Question by spuddy999: Some modern day intellectuals?
I read a lot of works by some outdated intellectuals (Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell) and there work is good and all, but I would like to hear some recommendations of modern day philosophers/intellectuals who are interpreting the current social/economic scene and critiquing it. This request is quite open to a variety of suggestions, so if you could suggest a few prominent intellectuals that would be greatly appreciated.

Best answer:

Answer by MavistheMaven
Maybe not quite what you’re looking for, but Arthur Caplan is a noted philosopher on medical ethics and is very readable.

Barbara Ehrenreich is more of a social researcher who includes social commentary in her writings. Look for her books Nickeled and Dimed, Bait & Switch, and others.

Your best bet is to go to a large Borders Books or Barnes & Noble and check out the books in sections such as Philosophy, Society & Culture, etc. Granted, they will have books by past intellectuals, but you’ll find current works when you look there, too.

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www.egs.edu Slavoj Žižek discussing Hegel in reference to Charlie Chaplins The Great Dictator, Leni Riefenstahl, fascism, the Nazi propaganda film Kolberg, Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo, objectivity in film. He also spoke about Peter Sloterdijk and Jürgen Habermas as well as ethics, dignity, military technology, pharmonarcoleptic drugs, scientology and Ron Hubbard. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Slavoj Žižek is one of the most renowned philosophers working today. Taking Marxs injunction that philosophers must not only examine the world, but change it, his work borders on the evangelic. Standing astride critical theory, traditional philosophy, political and film theory and theoretical psychoanalysis, he is, in one sense the sole contemporary inheritor of Lacan, doing to Lacan what Lacan once did for Freud. Though at times accused of inconsistency, Žižek instead uses the philosophical tradition to constantly examine (and undermine) received truths. He has argued that it is not the role of the philosopher to act as the Big Other who tells us about the world, but rather it is the role of the thinker to challenge our own ideological assumptions. Slavoj Žižek is the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, a professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and a visiting …
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Question by Dutchess: Can you name me some modern-day philosophers?
and what are their occupations?

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Answer by coop
Bertrand Russell
occupation: philosopher

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Question by Nethuch: What are some philosophers that believe in equality and law rather than equity and law?
Both modern and ancient philosophers. It’d be great if you could answer my question as soon as possible.
I’m looking for philosophers.
I’m looking for philosophers.
Preferably Western philosophers.

Best answer:

Answer by Peace_Is_The_Answer
This question doesn’t make sense. Are you asking for the *names* of some philosophers who believe in equality and law rather than equity and law? Or are you asking for some philosophIES that believe in equality and law rather than equity and law?

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This is a video I made as a part of my final paper for Early Modern Philosophy. Extra credit was promised if we included a significant incorporation of Kant in our work…

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Question by Murphy: What are some modern philosophers?

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Answer by Drunk Misanthrope
Bill Hicks.

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Question by funkymonkey: Recommend me some good philosophical reading. Post modern philosophers please?

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Answer by madoli
The most influential early postmodern philosophers were Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Foucault approached postmodern philosophy from a historical perspective, building upon structuralism, but at the same time rejecting structuralism by re-historicizing and destabilizing the philosophical structures of Western thought. He also considered how knowledge is defined and changed by the operation of power.

In America, the most famous postmodernist is Richard Rorty. Originally an analytic philosopher, Rorty believed that combining Donald Davidson’s criticism of the dualism between conceptual scheme and empirical content with Willard Van Orman Quine’s criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction allowed for an abandonment of the view of the mind as a mirror of a reality or external world. He argued that truth was not “out-there”, but was in language and language was whatever served our purposes in any particular time; ancient languages are sometimes untranslatable into modern ones. Donald Davidson is not usually considered a postmodernist, although he and Rorty have both acknowledged that there are few differences between their philosophies[1][2].

The writings of Lyotard were largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and particularly how that role has changed as we have left modernity and entered a “postindustrial” or postmodern condition. He argued that modern philosophies legitimized their truth-claims not (as they themselves claimed) on logical or empirical grounds, but rather on the grounds of accepted stories (or “metanarratives”) about knowledge and the world — what Wittgenstein termed “language-games.” He further argued that in our postmodern condition, these metanarratives no longer work to legitimize truth-claims. He suggested that in the wake of the collapse of modern metanarratives, people are developing a new “language game” — one that does not make claims to absolute truth but rather celebrates a world of ever-changing relationships (among people and between people and the world).

Derrida, the father of deconstruction, practiced philosophy as a form of textual criticism. He criticized Western philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and logos, as opposed to absence and markings or writings. Derrida thus claimed to have deconstructed Western philosophy by arguing, for example, that the Western ideal of the present logos is undermined by the expression of that ideal in the form of markings by an absent author. Thus, to emphasize this paradox, Derrida reformalized human culture as a disjoint network of proliferating markings and writings, with the author being absent.

Though Derrida and Foucault are cited as postmodern philosophers, each has rejected many of the other’s views. Like Lyotard, both are skeptical of absolute or universal truth-claims. Unlike Lyotard, however, they are (or seem) rather more pessimistic about the emancipatory claims of any new language-game; thus some would characterize them as post-structuralist rather than postmodernist.

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Question by simply delicious: Who are some great modern day Philosophers that are still going strong ?

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Answer by Ardi Pithecus ™
Because of Obama and the current crop of Democrats (and Republicans), Ayn Rand’s books high on the lists of best-sellers again—–after 52 years in the case of Atlas Shrugged.

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Question by : Why do some modern philosophers try to disprove or prove the existence of God?
when the great german philosopher, immanuel kant, said that the knowledge of a God is a priori (without experience) and thus impossible to know?

It seems like a waste of time.

Best answer:

Answer by JAQ
Because Kant may have been mistaken. Just like he believed that Hume was mistaken. Who believed that Descartes was mistaken. Who believed that philosophers before him were mistaken.

Challenging previously-held beliefs is the essence of the human intellect’s search to learn things that were previously unknown. What seems like an impossible waste of time to one person may turn out to be just the perfect puzzle for someone else to solve.

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Can someone PLS give me some examples for islam art, geography, literature, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, religion, and science?! im working on this islam brochure project for social studies and im desperate to get a good grade on it. the teacher said i have to have at least 2 examples for each subject but i can’t find any. any suggestions are appreciated. pls help, the due date is oct. 22, 07

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In recent years, many members of the intellectual community have embraced a radical relativism regarding knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular, holding that Kuhn, Quine, and Feyerabend have knocked the traditional picture of scientific knowledge into a cocked hat. Is philosophy of science, or mistaken impressions of it, responsible for the rise of relativism? In this book, Laudan offers a trenchant, wide-ranging critique of cognitive relativi… More >>

Science and Relativism: Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science

I’m looking for an African (not Arabian or African-American, but just African) philosopher who has impacted the modern world. I’m also looking for some amazing African Architecture from around the Greek era. Or well from any era will be fine. This shouldn’t be too hard since they inhabit the entire African continent right?