Monday, March 07, 2005

Desert-Island Philosophers

A meme, that can be traced back to Blogosophy, is haunting the philosophy blogs, and is now appearing here ...

The question has been asked: 'Which five philosophers works would you take with you to a desert island, given that you are probably going to be trapped there for a very long time?' To make the process of selection as easy as possible, you can take with you their complete works (however they may be concieved ...).

My list would probably be:
I. Michel de Montaigne
II. Niccolo Machiavelli
III. Michel Foucault
IV. Albert Camus
V. Bertrand Russell

(I get the feeling that I possibily would not be the sort of person that you would want to meet after some time on an island with these as my company ...)

Now, who would constitute your desert island five?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mine :

1) Marcus Aurelius
2) Alain de Botton
3) Ludwig Wittgenstein
4) A. A. Milne
5) Robert Heinlein

Cheers,
-MP

MH said...

I would disagree with Marx not being apt for the island. Rather, if Marx could be taken to be the collected works of Marx and Engles, I think it would probably be a worthy addition to the Island library, given the sheer volume of their papers (it would take a considerable ammount of time to read through - I get the same feeling, of so many volumes so little time, having browsed the Kierkegaard shelf this afternoon). The problem that I had trying to include Marx/Engles is that there are so many that you would include prior.

Further question - would anyone include Hegel on their list?

Anonymous said...

1) Friedrich Nietzsche

2) Jean-Paul Satre

3) Kurt Godel

4) Arthur Schopenhaur

5) Albert Camus