Philosophers Tier List | Marx, Foucault, Hegel, and More!

This is a fun video ranking 20 philosophers from S to D tier. I'll take into consideration their contributions to a larger field of study, their individual thought, as well as their personalities and respectability as a thinker. Enjoy!

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[avqantennacsponrantiquestore]

Why not mention Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party or the various other Heidegger affairs?

[robertx]

Foucault S tier and Hegel B tier is crazy. I like Foucault but he is A tier

[uwayn]

Pov you discovered post-structuralism yesterday

[tcmackgeorges]

Everything you said about Sartre (and Beauvoir) really proves to me that you have not read his work closely. Are there a lot of moments in being and nothingness where he is incorrectly reading Heidegger sure but goes for majority of figures in the history of philosophy (including people you have in S). but there are some extremely original moments of philosophy in being and nothingness. While Heidegger does have an account of others in being and time it is so brief. In chapter 4 he just runs by what it means for me to have a relationships to other people because he’s so obsessed with calling public life inauthentic. Whereas Sartre is able to arrive at the same conclusions that husserl does about other (without even having access to Ideas II) and spends multiple chapters on the relationships with others, which is much more exhaustive than Heidegger. The description about how the other can either break my sense of self or my sense of world through looking-at at or being-looked-at consciousness is new. I just read finish being and time cover to cover and there is nothing like that in it. There’s definitely nothing like the chapter on concrete relations to others where he goes onto to show how projects of love and sexuality are always a matter managing this conflict between looking and looked at. Your commentary on Beauvoir similarly misses this point when you just simply reduce the interesting fact about them being that they had a relationship to each other and not that the two of them are responding to each other’s philosophies and shaping a whole generation! But more than that, the claim that his ethical work is derivative, when it’s the most severe break from Heidger’s thought and politics. It really shows that you haven’t read colonialism and colonialism or antisemite and Jew, not only are these text extremely original but they are extremely formative for one of the thinkers that you have an a like Fanon. And to that point a point, which is critical for the writing of the wretched of the earth by the way, if you think that Sarra is a pop philosopher or an easy to read philosopher or someone who is just popular because of his fame, then I employ you to try and read the critique of dialectical reason and come back and tell me that that is pop philosophy Fanon sure didn’t think when he cited in WOTE and taught lectures on this text when he was an active revolutionary. This is absolutely pathetic. Oh my goodness. What is unoriginal are these tired old criticisms of his work that always show to me that the person saying it have not read it at all.

[eskybakzu]

Fair list. Hegel and Marx go to S because they are too integral in the development from Kant to Foucault and his class to be anywhere else. Heraclitus goes to S (but I do read his Greek, so I am biased). Butler to A; their philosophy is too derivative of Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva for S. Said is well placed; he too gets a lot from Foucault especially. Sartre to D: he tried with Being and Nothingness but Heidegger and Husserl, and even maybe Bergson and Bachelard overshadow his work massively. Guattari to A; while generally underrated and overshadowed by Deleuze, he deserves some recognition although his influence is limited. Spot on with Foucault, besides his obvious intelligence, his prose-style and especially what I like to call a "syntax of negativity" makes reading him immensely enjoyable. Heidegger is the most important philosopher of the first half of the 20th century.

[rod]

I give Cody here a break cause he placed Zizek at the bottom

[rama_lama_ding_dong]

The idea for this video is a brilliancy

[christianvaneeden]

Derrida enters the tiers, and then proceeds to rename S to Z in the process of abnegating his own development: Teers.

[PunishedFelix]

Nice video, it might be fun to work on more produced videos comparing philosophy with video game video tropes as a way to communicate to newbies.

Also Lol Slavoj in D tier

[RowanSharkey-imsq]

I haven’t read the works of all of these thinkers, but Descartes, Marx, and Hume deserve to be in the S-tier.

[fleablock]

So where would you put Kant? Why Kant you find a minute to at least give him an honorable mention?

[daanisch]

this feels an impossible challenge. I was wondering if you could help me figure out a good place to start in relation to consciousness in the philosophical domain, on my own I keep coming across terms like the cartesian theatre and cartesian dualism, any recommendation by you would be helpful

[ivan_ivankovich]

I'm a layman, I try to get desent understanding of philosophy whenever I can. That said, I can comfortably say that whenever I try to understand many concepts specifically attributed to Guattari, I feel utterly lost lmao. Not sure what to do about that tbh.

Seeing as the Israel/Palestine conflict is getting much emphasis lately in public discourse, I wonder what your thoughts are on marxists' criticism of national liberation movements for being class collaborationist and abandoning international working class solidarity. Is this a showcasing of marxism's limitations/reductive tendencies, or is this a sobering reminder of what is ultimately most important?

[sirfluffythegreat]

Have you heard of Maimonides? He’s a quintessential figure of Jewish philosophy

[bananaman_x_x]

What are your thoughts on Kierkegaard and William James?

[almusquotch]

My issue with Zizek is that he's too close to liberal centrism, surprised someone thinks the opposite.

[woanologue]

i agree so much with your considerations of Sartre esp re: Heidegger and La Nausée. but we differ on Žižek :) thank you for this. it was enjoyable and really helpful!

[bringospalungo]

great list! I would promote Hegel to S and demote Foucault and Butler to A on mine

[elijahl-s]

No mention on Schopenhauer? I would put him in A tier. He is a father for any aspiring philosopher.

[occularpatdown]

Does knowing the dangers of being a cyclops free you from it's grasp