# Who are the US intellectual heavyweights these days re contending social & political philosophies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 13, 2012, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795 "2012-05-13T19:07:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/41 "2012-05-20T21:33:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Of course, when you think about it . . . the exercise of the will **is** all the meaning life can ever have; an existentialist would probably agree (while phrasing it differently); but understanding that does not make one a fascist. And indeed Walter Kaufmann who translated and wrote about Nietzsche, found him to be misunderstood, and going toward liberal humanism. I felt quite the lift reading Nietzsche in college, after many years of Christian mind programming, and I especially enjoyed the rejection of slave morality, his description of herd values, and his way of turning everything upside down, as far as what I thought I knew before reading Nietzsche. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/42 "2012-05-20T21:42:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Chomsky is not a **philosopher** at all. But he is a political intellectual who writes books intended to have immediate political influence, which Plato did not. Immediate political influence on…? Congress? Voters? The President? Foreign policy? Aside from being popular amongst a small circle, I’d say he has very _little_ influence. And yes, he is a philosopher. What is your definition of philosopher, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/43 "2012-05-20T21:48:51Z")
I wonder if part of the issue is the constant focus in academia for specialization, combined with the separation of academic work from the classroom and later the masses? My academic friends refuse to write books for the masses - it won’t help with tenure, the time takes away from journal publication, and when you dumb-down your work for the masses you are sneaked at. That all said, I think that Jon Haidt has done a good job of bridging the academic / masses, and he has some interesting stuff to say. After that, we get the slightly more erudite talking heads like William F Buckley, Lind, and others. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/44 "2012-05-20T21:55:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, be careful, there. Aristotle wrote at a time when there was a long-established status quo to examine – a (Hellenic) world of independent cities – and his politics are all about that. But (despite having tutored Alexander) Aristotle was persistently oblivious to the fact that that status quo he wrote about was about to die, indeed was already dying, rendering his political philosophy utterly irrelevant for the next thousand years and more. I didn’t say useful, I said creative and fruitful. There is a slight but measurable difference. In fact, one could say that having an established status quo to examine tends to result in a subversion thereof. Right now, it’s more a matter of the blind men hanging on to the elephant as it stampedes. They’re not going to describe it too well, and they have no idea where the hell it’s going. At least in Aristotle’s time, even if the elephant was heading for a cliff, the philosophers could come to an agreement that there was, in fact, an elephant, and not, say, a crowd of lemmings carefully shaved and glued together. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/45 "2012-05-20T22:03:57Z")
Why has nobody mentioned Jesus Christ? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/46 "2012-05-20T22:05:20Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > In fact, one could say that having an established status quo to examine tends to result in a subversion thereof. Well, that’s not how it worked in Aristotle’s time. The status quo was subverted for entirely different reasons. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/47 "2012-05-20T22:06:50Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Why has nobody mentioned Jesus Christ? As “a _truly_ seminal thinker or important philosopher with respect to the future political or social direction of the US”? Definitely not. America really cannot afford to take him seriously. We would have no Defense Department. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/48 "2012-05-20T22:26:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > As “a _truly_ seminal thinker or important philosopher with respect to the future political or social direction of the US”? Definitely not. America really cannot afford to take him seriously. We would have no Defense Department. Noted deep political philosopher George Bush disagrees with you. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/49 "2012-05-21T00:56:18Z")
> [@Gobineau](#): > > And I was not referring solely to political philosophy, but philosophy in general. Arguably, America has yet to produce a single philosopher of the first rank. People such as Rawls, Kripke, and Donald Davidson are intelligent fellows, but their philosophy just does not have the profound effect on Western civilization that thinkers like Machiavelli, Kant, Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche did. This is as much due to the limitations of Anglo-American analytic philosophy as to any personal shortcomings on their part. But this brand of analytical philosophy is very much a product of the utilitarian, materialist, egalitarian state of mind I mentioned. Hence William James’s definition of truth as “what helps us get by” and the current suggestions that philosophy needs to become science-lite in order to justify its existence. I think that may in part because much of the Anglo-American philosophical basis had already been established by the time the United States came of age intellectually. Hence as a result most philosophers ended up refining the already existing ideas of people like Locke or Smith (and Bacon too for that matter). What about the libertarian movement such as people like Ayn Rand or Murray Rothbard or the founder of Scriptualism Gordon Clark? More info on Scriptualism: [http://www.trinityfoundation.org/](http://www.trinityfoundation.org/) > [@](#): > > I should note that your comment also betrays a very American attitude: the conviction that there really are no\* fundamental \*flaws in the American system or way of life. I’m afraid so. But I’m interested in reading criticism of American society based on people like Nietschze or Evola rather than just leftist ones. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/50 "2012-05-21T02:02:44Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > I’m afraid so. But I’m interested in reading criticism of American society based on people like Nietschze or Evola rather than just leftist ones. Try [Francis Parker Yockey.](http://www.johnreilly.info/imp.htm)[He was an American.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Parker_Yockey) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/51 "2012-05-21T02:07:27Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > What about the libertarian movement such as people like Ayn Rand or Murray Rothbard or the founder of Scriptualism Gordon Clark? Whatever [Gordon Clark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Clark) was, he was **not** a political intellectual heavyweight. Neither was [John Rushdoony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushdoony) or any [Dominionist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism) or [Christian Reconstructionist.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Reconstructionism) We’re not living in Martin Luther’s day. I doubt there can be such thing, now, as a political intellectual heavyweight who starts from the point that “The Bible alone is the Word of God” and bases everything on that. That’s like asking for the Klan to produce a political intellectual heavyweight, it’s preposterous. They can’t be anything but cranks. The most extremely stupid Communists or Objectivists are serious political thinkers by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/52 "2012-05-21T08:16:54Z")
Nietzsche may have inculcated the culture of opposition to camaraderie, but he had little to no influence on the synthesis of [Hiter’s philosophy](http://nobeliefs.com/hitler-myths.htm#myth4). ---
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/53 "2012-05-21T18:39:19Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > Nietzsche may have inculcated the culture of opposition to camaraderie, but he had little to no influence on the synthesis of [Hiter’s philosophy](http://nobeliefs.com/hitler-myths.htm#myth4). It is a shame that his sister worked to fraudulently connect Nietzshe with anti semitism, leading to part of the misinterpretation of his writing. She was married to a nazi that Nietzshe disagreed with and criticized. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795/54 "2012-05-21T19:23:11Z")
Nietzsche had nothing against Jews, really. He did once publish a pamphlet purporting to prove Wagner was a Jew – but that was a parody on **Wagner’s** antisemitism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-us-intellectual-heavyweights-these-days-re-contending-social-political-philosophies/621795.md?page=2)