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Curated playlist

Theorists on Western civilization

  • VoltaireThe line Voltaire is most quoted for was written in 1906, long after he died.
  • George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
  • Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWhen French soldiers broke into Goethe's home in 1806, his companion Christiane Vulpius defended it.
  • Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
  • Martin HeideggerPhilosopher Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in May 1933. He did so while admired as a leading thinker of being.
  • Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
  • 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.
  • Cormac McCarthyCormac McCarthy bought a portable Olivetti Lettera 32 at a Knoxville pawn shop for $50, shortly before a trip to Europe in the early 1960s. Over the next five decades he typed about five million words on it. He kept it running by blowing…
  • Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
  • John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at age three. His father was deliberately raising a genius.
  • Pierre-Joseph ProudhonPierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person known to call himself an anarchist, and many consider him the father of anarchism. He reached that title through the printing trade, having taught himself Latin so that he could print books in…
  • Benjamin FranklinIn 1728, a 22-year-old printer named Benjamin Franklin sat down and wrote his own epitaph. He pictured his body as the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and its lettering and gilding stripped away. It would lie in the earth as…
  • Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard dropped his script and wrote dialogue day by day for the film Breathless.
  • Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels rode with an aristocratic fox hunt while funding Karl Marx.
  • Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
  • Max WeberMax Weber died in 1920 with his major book unfinished on his desk. His widow spent two years preparing it.
  • Mikhail BakuninKarl Marx had the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin expelled from the First International in 1872.
  • Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes, the English philosopher born in 1588 at Westport in Wiltshire, liked to say that his mother gave birth to twins: "myself and fear." He arrived early, because news had just reached the household that the Spanish Armada was…
  • Yuval Noah HarariYuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens grew out of an undergraduate world history class.
  • David AttenboroughAt 11, David Attenborough sold newts to a university for three pence each.
  • Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein, the Austro-British philosopher, published only one book of philosophy during his lifetime, and it ran to just 75 pages. He was born in Vienna on the 26th of April 1889 and died on the 29th of April 1951. Nearly…
  • Edward GibbonEdward Gibbon said commanding militia grenadiers helped him understand the Roman legion.
  • Karl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna on the 28th of July 1902 and died on the 17th of September 1994. In between, he built a philosophy of science on an odd idea. The strongest theories, he argued, are the ones most exposed to being…
  • Robert ReichRobert Reich stands 4 feet 11 inches tall, and he has spent his working life arguing with people who hold far more power than he does. Born on the 24th of June 1946, he became an American lawyer, professor, author and political…
  • Christopher HitchensOn the 8th of October 2011, Christopher Hitchens collected the Richard Dawkins Award at the Texas Freethought Convention. It was his final public appearance. Christopher Eric Hitchens, a British and American author and journalist, had been…
  • Victor Davis HansonAfter earning a Stanford PhD, Victor Davis Hanson went home and farmed. He grew orchards and vineyards for four years.
  • Michel WeberMichel Weber opened Belgium's first philosophical counseling service. He champions process philosophy.
  • Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher whom one admirer called the Elvis of cultural theory and whom another label dubbed the most dangerous philosopher in the West. He was born on the 21st of March 1949 and has written over 50 books. He…

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