Ten Greatest Philosophical Writers

As I reviewed my list of most influential philosophers, I had about 10-15 that were on the borderline between philosopher and writer. I had a similar dilemma with my theologian list and decided to separate the pure thinkers from the pure writers. Many of these great writers championed already existing philosophical ideals. It didn't seem right to include them as systematic philosophers who established original concepts, but I still wanted to give them their philosophical dues (especially as someone who appreciates great writing). These writers were still very influential in advocating various concepts thru their popular works. Some of these writers went on to lead social movements, most notably the transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau. I personally consider Ralph Waldo Emerson the ultimate guide and mantra to my way of thinking. 

So just like I did with my Top Ten Greatest Catholic Writers, I'm going to focus on my Top Ten Greatest Philosophical Writers. These writers serve as the prime example of making a philosophical concept popular thru literature. It's fair to say that many of the great philosophers were better at their rhetoric than their actual writing (such as Socrates, Diogenes, and Immanuel Kant). However on the flip side there were some pure philosophers who were also very good writers such as Plato, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Rene Descartes, John Stuart Mill, and Nietzsche. I will not be including these writers in this particular post since I already covered them in the previous post. (They will be included however on my list of greatest works of philosophical writing. This here list will focus on the philosophical writers who were more famous for their works of literature vs their original concepts. 

Greatest Philosophical Writers

Lucretius

• 
  Dates: 99-55 BC
  
• Nationality: Roman
• School of Thought: Epicureanism
• Type of Writing: Epic Poem
• Influenced by: Epicurus, Democritus, early Greek atomism
• Key Works:
• De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
• Key Themes:
• Atomism
• Materialism
• Nature
• Mortality
• Rejection of divine internvention
• Fear of death
• pleasure
• Human happiness
• The origins of the universe
• Influenced: Virgil, Epicureanism, Renaissance humanism

• Summary: He was a Roman poet and philosopher who advocated the concepts of Epicurus and Democritus pertaining to epicureanism. This is essentially a form of hedonism that puts pleasure and happiness above everything else. Lucretius most famous work, On the Nature of Things explains the origins of the universe as pure atomic matter, free from any divine influence. This ultimately means that humans are free to live without moral fear of the afterlife and should make the most of their life on earth. The writing is revered not only for it's philosophical concepts but more so for it's poetic dictation. Quite interestingly the poem was lost for some time, and was not rediscovered until during the Renaissance where it went on to help inspire the social movement of humanism. 

Michel de Montaigne

• Dates: 1533-1592
• Nationality: French
• 
  School of Thought: Renaissance Humanism, Skepticism
  
• Type of Writing: Essays
• Influenced by: Socrates, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero
• Key Works:
• The Essays (Essais)
• Key Themes:
• Skepticism
• self-knowledge, individuality
• human nature
• mortality
• Uncertainty
• education
• custom and culture
• religion
• virtue
• Influenced: Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nietzsche, existentialism, humanism, 

• Summary: Regarded as the French Machiavelli, Montaigne championed the philosophical discourse of humanism in written form. Many of his most famous concepts are in his work Essais which ultimately ask his famous question, +What do I know?" Montaigne used a skeptical approach to question everything pertaining to religion, culture, and human nature. What makes Montaigne more of a writer then a philosopher, was that he was not making any major groundbreaking claims. In his writings he was mostly examining life thru critical analysis with pure open-ending conclusions. He is considered the father of modern essay who made the topic of philosophy popular once again. 

