take a look!
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John Locke- Empiricism
Reality is what we derive from our own sensory experience.
Friedrich Nietzsche — Existentialism
Reality is not absolute, unmoving, or God-given, but created by human values through rugged individualism and battling collective insanity.
Michel Foucault — Structuralism
Knowledge is power, but not in a good way like we heard growing up, Foucault aims to show how institutions use power to control information and thus control reality for the rest of us.
Jean Baudrillard — Postmodernism/Inspiration for ”The Matrix”
If you take enough different stimuli, mix them together and flash them fast enough, it can simulate a reality that we tend to hold true.
Georges Bataille- Metaphysician of Evil
Reality is a fleeting, promiscuous, and violent inner battle, humans connect where our wounds bleed together in the process of communal sacrifice.
Arthur Schopenhauer — Metaphysical ethics
Reality is not something known but surrendered to, as an energetic lifeforce called the “will” tests us in expressing its own true nature.
Jean Paul-Sartre — Existentialism
Reality is both the isolating and liberating freedom that’s put in our hands, the burden of creating the world based on our decisions.
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Karl Marx — Marxism
Reality is based on an economy where objects and subjects battle for supremacy and capitalism can never succeed because it relies too heavily on the exploitation of subjects.
Immanuel Kant- Enlightenment thinker
Reality is a duty, upheld by our reasoning to do the right thing.
David Hume- Another Empiricist
Reality is just a network of experiences that we’ve chosen to believe are connected in order to understand our world.
Conclusion
This is not just to save you time, but maybe to point you in the right direction towards exploring the thinkers that speak to your interests.
I know that trying to break down entire philosophies of reality into one sentence is going to fluff the feathers of any hardened philosophy buff, but genuinely, I would be interested to see what debate can come out of it.