Which philosopher has been your greatest influence?

[Bono]

Arthur Schopenhauer(general stuff), Hans Hermann Hoppe, Pierre Proudhon, Lysander Spooner(all 3 politics).

[Bono]

No one, really; I form my opinions based on what seems correct to me given what I know and can reasonably infer.  I can't think of any one single philosopher whose ideas I have taken as one large whole and have held up as sacrosanct.

´

That's not the issue. One can be influenced by Ayn Rand, for instance, but still aknowledge she was a mean c**ntrag who made up individualist excuses for denying people their individuality and nuking those people(namely people who wear cloth in their heads and very much dislike Israel). Being influenced by someone is recognizing value in their ideas and using them to reformulate our tought, not follow everything philisophers say.

[Bono]

In rough order:

1. George Santayana

You don't believe that bunk about history repeating itself do you?

Anyway mine would be Locke, Paine and Mill probably, though I'd like to learn more about Nozick, I only know a small amount about his challenges to the work of Rawls.

All you need to know was that he was an idiot who thought all states evolved in the way he thought they should and used that as an argument against anarchy, when in fact there are few, if any, states that have evolved in the Nozickian manner.

[Bono]

I'm sorry to not be on the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman train to neo-con land

Neo-cons are influenced by Trosky and social-democrats, not Friedman or Rand(except maybe Rand on foreign policy, though not even many neo-cons support nuking the middle east).

[Bono]

I'm sorry to not be on the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman train to neo-con land

Neo-cons are influenced by Trosky and social-democrats, not Friedman or Rand(except maybe Rand on foreign policy, though not even many neo-cons support nuking the middle east).

Once again I am foiled by my own stupidity.

If you meant Trotsky that would be really strange, since he was a communist, a different branch if I recall.

Ask John ford or Soulty, two neo-cons, and they'll tell you I'm right. Or I can find you a post by Ford where he says so:

Our roots are not in Zionism, but rather (as Bono has pointed out) Trotskyism.  We neoconservatives got our penchant for world revolution from the Trotskyists.

[Bono]

bump

Augustine, Zeno of Citium, Calvin, Schopenhauer.