Johnathan Swift

• Dates: 1667-1745
• 
  Nationality: Irish
  
• School of Thought: Enlightenment, Augustinism, Christian humanism
• Type of Writing: Satire, essays, poetry, prose fiction
• Influenced by: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke
• Key Works:
• Gulliver's Travels
• A Modest Proposal
• A Tale of a Tub
• The Drapier's Letters
• The Battle of the Books
• Key Themes:
• Human nature and pride
• Political corruption and abuse of power 
• Inequality and poverty
• Religious conflict
• Limits of human knowledge
• Influenced: Political satire, Voltaire, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw

• Summary: He is considered one of the most famous satirist writers best known for his fantasy novel of Gulliver's Travels. This book explores the philosophical and political institutions of human society. Gulliver represents the neutral external perspective as he visits various unique civilizations. Each civilization is caught up in the most ridiculous of circumstances, thus demonstrating Swift's use of satire. Each civilization represents some backward political or philosophical ideal that is quite symbolic of our real society. Swift ultimately asks the question in this famous novel, how rational do we really think we are? Many of his writing directly challenged political and philosophical ideals thru a skeptical lens. He also inspired the great French satirist, Voltaire, who dove further into philosophical concepts. 

Voltaire

• Dates: 1694-1778
• Nationality: French
• 
  School of Thought: Enlightenment, Deism, Liberalism, Philosophical Skepticism
  
• Type of Writing: Essays, satire, letters, plays, poetry
• Influenced by: John Locke, Isaac Newton, Renaissance humanism
• Key Works:
• Candide
• Letters Concerning the English Nation
• Philosophical Dictionary
• Treatise on Tolerance
• Zadig
• Key Themes:
• Religious tolerance
• Civil liberties; freedom of thought, speech, expression
• Reason as the ultimate truth
• Empiricism
• Criticism of religious fanaticism
• Separation of church and state
• Influenced: French Enlightenment, secularism, French revolution

• Summary: He is considered one of the most influential writers of the Age of Enlightenment, with many famous philosophical works. Perhaps his most central theme in most of his writings was a critique on the church and any form of authoritarian control over society. As an advocate of John Locke's school of liberalism, Voltaire emphasized the practice of individual freedom over everything. He used clever satire and wit in his writings to target both the church and the government, most famously his novella, Candide. In this writing he especially attacks the metaphysical concepts of Gottfried Leibniz that our earth is the best possible scenario. Instead Voltaire believes we should set aside these metaphysical beliefs and focus on what is before us, or as he famously says "we must cultivate our own garden". Voltaire was very popular throughout his lifetime and had a correspondence with many famous figures such as Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Emilie du Chatelet (mathematician), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexander Pope, Johnathan Swift, and Benjamin Franklin. His popular writings became the backbone of the Enlightenment that favored reason and science over the religion, which also became the influential ideology of the French Revolution. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Dates: 1803-1882
  
• Nationality: American
• 
  School of Thought: Transcendentalism
• Type of Writing: Essays, poetry
• Influenced by: Immanuel Kant, Unitarianism, Romanticism, German Idealism, Eastern Philosophy
• Key Works:
• Nature
• Self-Reliance
• The Over-Soul
• Experience
• Essays
• Key Themes:
• Individualism, self-reliance
• Intuition
• Nature
• Over-Soul
• Nonconformity, individual conscious
• Influenced: Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, American Transcendentalism, Friedreich Nietzsche

• Summary: He is considered the leader of the American Transcendentalist movement throughout the mid-1800s. Influenced by the concepts of German idealism as well as Eastern philosophy, Emerson sought to break away from society norms and promote the individual. In his most famous work, Self-Reliance he described how the individual should trust and follow their own intuition rather then just follow the crowd. This is best achieved thru a connection with nature and one's own spirituality. Emerson's philosophy was heavily based with a Christian foundation where the individual should seek to achieve spiritual unity of their soul with God. This was a much different approach then Buddhism or German nihilism, which sought to separate the individual from religious restrictions. Emerson's concept of the Over-Soul is very similar to Nietzsche's Overman concept, both seeking to achieve inner transcendence (however Emerson's approach embraces divinity while Nietzsche completely rejects it). This mentality was very influential among many great American writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.   

