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The Michael Knowles Show
Michael Knowles RANKS The Greatest Philosophers
00:18:42
Who is the greatest philosopher of all time? Michael Knowles ranks the most influential thinkers in history—from Plato to Nietzsche, Aquinas to Marx—and sorts them into tiers based on their impact, logic, and lasting influence. Which philosophers shaped civilization? Who completely missed the mark? And who deserves to be forgotten? Join Michael as he breaks it all down in this definitive ranking of history’s greatest (and worst) philosophers! - - - Today's Sponsor: Balance of Nature - Go to https://balanceofnature.com and use promo code KNOWLES for 35% off your first order PLUS get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice.
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Michael Knowles
Everyone knows that the purpose of reading philosophy is to make yourself seem smart at parties. The problem that people have is they haven't actually read philosophy. Now I've read a little bit of philosophy, not a lot, but in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. So my team has asked me to provide the definitive ranking of philosophers. They have assembled the philosophers, they will present the philosophers to me and I will place them where they deserve in the hierarchy. Take it away. There are five tiers. S, A, B, C, F, S tier, that's galaxy brain. A tier just below means there could and maybe should be a college course dedicated to that person. B tier, it's good airplane reading, you know, good way to pass the time, productive use of your precious moments on earth. C tier, we're getting down to the Reddit tier. These are the gurus that the big brains on Reddit really like. Then you get down to the F tier, you're at the bong rippers, you're at the, you're at the philosophers, where you have to just tear rips from a bong before you're like, hey man, you know, you ever. But actually, man, I got a quote for you. You ever heard about, you know, that's the lowest year, let's take it away. Socrates, the galaxy brain. That was. I'm glad we're starting off easy. Socrates is the beginning of Western philosophy. We don't have any writings from Socrates, so we know Socrates through the writings of his student Plato and then down through his student, student Aristotle. So Socrates, he's a galaxy brain, he gets it. Nietzsche, where does one put Nietzsche? Nietzsche was intelligent at least, and he was wrong about everything. But he was wrong in a kind of delightful way. He's known for hits such as the claim that God is dead for the notion of the will to power for the critique of Christian morality. His philosophy was important to the rise of Nazism. Not to have guilt by association for the philosophers. But he was quite wrong. I'm not gonna say that you have to be totally right to be an important philosopher or that one could be edified by reading, even if to figure out where not to go wrong. So I put him at, I'm putting him at C tier, actually. I was gonna maybe give him B tier, but I'm giving him C tier. He's so wrong that the good that you'll get out of reading him doesn't, it doesn't push him up another notch. You know, it's just you should read him as a bit of a warning. Okay. And because he's a good observer of the times in which he. He's just wrong. Okay, next one. John Stuart Mill. Mill gets better grades than Nietzsche, so he'll get B tier. John Stuart Mill is a big promoter of utilitarianism. He's the author of On Liberty is probably his most famous work. Utilitarianism is usually summarized as promoting the greatest good and happiness for the greatest number of people, but. So it's good airplane reading. He's a very intelligent guy. He's wrong, but he's wrong in a really instructive way because he starts to show you where our whole civilization really started to go off the rails intellectually. So don't buy into him. But he's an amiable reader who will give you a lot to consider. Next one, John Locke. Edmund Burke, one of my favorite philosophers, considered one of the founders of modern conservatism. Edmund Burke said that John Locke's second treatise on government was one of the worst books ever written. Locke is the father of liberalism. I want to lower him a little bit. However, John Locke does in fact contribute something to good philosophy in as much as he contributed a fair bit to Catholic social teaching. Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, one of the great encyclicals in which he outlines Catholic social teaching, does in fact draw on John Locke. So he really does make a contribution to serious things. I'd put him. He's B tier. He gets. John Locke gets B tier. He doesn't get A tier. The. The libs and the libertarians want to give him A tier or S tier he gets, but he gets B tier. He's important. He's good. He gets better marks than Nietzsche. Next one, Karl Marx. He goes down with Nietzsche. He's not a total bong ripper. Like, he's not a total joke in his personal life. He kind of. Because he was just a disreputable man, physically filthy, just disgusting, unhygienic. A total mooch off his buddy Engels for his whole life. And just his family killed themselves, I suspect having something to do with the general aura around this man. He also wrote poetry about demons and stuff. He makes some valid critiques of politics, but he's totally wrong about, like, everything. So he. He's C tier. He's not. He's close to being a bong rip. I want to. I'm tempted to put him a little bit below Nietzsche because Nietzsche. Nietzsche was probably smarter or at least funnier to read, but no, he gets. He's a Reddit He's a Reddit tier guru and people on Reddit love Karl Marx. So he's C tier Ayn