The Michael Knowles Show - Michael Knowles RANKS The Greatest Philosophers

00:00:00.000 Everyone knows that the purpose of reading philosophy is to make yourself seem smart at parties.

00:00:06.540 The problem that people have is they haven't actually read philosophy.

00:00:11.060 Now, I've read a little bit of philosophy.

00:00:13.100 Not a lot, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. 0.72

00:00:15.920 So my team has asked me to provide the definitive ranking of philosophers.

00:00:22.060 They have assembled the philosophers.

00:00:24.000 They will present the philosophers to me, and I will place them where they deserve in the hierarchy.

00:00:31.880 Take it away.

00:00:35.140 There are five tiers.

00:00:37.340 S, A, B, C, F.

00:00:40.900 S tier, that's galaxy brain. 0.98

00:00:42.920 A tier just below means there could and maybe should be a college course dedicated to that person.

00:00:49.400 B tier, it's good airplane reading.

00:00:52.100 You know, good way to pass the time.

00:00:53.400 Productive use of your precious moments on Earth.

00:00:56.880 C tier, we're getting down to the Reddit tier.

00:00:59.960 These are the gurus that the big brains on Reddit really like.

00:01:04.460 Then you get down to the F tier.

00:01:06.740 You're at the bong rippers. 0.98

00:01:07.760 You're at the philosophers where you have to just tear rips from a bong before you're like, 0.98

00:01:13.980 Hey, man, you know, you ever, but actually, man, I got a quote for you.

00:01:17.700 Ever heard about, you know, that's the lowest tier.

00:01:21.480 Let's take it away.

00:01:23.220 Socrates, the galaxy brain.

00:01:25.820 That was easy.

00:01:26.300 I'm glad we're starting off easy.

00:01:27.860 Socrates is the beginning of Western philosophy.

00:01:32.100 We don't have any writings from Socrates.

00:01:34.380 So we know Socrates through the writings of his student, Plato, and then down through his student,

00:01:41.000 student, Aristotle.

00:01:42.500 So Socrates, he's a galaxy brain.

00:01:46.560 He gets it.

00:01:47.760 Nietzsche.

00:01:48.120 Where does one put Nietzsche?

00:01:51.980 Nietzsche was intelligent, at least, and he was wrong about everything, but he was wrong

00:01:57.580 in a kind of delightful way.

00:01:58.860 He's known for hits such as the claim that God is dead for the notion of the will to power

00:02:05.360 for the critique of Christian morality.

00:02:07.980 His philosophy was important to the rise of Nazism, not to have guilt by association for the philosophers,

00:02:14.780 but he was quite wrong.

00:02:16.940 I'm not going to say that you have to be totally right to be an important philosopher or that one

00:02:22.240 could be edified by reading, even if it's to figure out where not to go wrong.

00:02:26.040 So I put him at, I'm putting him at C tier, actually.

00:02:29.200 I was going to maybe give him B tier, but I'm giving him C tier.

00:02:32.860 He was, he's so wrong that the good that you'll get out of reading him doesn't, it doesn't push

00:02:41.100 him up another notch.

00:02:42.040 You know, it's just, you should read him as a bit of a warning.

00:02:44.640 Okay.

00:02:45.000 And because he's a, he's a good observer of the times in which he lived, but he's just,

00:02:49.540 he's just wrong.

00:02:50.360 Okay.

00:02:50.540 Next one.

00:02:51.940 John Stuart Mill.

00:02:53.300 He, Mill gets, gets better grades than Nietzsche.

00:02:56.000 So he'll get B tier.

00:02:56.920 John Stuart Mill is a big promoter of utilitarianism.

00:03:02.560 He's the author of On Liberty is probably his most famous work.

00:03:06.680 Utilitarianism is usually summarized as, as promoting the greatest good and happiness

00:03:11.580 for the greatest number of people.

00:03:13.820 But so it's good airplane reading.

00:03:16.980 He's a very intelligent guy.

00:03:18.480 He's wrong, but he's wrong in a really instructive way.

00:03:20.280 Cause it shows, he starts to show you where our whole civilization really started to go off

00:03:24.960 the rails intellectually.