Henry David Thoreau

• Dates: 1817-1862
  
• 
  Nationality: American
  
• School of Thought: Transcendentalism
• Type of Writing: Essays, poetry, journals
• Influenced by: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism, Romanticism, Eastern Philosophy
• Key Works:
• Walden
• Civil Disobedience
• A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
• Key Themes:
• Nature
• Simple living
• Individualism
• Self-reliance
• Spirituality
• Civil disobedience, resistant to unjust government
• Influenced: John Muir, environmentalism, conservationism

• Summary: Influenced heavily by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau strengthened the Transcendentalism Movement through his writings. In his most famous work Walden, he shared a journal experience of retreating to a cabin in the woods living only with the bare necessities. This experience embodied all the components of American transcendentalism such as self-reliance, individualism, simple-living, connection with nature, and spiritual unity with God. Thoreau argued that when we can remove the unnecessary material and social status we can get closer to our true individual freedom. He also promoted the practice of civil disobedience as a form of nonviolent resistance against unjust governments. This approach became very popular among future political activists most notably Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Marcel Proust

• Dates: 1871-1922
• 
  Nationality: French
  
• School of Thought: Modernism
• Type of Writing: Novels, essays
• Influenced by: Henri Bergson, John Ruskin, French Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism
• Key Works: 
• In Search of Lost Time
• Swann's Way
• Time Regained
• Pastiches et Melanges
• Key Themes:
• Memory
• Time
• Consciousness and perception
• Love, jealousy, sexuality
• Art
• Social identity
• Influenced: Samuel Beckett, Virginia Wolff, James Joyce, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Modernist literature, phenomenology, existentialism

• Summary: Best known for his famous novel, In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust wrote a uniquely profound story that pertains entirely to human consciousness. The entire story takes us inside the mind of the narrator who is experiencing flashbacks, a term Proust coins as involuntary memory. I like his concept of present day things that can trigger an involuntary memory, such as a song, a smell, or a taste. These sensory experiences in present time, gives us a slightly distorted version of the past memory but never the full event in total clarity. Despite this lack of clarity, Proust asks if the past is forever engrained within our consciousness as a part of us. This opens up a bigger philosophical question on time and perception. How is it even conceivable that we can revisit the past, and how does this align with time as we know it? This ties into one of Augustine's concepts where the past is pure memory that is explored in the present moment (thus making the past nonexistent). In Search of Lost Time is a philosophical rich story that uses a character and events to explore the internal nature of a human being. 

Hermann Hesse

• Dates: 1877-1962
  
• Nationality: German-Swizz
• 
  School of Thought: Existentialism, Romanticism, Eastern philosophy, Jungian psychology
• Type of Writing: Novels, novellas, poetry, essays
• Influenced by: Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, Buddhism, Hinduism
• Key Works:
• Demian
• Siddhartha
• Steppenwolf
• The Glass Bead Game
• Narcissus and Goldmund
• Key Themes:
• Self-discovery, inner-conflict, personal transformation
• Individuality
• Spiritiuality
• Duality
• Reason vs instinct
• East vs West
• alienation
• Society vs Individual
• Influenced: Existentialist literature, counterculture

• Summary: With his background in psycho-anaylsis and philosophical studies, Hesse brought a unique perspective into his writing. He worked closely with the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung who founded the school of analytical psychology. Hesse was also heavily influenced by Eastern religions and traditions. His central theme often pertained to self-discovery and embracing one's individuality amidst the expectations of society. He explored how the individual could search for their true identity and even find meaning thru spirituality. Similar to Proust, this form of writing takes the reader into the narrator's mind as their consciousness is on full display. It was a creative way to explore questions of existentialism and inner-transformation that later became very popular during the counterculture hippie days.  

