Best Philosopher?

[levinas12]

I have read a few of his papers, but not systematically. Any particular works of his you recommend?

Lacan himself is often totally impenetrable. But the secondary literature is very helpful. But it’s very extensive. Here’s just a sampling:

Jane Gallop. The Daughter’s Seduction and Reading Lacan.

John Forrester. Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis (doesn’t mention Lacan by name very much but this book is Lacanian to the core)

Joel Dor. Introduction to the Reading of Lacan.

Sean Homer. Jacques Lacan.

Slavjoy Zizek. Looking Awry. An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular
Culture. (Zizek has done a lot of movie analysis, especially Hitchcock, based on Lacan)

Anthony Wilden. The Language of the Self. (an old classic but still relevant)

Dylan Evans. Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. (Evans has recanted and has gone over to cognitive science).

For “cartoon” summaries, see Introducing Lacan (Leader and Groves) and Lacan for Beginners (Philip Hill). Both of these are amazingly good.

There are some videos of Lacan on the internet.

For Lacan himself, see Ecrits. But this book should come with a warning. The contents may be inaccessible.

Also, there are a number of negative assessments of Lacan (which should be consulted for the sake of balance). I don’t have a list of these right now. But the “wiki” on various Lacanisn concepts has mentions a number of them.

 

[levinas12]

Do you see post-modern (a-)theism as forming a fertile ground for a post-scientific, post-rationalist Christian revival? Does the deconstruction of the idea of ‘objective truth’ actually re-open the possibility of Faith as a viable intellectual orientation?

Not atheism per se. But maybe opposition to onto-theology with its emphasis on substance as the primary category… where God is reduced to an entity which cannot really love (like Aristotle’s prime mover).

It’s interesting that “person” is not in the Aristotelian repertoire.

Jean Luc Marion, a Catholic “postmodern” theologian, has much to say in this regard.

But there’s a lot that went on before Marion and deconstruction.

Scheler, who died in the late 1920’s, focused on love as opening up the very dimension of “truth”. This destablized the primordiality of impersonal “metaphysics”.

Levinas continued Scheler’s thematics with his discussions of the face.

And, of course, there’s Blessed JP II’s personalism.

In fact, a good dissertation topic would be “Levinas and JPII’s Theology of the Body”.

 

[meltzerboy]

I don’t know whether he is the best Catholic philosopher or generally thought of as a philosopher, but certainly one of the most interesting Catholic writers is Thomas Merton.

 

[KevJohn]

In fact, a good dissertation topic would be “Levinas and JPII’s Theology of the Body”.

I met a chap at the Theology of the Body Symposium in June 2011 who was writing a doctoral thesis on Levinas and Wojtyla, waaaaay over my head! Actually I think I actually asked you if you were him!

 

[levinas12]

I met a chap at the Theology of the Body Symposium in June 2011 who was writing a doctoral thesis on Levinas and Wojtyla, waaaaay over my head! Actually I think I actually asked you if you were him!

We’ll have to track this guy down. This is worthy of Hitchcock.

Tell me, what happened to Christopher West?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

There are different kinds of philosophers for different kinds of subjects. Aristotle certainly covered the gamut of philosophy more than just about anybody, as he left hardly any field untouched. But because he is dated, he does not get the attention he deserves.

As a teacher of philosophy, Plato is the best, since he teaches us how to think by dissecting a question into its parts and then reaching toward a conclusion by the process of eliminating unsatisfactory solutions. However, much of his philosophy is too utopian to suit my tastes.

A dark horse candidate, who is not usually described as a philosopher, but who had one of the most brilliant minds of modern times, was G.K. Chesterton. When the eminent American philosopher and psychologist William James visited England in his last years, he heard of and sought out the young Chesterton who was fresh on the literary scene, and was much amazed by his powerful intellect and his search for truth. This was long before Chesterton converted to the Church. The French Catholic philosopher Etienne Gilson was much impressed with the depth and grasp of Chesterton’s book on Aquinas.

 

[KevJohn]

We’ll have to track this guy down. This is worthy of Hitchcock.

Tell me, what happened to Christopher West?

I know him so I do. He has a cool name and is generally a cool dude.

I’m not sure what you mean about West. He done a good talk about Neo-Manicheism but other than that I am not aware of anything. The extent to which I keep up with current affairs is pitiful.

 

[awatkins69]

Re OP: The most important? Probably St. Thomas Aquinas. Catholic theology was heavily influenced by him from the 16th century up to today.

Blaise Pascal was another great Catholic philosopher as well, known for his famous Wager; he was a Jansenist during his life but I believe he reunited with the Church before his death.

 

[cpayne]

In Catholic philosophy, it is Aquinas. I mean, Schopenhauer? For Catholic philosophy? Most important?

 

[Qoeleth]

In Catholic philosophy, it is Aquinas. I mean, Schopenhauer? For Catholic philosophy? Most important?

Well, it seems that the most important Catholic philosophers of the 20th Century (including Rahner and Ratzinger) come from the ‘background’ of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic view of life- and (like Schopenhauer) present Christianity as a solution to the fallenness of Being (to use a term of Heidegger).