00:03:26.000 So don't buy into him, but he's an amiable reader who will give you a lot to consider.

00:03:31.040 Next one.

00:03:32.280 John Locke.

00:03:33.900 Edmund Burke, one of my favorite philosophers, considered one of the founders of modern conservatism.

00:03:39.940 Edmund Burke said that John Locke's second treatise on government was one of the worst

00:03:43.820 books ever written.

00:03:45.860 Locke is the father of liberalism.

00:03:47.320 I want to lower him a little bit.

00:03:50.140 However, John Locke does in fact contribute something to good philosophy in as much as

00:04:00.180 he contributed a fair bit to Catholic social teaching.

00:04:03.840 Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, one of the great encyclicals, which he outlines Catholic social

00:04:10.780 teaching, does in fact draw on John Locke.

00:04:13.720 So he really does make a contribution to serious things.

00:04:17.560 I'd put him, he's B tier.

00:04:19.920 He gets, John Locke gets B tier.

00:04:21.560 He doesn't get A tier.

00:04:22.520 The libs and the libertarians want to give him A tier or S tier.

00:04:25.160 He gets, but he gets B tier.

00:04:26.880 He's important.

00:04:27.480 He's good.

00:04:28.760 He gets better marks than Nietzsche.

00:04:30.920 Next one.

00:04:32.520 Karl Marx.

00:04:36.980 He goes down with Nietzsche.

00:04:38.760 He's not a total bong ripper. 0.99

00:04:40.600 Like he's not a total joke in his personal life. 0.98

00:04:42.640 He kind of was because he was just a disreputable man, physically filthy, just disgusting, unhygienic, 0.98

00:04:49.180 a total mooch off his buddy Angles for his whole life and just his family killed themselves 1.00

00:04:55.160 and I suspect having something to do with the general aura around this man.

00:05:01.000 He, he also wrote poetry about demons and stuff.

00:05:03.880 He makes some valid critiques of, of politics, but he's, he's totally wrong about like everything.

00:05:10.700 So he, he's C tier.

00:05:13.440 He's not, he's close to being a bong ripper. 1.00

00:05:16.040 I want to, I'm tempted to put him a little bit below Nietzsche because Nietzsche, Nietzsche

00:05:19.980 was probably smarter or at least funnier to read.

00:05:23.440 But no, he gets, he's a Reddit, he's a Reddit tier guru and people on Reddit love Karl Marx.

00:05:28.020 So he's C tier.

00:05:30.880 Ayn Rand.

00:05:33.600 I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this.

00:05:35.380 I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this.

00:05:38.080 Ayn Rand is a bong ripper.

00:05:39.940 She's a, she's a bong ripper. 1.00

00:05:41.520 She's F tier.

00:05:43.340 Michael, you're putting Ayn Rand, an erstwhile hero of the American right below.

00:05:47.700 Karl Marx, what's the matter with you, Michael?

00:05:49.680 Are you a commie?

00:05:50.360 No, it's just, she's not a serious thinker.

00:05:55.160 That's the problem.

00:05:56.380 She's not a serious thinker.

00:05:57.660 And look, there are plenty of people who are not serious thinkers.

00:05:59.920 She's not a serious thinker.

00:06:01.700 And she wasted so much of my time when I was forced under duress to read Atlas Shrugged and

00:06:09.640 Fountainhead.

00:06:10.060 Fountainhead was better than Atlas Shrugged, but it's just, it's just not serious.

00:06:14.120 She too, like Karl Marx, makes some valid critiques of her time period, but that does

00:06:20.220 not make her a systematic or serious thinker.

00:06:23.120 And for the, for the so-called conservatives who really just love Ayn Rand, just are totally

00:06:28.060 gung-ho for Ayn Rand.

00:06:28.980 But, you know, she is a modernist, atheist, radical individualist.

00:06:37.800 What about that is concerned?

00:06:38.800 What about that am I supposed to like?

00:06:41.200 I get that some of her, some of her writings get a little saucy, you know, that's kind of

00:06:45.860 entertaining.