Franz Kafka

• Dates: 1883-1924
• 
  Nationality: Austro-Hungarian, Czech
  
• School of Thought: Modernist, Existentialism
• Type of Writing: Novels, novellas, short stories 
• Influenced by: Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Grillparzer
• Key Works:
• The Trial
• The Metamorphosis
• The Castle
• Amerika
• The Judgement
• In the Penal Colony
• Key Themes:
• Alienation, isolation
• Absurdity
• Bureaucracy, authority
• Guilt, anxiety, helplessness 
• Identity, freedom
• Meaning
• Communication
• Justice
• Influenced: Existentialism, Absurdism, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Hannah Arendt

• Summary: Although Kafka himself did not identify with the movements of existentialism or absurdism, his writings are highly based on these philosophical concepts. His central question in many of his works, is how can the identity find meaning in a world that can hardly comprehend. For example in his famous work of The Trial, a man is arrested but is not told what the crime is. Thus we enter the man's inner consciousness as he questions his moral compass vs the legal authoritative system. Even more absurd is his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis where a man wakes up one day and is transformed into an insect. The character then begins to explore the philosophical questions of personal identity ( in this case having the same mind but in a whole different body, albeit a monstrous one). The situation itself is a prime example of an absurd reality where we must continue to go on despite not understanding the reason or purpose being it all. These writings went on to influence some of the great modern philosophers such as Jean Paul-Sartre and Albert Camus.  

Jorge Luis Borges

• Dates: 1899-1986
• 
  Nationality: Argentina
  
• School of Thought: Modernism, philosophical fiction, magical realism
• Type of Writing: Short stories, essays, poetry
• Influenced by: George Berkley, David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, Kabbalah, Buddhism, Christianity
• Key Works:
• Ficciones
• Labyrinths
• The Aleph
• The Library of Babel
• The Garden of Forking Paths
• Pierre Menard
• Author of the Quixote
• Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• Key Themes:
• Reality and illusion
• Time and infinity
• Identity
• Memory
• Language
• Free will and fate
• The nature of God
• The universe as a labrynth
• Influenced: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, magical realism

• Summary: Heavily influenced by the movements of empiricism, German idealism, and existentialism Jorge Luis Borges explored these concepts in many of his famous short stories. His most famous writings of Ficciones and El Aleph demonstrate fantasy settings that challenge our perspective on reality. This especially pertains to the mysterious nature of dreams or the concept of infinity. Borges also famously illustrates the world as one giant labyrinth where we are constantly trying to navigate thru various choices, paths, alternative realities, and an infinitude of archives. He also demonstrates the limits of language and how it can lead to uncertainty, confusion, and even madness. I especially enjoy this concept of an infinite amount of possibilities that can lead to an overwhelming anxiety. Borges is not so much answering these questions rather putting the reader in the midst of an imaginative setting that explores these questions. This type of writing became highly influential to the father of magical realism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  

Greatest Philosophical Writings

• The Upanishads (Various Hindu writers) 800-300 BC
• The Analects (Confucius) 475 BC
• Symposium (Plato) 385 BC
• The Republic (Plato) 375 BC
• Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 340 BC
• On the Nature of Things (Lucretius) 50 BC
• Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) 180 
• The Enneads (Plotinus) 270
• Confessions (Augustine of Hippo) 397 
• City of God (Augustine of Hippo) 413 
• The Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius) 523 
• The Book of Healing (Avicenna) 1027
• The Guide for the Perplexed (Maimonides) 1190
• Summa Theologeia (Thomas Aquinas) 1265-1274
• Divine Comedy (Dante) 1308-1321
• The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli) 1513
• Essays (Michael de Montaigne) 1580
• Novum Organum (Francis Bacon) 1620
• Meditations on First Philosophy (Rene Descartes) 1641
• Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes) 1651
• Ethics (Baruch Spinoza) 1677
• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (John Locke) 1689
• Gulliver's Travels (Johnathan Swift) 1726
• A Treatise of Human Nature (David Hume) 1739
• The Social Contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) 1762
• Candide (Voltaire) 1759
• Critique on Pure Reason (Immanuel Kant) 1781
• The World as Will and Representation (Arthur Schopenhauer) 1818
• Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson) 1836 
• Fear and Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 1843
• Walden (Henry David Thoreau) 1854
• On Liberty (John Stuart Mill) 1859
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) 1883
• Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 1886
• The Trial (Franz Kafka) 1914
• Siddhartha (Herman Hesse) 1922
• In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust) 1927
• Being and Nothingness (Jean-Paul Sartre) 1943
• The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus) 1955