Here is the Ethical Philosophy Selector, a curious little engine, indicative of our times. Answer a few multiple-choice questions about human nature, moratility and your view of universal truth and an algorithm runs and matches you up, by percentages of agreement, to philosophers in the Selector database. Get your world view on.
As an exercise in fun, it's okay. As an exercise in enlightenment, where is that panic button? If you're interested in finding out more about philosophers, what they said, the theories they contributed to our understand of the world and ourselves, then check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and browse through the table of contents.
If you're actually interested in remembering the things you learned and read in the one philosophy course you took as an undergrad, then revisit your text books, or buy new ones, or check out this handy little number, Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. At least it'll make you sound smart when you pull out the philosopher credited with the most misquoted line of all time - "Those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it." - over crantinis and pints. Of course no one will appreciate it and your genius will be wasted on the boors, but isn't that the point?
Posted by James Sherrett at February 12, 2004 03:38 PMFor the record, the author's score went something like this:
1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)
2. St. Augustine (92%)
3. Aquinas (91%)
4. John Stuart Mill (91%)
5. Kant (89%)
6. Jeremy Bentham (87%)
7. Spinoza (85%)
8. Aristotle (77%)
9. Ockham (70%)
10. Plato (67%)
11. Nel Noddings (61%)
12. Stoics (60%)
13. Ayn Rand (55%)
14. David Hume (52%)
15. Epicureans (52%)
16. Prescriptivism (51%)
17. Nietzsche (45%)
18. Cynics (44%)
19. Thomas Hobbes (17%)