00:06:46.280 It's also funny that the plot lines of all of her books are that super hot, rich, successful

00:06:53.480 Giga Chads all just really, really want to sleep with Ayn Rand. 1.00

00:06:57.080 My friend Spencer Clavin pointed that out one time to me and he sort of says like, okay,

00:07:00.600 Ayn, you know, yeah, all right, sure, maybe.

00:07:03.300 So anyway, she's, she's F tier. 0.90

00:07:05.580 I spent hours of my life that I will never get back reading those books.

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00:08:18.900 Aristotle, thank goodness, S-tier. 1.00

00:08:20.580 He's back to S-tier.

00:08:21.460 Aristotle, one of the greatest thinkers ever to live, write about pretty much everything.

00:08:25.980 If you can only read five books in your life, the Nicomachean Ethics must be among

00:08:31.080 those books.

00:08:32.000 He's just right about almost everything.

00:08:33.360 I think, forget about even ethics, politics, maybe physics too.

00:08:37.800 He's just, I'm not even joking, increasingly, I think physics is vindicating Aristotle over

00:08:42.980 the more modern scientific writers.

00:08:47.680 S-tier, no doubt.

00:08:49.040 Next one.

00:08:50.020 Voltaire.

00:08:54.880 How charitable am I feeling?

00:08:58.100 It's obviously between C and F.

00:08:59.400 That's F.

00:09:02.180 He gets F.

00:09:03.820 He's sometimes, there's this phrase that is often attributed to him.

00:09:06.360 It's probably his most famous quote.

00:09:08.200 I do not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to your death the right to say it.

00:09:12.360 I don't think he actually said that.

00:09:13.800 There's no evidence that he actually ever said that.

00:09:15.880 And it's wrong. 0.98

00:09:16.880 My version of it is, I might not agree with what you say, and I will kill you for saying 0.99

00:09:21.300 it.

00:09:21.900 But I don't think he said that. 0.71

00:09:23.900 But he says all sorts of nonsense.

00:09:25.480 You know, those, Christopher Hitchens loved to quote this one line from Voltaire.

00:09:28.300 Those who will make you believe absurdities will also inflict upon you terrible cruelties

00:09:36.260 or something like that.

00:09:36.980 I don't know. 0.98

00:09:37.420 Anyway, he was awful.

00:09:39.060 He's just truly wrong about everything.

00:09:41.680 That's it.

00:09:42.400 He gets F.

00:09:43.060 The more I talk about him, the more certain I am that he's in the bong ripper tier of 0.98

00:09:47.820 philosophy.

00:09:48.360 Next one.

00:09:48.720 Ah, that's a nice palate cleanser.

00:09:52.020 S tier, right about everything.

00:09:54.340 I've said so far with Socrates, Aristotle, these guys are right about basically everything.

00:09:58.800 Thomas Aquinas, just right about everything.

00:10:01.280 Just, and he also wrote about everything.

00:10:06.460 In fact, his most famous work is the Summa Theologica.

00:10:11.460 Traditionally said, it's really the Summa Theologiae, but we're being pedantic.

00:10:15.040 Like, in any case, there's a legend that he would write three books at a time.

00:10:20.180 And maybe it's not legendary.

00:10:21.600 Maybe it's just true.

00:10:23.040 Anyway, yeah, he's right about everything.

00:10:24.460 If you could read one thinker, read him.

00:10:32.160 I'm getting whiplash.

00:10:34.240 Voltaire, Thomas Aquinas, the great scholar Andrew Tate.

00:10:38.580 Hmm.

00:10:39.700 He wouldn't call himself a philosopher, to be fair to Andrew Tate.

00:10:42.620 I don't think he would call himself a philosopher, so I don't want to knock the guy.

00:10:48.640 I mean, you know, he does leave himself open to some criticism on account of, you know, all the things he's done and said.

00:10:54.120 But I don't blame him for being included in this list.

00:10:57.920 He wouldn't call, but he, I would say he's not a philosopher.

00:11:01.680 Not exactly a systematic thinker, so he would have to go with the bong rippers. 1.00

00:11:07.520 Zeno.