Rand. I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this. I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this. Ayn Rand is a bong ripper. She's a bong ripper. She's F tier. Michael, you're putting Ayn Rand, an erstwhile hero of the American right below Karl Marx. What's the matter with you, Michael? Are you a commie? No, it's just she's not a serious thinker. That's the problem. She's not a serious thinker and look, there are plenty of people who are not serious thinkers. She's not a serious thinker and she wasted so much of my time when I was forced under duress to read Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. Fountainhead was better than Atlas Shrugged, but it's just, it's just not serious. She too, like Karl Marx, makes some valid critiques of her time period, but that does not make her a systematic or serious thinker. And for the so called conservatives who really just love Ayn Rand, just are totally gung ho for Ayn Rand, you know, she is a modernist, atheist, radical, individualist. What about that is concern? What about that? Am I supposed to like. I get that some of her, some of her writings get a little saucy, you know, that's kind of entertaining. It's also funny that the plot lines of all of her books are that super hot, rich, successful gigachads all just really, really want to sleep with Ayn Rand. My friend Spencer Clavin pointed that out one time to me and he sort of says like, okay, ein, you know, yeah, all right, sure, maybe so anyway, she's F tier. I spent hours of my life that I will never get back reading those books. There's so much more to say. First though, go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Knowles. I love Balance of Nature fruits and veggie supplements. They are the easiest way that I've found to get my daily fruits and vegetables when life is busy. 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Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code KNOWLES KWLES for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That is balanceofnature.com promo code knowles. Aristotle. Thank goodness. S tier. He's back to S tier. Aristotle. One of the greatest thinkers ever to live. Write about pretty much everything. If you can only read five books in your life, the Nicomachean Ethics must be among those books. He's just right about almost everything, I think. Forget about even ethics, politics, maybe physics too. He's just. I'm not even joking. Increasingly, I think physics is vindicating Aristotle over the more modern scientific writers. S tier, no doubt. Next one. Voltaire. How. How charitable am I feeling? It's obviously between C and F. That's F. He gets F. He's sometimes. There's this phrase that is often attributed to him. It's probably his most famous quote. I do not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to your death the right to say it. There's. I don't think he actually said that. There's no evidence that he actually ever said that. And it's wrong. My version of it is. I might not agree with you with what you say, and I will kill you for saying it. But. But I don't think he said that. But he says all sorts of nonsense. You know, those who. Christopher Hitchens loved to quote this one line from Voltaire. Those who will make you believe absurdities will also inflict upon you terrible cruelties or something like that. I don't know. Anyway, he was. He was awful. He's just truly wrong about everything. That's it. He gets F. The more I talk about him, the more certain I am that he's in the Bong Ripper tier of philosophy. Next one. That's a nice palate cleanser. S Tier. Write about everything I've said so far with Socrates, Aristotle. These guys are right about basically everything. Thomas Aquinas just write about everything. Just. And he also wrote about everything. In fact, his most famous work is the Summa Theologica traditionally said it's really the Summa Theologiae, but we're being pedantic. In any case, there's a legend that he would write three books at a time. And maybe it's not legendary, maybe it's just true. Anyway, he's right. Yeah, he's right about everything. If you. If you could read one thinker, read him getting whiplash. Voltaire, Thomas Aquinas, the. The great scholar Andrew Tate, would he. He wouldn't call himself a philosopher. To be fair to Andrew Tate, I don't think he would call himself a philosopher. So I don't want to knock the guy. I mean, there, you know, he does leave himself open to some criticism on account of, you know, all the things he's done and said, but I don't blame him for being included in this list. He wouldn't call, but he. I would say he's not a philosopher, not exactly a systematic thinker. So he would. He would have to go with the Bong Rippers. Zeno. Zeno. Not quite my man, but he's. He's cool. Founder of Stoicism. A lot of people like Stoicism now, so it's really big in Silicon Valley. It was big when the 80s and 90s with Wall street types. Definitely not S tier. Maybe not A tier. Maybe B tier. It's between B tier and A tier. Well, look, if we're gonna put John Stuart Mill in B T. Yeah, he's in B tier. Stoicism goes to B tier. S tier, no question. No. What other philosophers could we rank Harry Sissonin with? His work on politics is not very impressive, but his work on Eros, on the relation between men and women, which has been recently been published, is actually more impressive. It impresses itself upon your mind, even when you want to get it out of your mind. It just stays in your mind. And you're kind of. You want to like spoon out your mind's eye. Cause you actually read those texts Anyway, if we're going to be fair to Andrew Tate, I think we. And Ayn Rand, I think we have to put. We can't put Sisson above them. So I would say he gets F tier. But