 

[Solus_vistor]

Also, there are a number of negative assessments of Lacan (which should be consulted for the sake of balance). I don’t have a list of these right now. But the “wiki” on various Lacanisn concepts has mentions a number of them.

I know practically nothing about Lacan’ philosophy or psychoanalysis but I think “negative assessment” would be a mild expression to describe what is in Chapter 2 (pp. 18-37) of "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science by A. Sokal and J. Brickmont (Picador 1998), a chapter devoted solely to Jacques Lacan. His escapades into mathematics are such that they would make every undergraduate student of mathematics laugh his head off. The point is not tha Lacan does not understand mathematics, the point is that if he is a serious scholar he should know that he does not undetrstand the mathematically clearly defined concepts he uses.

 

[sandomenico]

Aquinas, yes; Augustine, yes; Aristotle, Plato, yes, yes…

Socrates, anyone?

And Josef Pieper?

 

[Dirkie]

Blaise Pascal

 

[Zimm3r]

I would find that it needs to be split into two, best Catholic philosophers to the outside (those outside of Christianity and Catholicism) and the best Catholic philosophers to the inside (those inside…). I think both Augustine and Aquinas were good to the inner church but I find that Aquinas’s Summa Theologica better than Contra Getiles and if I am not mistaken (I very well could be) that Theolgica was on Catholic dogma more than meta-physics… again I could be mistaken. and Augustine again best work in the church’s mindset not out of it.

Again I could be mistaken, I am not reminded I need to read a good beginner primer on both Aquinas and Augustine.

 

[tonyrey]

Jesus is the best philosopher because He explained how the immense value of life and the exquisite beauty of nature are all overwhelming evidence of Design by our infinitely loving Father in heaven.

 

[Palamas]

I am very surprised at the answere given for modern Catholic philosophers.

I recommend Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. Fr. and Professor Joseph Koterski at Fordham University is also a great modern teacher and philosopher.

While not Roman Catholic, I would also recommend Mortimer Adler and Eric Voegelin. They are certainly better than Camus and Derrida.

 

[Khalid]

I know practically nothing about Lacan’ philosophy or psychoanalysis but I think “negative assessment” would be a mild expression to describe what is in Chapter 2 (pp. 18-37) of "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science by A. Sokal and J. Brickmont (Picador 1998), a chapter devoted solely to Jacques Lacan. His escapades into mathematics are such that they would make every undergraduate student of mathematics laugh his head off. The point is not tha Lacan does not understand mathematics, the point is that if he is a serious scholar he should know that he does not undetrstand the mathematically clearly defined concepts he uses.

The same A Sokal who published a computer-generated paper full of nonsense in a “peer-reviewed” journal of postmodern philosophy (the famous Sokal Affair)?

 

[Solus_vistor]

The same A Sokal who published a computer-generated paper full of nonsense in a “peer-reviewed” journal of postmodern philosophy (the famous Sokal Affair)?

Yes. I don’t know about “computer generated”, but yes in 1996 the physicist Sokal submitted for publication in “Social Text” a paper called “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, where he quoted extensively from postmodernist French and American thinkers. After the paper was actually published by the respected postmodernist journal without the editors noticing that it all was a nonsense, he disclosed in another journal that the lot was a parody or satire, its purpose being, among other things, to denounce postmodern relativism, which holds that truth is a mere social convention. The purpose of the book I referred to was apparently similar.

 

[levinas12]

Yes. I don’t know about “computer generated”, but yes in 1996 the physicist Sokal submitted for publication in “Social Text” a paper called “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, where he quoted extensively from postmodernist French and American thinkers. After the paper was actually published by the respected postmodernist journal without the editors noticing that it all was a nonsense, he disclosed in another journal that the lot was a parody or satire, its purpose being, among other things, to denounce postmodern relativism, which holds that truth is a mere social convention. The purpose of the book I referred to was apparently similar.

I wouldn’t let Sokal obscure the questions raised by Lacan, Derrida and other postmodernists.

Specifically, “truth” is not an easy concept to pin down.

 

[levinas12]

I know practically nothing about Lacan’ philosophy or psychoanalysis but I think “negative assessment” would be a mild expression to describe what is in Chapter 2 (pp. 18-37) of "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science by A. Sokal and J. Brickmont (Picador 1998), a chapter devoted solely to Jacques Lacan. His escapades into mathematics are such that they would make every undergraduate student of mathematics laugh his head off. The point is not tha Lacan does not understand mathematics, the point is that if he is a serious scholar he should know that he does not undetrstand the mathematically clearly defined concepts he uses.

Notwithstanding Sokal, Lacan has raised interesting questions about what it means to be a human being, and, specifically, what it means to be a “speaking” being.

You might want to look at one of the secondary resources mentioned in my posting #21 (perhaps Zizek or Forrester).

Lacan is a genuine intellectual, well versed in continental philosophy (Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre) as well as Freud.

But I have a feeling I’m not being very persuasive.