The Most Influential Philosophers Explained in 26 Minutes: From Socrates to Wittgenstein

The ques­tion of who are the fif­teen most influ­en­tial philoso­phers of all time may not arise at every con­ver­sa­tion down at the pub — not out­side the cir­cle of Open Cul­ture read­ers, in any case. But even among non-spe­cial­ists, it could spark a live­li­er debate than you might imag­ine. Names like Socrates, Aris­to­tle, Descartes, and Marx are known, after all, even among the gen­er­al pub­lic who’ve nev­er read a page of philo­soph­i­cal text. All of them appear in the mil­lion-viewed video from Jay­done His­to­ry above, which takes its own crack at nam­ing a top fif­teen. Its 26 min­utes also pro­vide a brief bio­graph­i­cal sketch of each one, infor­ma­tive if lit­tered with odd mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tions, plus a cap­sulized sense of these philoso­phers’ last­ing ideas.

In pur­suit of truth, Socrates cre­at­ed the ques­tion­ing method of dia­logue that bears his name. Pla­to, Socrates’ stu­dent, advo­cat­ed for rule by the enlight­ened and the pur­suit of knowl­edge through the con­tem­pla­tion of pure forms. Reject­ing Pla­to’s method, Aris­to­tle ded­i­cat­ed him­self to sys­tem­at­ic empir­i­cal obser­va­tion. On the oth­er side of the world, Con­fu­cius spread teach­ings about the cul­ti­va­tion of moral virtue to main­tain the social rela­tion­ships he saw as the basic build­ing blocks of civ­i­liza­tion­al order, which Chi­na even­tu­al­ly adopt­ed as its state phi­los­o­phy. Back in Europe, Augus­tine syn­the­sized Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and clas­si­cal phi­los­o­phy, lay­ing the ground­work for medieval thought. Thomas Aquinas, too, ded­i­cat­ed him­self to a com­bi­na­tion of faith and rea­son, mak­ing a suite of oft-cit­ed argu­ments for the exis­tence of God.

Seek­ing a foun­da­tion of absolute­ly cer­tain knowl­edge, René Descartes arrived at self-aware­ness, famous­ly declar­ing, “I think, there­fore I am” and artic­u­lat­ing his epony­mous dual­is­tic world­view. Even apart from his work on the nature of knowl­edge, John Locke’s thoughts on social orga­ni­za­tion and gov­ern­ment live on in Enlight­en­ment-influ­enced mod­ern democ­ra­cies even today. David Hume mount­ed fun­da­men­tal chal­lenges to estab­lished ideas of empiri­cism, ques­tion­ing our very notion that future events will mir­ror past expe­ri­ence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau intro­duced the con­cep­tion of legit­i­mate polit­i­cal author­i­ty as aris­ing from the “gen­er­al will,” a social agree­ment among free and equal indi­vid­u­als, which turned out to be cen­tral to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of the French Rev­o­lu­tion. Immanuel Kant worked to bridge the gap between ratio­nal­ism and empiri­cism, rec­on­cil­ing the role of both expe­ri­ence and the mind’s phys­i­cal struc­ture to the for­ma­tion of knowl­edge.

Among oth­er con­cepts, Georg Wil­helm Friedrich Hegel defined that of dasein, which encap­su­lates the human mode of being (and which requires a life­time spent with his writ­ings to grasp, if even then). A pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an, Karl Marx described human his­to­ry through eco­nom­ic struc­tures and class strug­gle, and his vision of a per­fect­ly equal soci­ety ahead still remains com­pelling to many. Friedrich Niet­zsche declared that “God is dead,” plac­ing the bur­den of defin­ing moral­i­ty on man, and specif­i­cal­ly a fig­ure he called the Über­men­sch. Lud­wig Wittgen­stein took it upon him­self to explain the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage and real­i­ty with the high­est rig­or. In the com­ments, the video’s cre­ator teas­es a part two, which makes one won­der which philoso­phers will be includ­ed: Spin­oza? Hei­deg­ger? Sartre? The year and a half it’s tak­en so far is sure­ly long enough for the nar­ra­tor to have learned to pro­nounce them.

Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to 35 Philoso­phers by The School of Life: From Pla­to to Kant and Fou­cault

Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Con­ver­sa­tions With Famous Philoso­phers (1978–87)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

The 20 Most Influ­en­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Books of All Time: No Spoil­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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