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Curated playlist

Social philosophers

  • AristotleOnly around a third of Aristotle's original writings survive, and none was meant to be published.
  • Han FeiHan Fei was forced to drink poison after his former classmate Li Si turned a king against him.
  • Jean-Jacques RousseauRousseau refused a king's pension after Louis XV loved his opera. Friends were exasperated by his choice.
  • Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
  • Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
  • Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
  • John MiltonJohn Milton sold Paradise Lost for five pounds. The blind poet handed it to a publisher in April 1667.
  • Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza was expelled from his Jewish community at twenty-three, and it still refuses him back.
  • Marcus AureliusMarcus Aurelius wrote a private journal that sold 100,000 copies in 2019.
  • Adam SmithAdam Smith once walked straight into a tanning pit while talking about free trade.
  • The BuddhaNo written record of the Buddha survives from his lifetime. Ashoka's edicts name him in the 3rd century BCE.
  • MenciusMencius said a tyrant king was no longer a ruler at all. The Chinese philosopher put common citizens above rulers.
  • XenophonXenophon helped lead ten thousand stranded Greek mercenaries home from deep inside Mesopotamia.
  • Ludwig von MisesNazi troops raided Ludwig von Mises's Vienna apartment and took his papers. He was already in Geneva.
  • AverroesIn 1169, a caliph asked the philosopher Averroes if the heavens had a beginning.
  • Mikhail BakuninKarl Marx had the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin expelled from the First International in 1872.
  • ConfuciusTold his stables had burned, Confucius asked only, "Was anyone hurt?" He did not ask about the horses.
  • Peter KropotkinAnarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin refused a cabinet seat in Russia's Provisional Government.
  • LaoziLaozi's name is not a name at all, but a title meaning old teacher. Tradition credits him with the Tao Te Ching.
  • Alexander HerzenFor three years, Alexander Herzen's Russian press in London did not sell a single copy.
  • José Ortega y GassetJosé Ortega y Gasset answered Descartes with "I live therefore I think." He put lived experience before abstract reason.
  • Michel WeberMichel Weber opened Belgium's first philosophical counseling service. He champions process philosophy.

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