00:11:08.540 Zeno.

00:11:09.260 Not quite my man, but he's a cool founder of stoicism.

00:11:13.380 A lot of people like stoicism now.

00:11:16.300 It's really big in Silicon Valley.

00:11:18.860 It was big, what, in the 80s and 90s with Wall Street types.

00:11:22.920 Definitely not S tier.

00:11:26.160 Maybe not A tier.

00:11:28.980 Maybe B tier.

00:11:29.580 It's between B tier and A tier.

00:11:32.300 Well, look, if we're going to put John Stuart Mill in B tier.

00:11:34.560 Yeah, he's in B tier.

00:11:35.780 Stoicism goes to B tier.

00:11:39.740 S tier.

00:11:42.620 No question.

00:11:43.420 No.

00:11:44.180 What other philosophers could we rank Harry Sisson in with?

00:11:47.680 His work on politics is not very impressive.

00:11:52.020 But his work on Eros, on the relation between men and women, which has been recently been published, is actually more impressive.

00:12:02.040 It impresses itself upon your mind.

00:12:03.760 Even when you want to get it out of your mind, it just stays in your mind.

00:12:05.860 You want to spoon out your mind's eye because you actually read those texts.

00:12:09.220 Anyway, if we're going to be fair to Andrew Tate and Ayn Rand, I think we have to put, we can't put Sisson above them.

00:12:19.060 So I would say he gets F tier.

00:12:21.640 But with his new work on romantic love, maybe he's a young man, maybe he has the potential to rise up.

00:12:30.860 Martin Luther.

00:12:31.400 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.

00:12:41.500 But he's not really a philosopher of Protestantism.

00:12:45.080 There are many other more serious thinkers in Protestantism.

00:12:47.800 In fact, Hilaire Belloc pointed out, for Martin Luther, Martin Luther was more a political figure.

00:12:52.800 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.

00:13:02.800 German princes cynically maybe using Martin Luther as an excuse to wrest more political power from the Catholic Church.

00:13:09.180 So I don't see a lot of systematic thought in Martin Luther.

00:13:13.020 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.

00:13:23.380 So Calvin might, even though I think Calvin's wrong, he might get a higher ranking.

00:13:27.600 But in terms of philosophy, not political impact, but philosophy, I'm going to have to say C or F.

00:13:37.020 And really, I would say, really, I would have to say F.

00:13:42.600 Plato.

00:13:43.340 Okay, Plato's back at, I guess we have to put him in S tier.

00:13:47.560 Socrates, even though he's not as good as Aristotle.

00:13:51.480 Aristotle is more correct than Plato.

00:13:54.300 But I put Socrates in S tier, and we only really know, we have a sense of Socrates from Plato.

00:14:00.340 So it would seem wrong to put Plato in A tier and Socrates in S tier.

00:14:04.460 So Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all get S tier.

00:14:07.840 But make no mistake, Aristotle is the best of them.

00:14:11.000 Next one.

00:14:11.340 So Epicurus, I would be very tempted by Epicureanism if I were not Christian.

00:14:19.860 Epicurus believed that the highest good to be sought in life was pleasure.

00:14:26.340 Not merely, Aristotle would say that man seeks happiness.

00:14:31.800 And happiness he defines as excellent rational activity done in accordance with virtue.

00:14:37.640 That's how he defines it in the Nicomachean Ethics.

00:14:39.400 Xeno and Stoicism would say that the highest good to be sought is virtue, which is a little different.

00:14:46.940 And Epicurus would say that the highest good to be sought is pleasure.

00:14:51.000 So not merely happiness, which results in pleasure, but pleasure itself.

00:14:55.800 So the maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. 0.62

00:14:58.400 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.

00:15:13.060 I don't know.

00:15:13.300 But 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.

00:15:22.540 But that's not really the end in itself.

00:15:24.800 That's mistaking.

00:15:26.460 That's putting the cart before the horse, I guess.

00:15:29.020 So he gets, Epicurus gets, he gets B-tier.

00:15:33.660 I'll give him B-tier.