with his new work on romantic love, maybe his young man maybe has the potential to rise up. Martin Luther, also, to be fair to Martin Luther, I don't know that he would call himself a philosopher. And he really wasn't. Not just with prejudice because of my mackerel snapping papism, but he's not really a philosopher of Protestantism There are many other more serious thinkers in Protestantism. In fact, Hilaire Belloc pointed out for Martin Luther, Martin Luther was more a political figure. You know, the splitting away of the early days of the Protestant Reformation, which is better understood as a revolution really is Martin Luther gaining favor with German princes? German princes cynically maybe using Martin Luther as an excuse to wrest more political power from the Catholic Church. So I don't see a lot of systematic thought in Martin Luther. Martin Luther contradicts himself throughout his career. And it's not really Hilaire Belloc makes the point. The real genius thinker of Protestantism is John Calvin. So Calvin might, even though I think Calvin's wrong, he might get a higher ranking. But in terms of philosophy, not political impact, but philosophy, I'm gonna have to say C or F. And really I would say really, I would have to say F. Plato. Okay, Plato's back at. I guess we have to put him in S tier even though he's not as good as Aristotle. Aristotle is more correct than Plato. But I put Socrates in S tier and we only really know we have a sense of Socrates from Plato. So it would seem wrong to put Plato in A tier and Socrates in S tier. So Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all get S tier. But make no mistake, Aristotle is the best of them. Next one, Epicurus. I would be very tempted by Epicureanism if I were not Christian. Epicurus believed that the highest good to be sought in life was pleasure, not merely. Aristotle would say that man seeks happiness and happiness he defines as excellent rational activity done in accordance with virtue. That's how he defines it in the Nicomachean ethics. Zeno and Stoicism would say that the highest good to be sought is virtue, which is a little different. And Epicurus would say that the highest good to be sought is pleasure. So not merely happiness which results in pleasure, but pleasure itself. So the maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. And so one can imagine this as a kind of degraded hedonism where you're just doing a bunch of drugs and sleeping with hookers and I don't know, like riding roller coasters for your, just kind of stuffing your face with pizza. I don't know. But, but there's a, there's a higher minded Epicureanism which is that, oh, we're going to listen to the best music, look at the best art, consider the best philosophy. All this, you know, but that's, that's not really the end in itself. That's, that's mistaking that's putting the. The cart before the horse, I guess. So he gets. Epicurus gets. He gets B tier. I'll give him. I'll give him B tier. It's better. Better. Definitely better than some of the other guys. But he's just kind of. Kind of goes off and in some ways. Maybe I should put him lower because epicureanism is so tempting. Next one. Alistair McIntyre. Now we're moving back up, too. Ooh, do we go S tier? Do we go all the way? Alistair McIntyre. He's still alive, I think. Contemporary philosopher who revived virtue ethics. Very famous, very popular book, after virtue. Highly recommended reading. Is he S tier or is he. I mean, he's not. He's not himself. Aristotle, you know, but he's really, really good and important. He's at least A tier. He gets A tier. Is he the first A tier. I don't know if we've had other A tiers. Descartes. There's a joke I used to know about a horse in a bar, and the punchline is Descartes before the horse. But I remember the whole joke. I said it in an interview, though, some years ago. Descartes is famous for mind body dualism. Well, his most famous line is cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. And mind body dualism, which is wrong. That also mistakes how human nature works in the relation of the body to the mind or the soul. Because actually Aristotle's right about that. We're hylomorphic creatures. So body and soul are inextricably linked here on earth. So because of that. And Descartes is responsible for a lot of modern philosophical errors. So he gets B tier. Low, low, B tier. Carl Schmidt. Oh, now, come on, dude, don't you're gonna get me on record here, because I guess so. Carl Schmidt. Carl Schmidt was. He was a Nazi. Okay, so let's just get that on the table. To begin with, Schmidt was a Nazi, though he eventually fell out of favor, I think, with the Nazis. But whatever, man. You know, there were a lot of. There were plenty of thinkers who were Nazis. Heidegger got rehabilitated. So let's. So, okay, we'll get that off there. But he made important contributions to political philosophy, to political theology. He's probably most famous for the friend, enemy distinction. The politics ultimately comes down to friend and enemy. The notion that the sovereign is. Is he who makes the exception. That's a famous quote of Carl Schmidt. So he's a. Anyway, all I'm saying is he like, look, man, Hitler drank water. Okay, that's not an indictment of water. So can we. It's not an indictment of watercolor painters and dog owners. So let's just. He's at least good airplane. Let's put it that way. Maybe even a little better than that. Maybe we're talking high B, low A. We'll leave him in B for now. That's it. So who wins? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. And above them, even St. Thomas Aquinas. Who loses? Internet influencers and Ayn Rand. Okay, this is not man bites dog stuff, but I think it turned out all right.