00:15:35.220 It's better, definitely better than some of the other guys, but he's just kind of, kind of goes off.

00:15:40.140 And in some ways, maybe I should put him lower because Epicureanism is so tempting.

00:15:44.440 Next one.

00:15:46.100 Alistair McIntyre.

00:15:47.100 Now we're moving back up to, ooh, do we go S-tier?

00:15:51.380 Do we go all the, Alistair McIntyre, he's still alive, I think.

00:15:55.480 Contemporary philosopher who revived virtue ethics.

00:15:58.400 Very famous, very popular book, After Virtue.

00:16:02.080 Highly recommended reading.

00:16:03.360 Is he S-tier or is he, I mean, he's not, he's not himself Aristotle.

00:16:08.120 You know, he's really, really good and important.

00:16:09.800 He's at least A-tier.

00:16:11.400 He gets A-tier.

00:16:12.120 Is he the first A-tier?

00:16:13.080 I don't know if we've had other A-tiers.

00:16:16.400 Descartes.

00:16:18.700 There's a joke I used to know about a horse in a bar and the, the punchline is Descartes before the horse.

00:16:26.880 But I don't remember the whole joke.

00:16:27.980 I said it in an interview though, some years ago.

00:16:30.220 Descartes is famous for mind-body dualism.

00:16:32.800 Well, his most famous line is cogito ergo sum.

00:16:36.680 I think therefore I am.

00:16:37.860 And mind-body dualism, which is wrong.

00:16:40.440 That also mistakes how human nature works in the relation of the body to the mind or the soul.

00:16:47.120 Because actually Aristotle's right about that.

00:16:48.780 We're hylomorphic creatures.

00:16:49.820 So, body and soul are inextricably linked here on Earth.

00:16:53.700 So, because of that.

00:16:55.120 And Descartes is responsible for a lot of modern philosophical errors.

00:16:59.100 So, he gets B-tier.

00:17:02.020 Low B-tier.

00:17:03.500 Carl Schmitt.

00:17:05.920 Oh, no.

00:17:06.540 Come on, dude.

00:17:07.340 Don't.

00:17:08.460 Are you going to get me on record here?

00:17:09.960 Because I guess.

00:17:10.380 So, Carl Schmitt.

00:17:13.660 Carl Schmitt.

00:17:14.760 He was a Nazi. 0.84

00:17:16.000 Okay.

00:17:16.560 So, let's just get that on the table to begin with.

00:17:20.200 Schmitt was a Nazi.

00:17:21.360 Though he eventually fell out of favor, I think, with the Nazis.

00:17:23.480 But whatever, man.

00:17:24.440 You know, there were a lot of, there were plenty of thinkers who were Nazis.

00:17:27.200 Heidegger got rehabilitated.

00:17:28.500 So, let's, so, okay, we'll get that off there.

00:17:32.200 But he made important contributions to political philosophy, to political theology.

00:17:36.960 He's probably most famous for the friend-enemy distinction.

00:17:40.580 The politics ultimately comes down to friend and enemy.

00:17:44.180 The notion that the sovereign is he who makes the exception.

00:17:49.720 That's a famous quote of Carl Schmitt.

00:17:52.840 So, he's a, anyway, all I'm saying is he, like, look, man, Hitler drank water. 0.94

00:17:57.880 Okay, that's not an indictment of water.

00:17:59.620 So, can we, it's not an indictment of watercolor painters and dog owners.

00:18:03.340 So, let's just, he's at least good airplane duty.

00:18:07.520 Let's put it that way.

00:18:09.640 Maybe even a little better than that.

00:18:11.440 Maybe, I'm talking high B, low A.

00:18:13.760 We'll leave him in B for now.

00:18:15.760 That's it.

00:18:16.580 So, who wins?

00:18:18.980 Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and above them even, St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:18:26.740 Who loses?

00:18:28.860 Internet influencers and Ayn Rand.

00:18:31.520 Okay.

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00:19:13.640 действion of the22 revealed to fully

The Michael Knowles Show - April 05, 2025

Michael Knowles RANKS The Greatest Philosophers

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