For this, I have chosen Saint Augustine (354-430), or often known as Augustine of Hippo, in present day Algeria. He was an early Christian father and philosopher, who added a few additions to the Christian faith changing it effectively from a pacifist set of beliefs with an acceptance of women (or at least not institutionalised misogyny) into one that, through his concept of original sin, made female sexuality a spiritual threat and sex distasteful, and through his concept of a Just War Christians into potential warriors. Many of his other, not-mentioned, ideas made Christianity into a paradigm of introversion and neurosis.
Of course there are many others more obvious, Fascism and Nazi beliefs, but there are many others wrongly celebrated that have caused immense problems and numerous deaths. Socrates and Plato I believe fostered elitism, and, with some effort, that can be viewed as ultimately damaging. Make a choice......
I wanted/want people to scrutinise their presumptions on the present world and the thinkers they revere. In fact, there is evidence of organised Christian violence before Augustine, but the change in perspectives on sexuality-well before the advent of the religion (Jesus says nothing on this)- such a view would have been derided.
Morality had arrived in Rome, based on the political justification for marraige, but sexuality was treated as natural. Did Augustine change all that and create the distaste that has existed until recently, and is still viewed ambiguously
especially in Islam with its fervent control of women's bodies and, of course, sexuality.
Augustine had an enormous impact, no doubt. But even he, as a single thinker, has been unable to "change Christian faith". By the way, I totally disagree with your sketch of his ideas.
How disagree? Are you saying he did not write on these matters?
His concept of 'Original Sin' certainly did change Christianity. There is perhaps sexual distaste in Paul, but none in Jesus (according to text).
There is an excellent book, according to me, about the doctrine of grace of Augustine: Volker Henning Drecoll: Die Entstehung der Gnadenlehre Augustins, Tuebingen [Germany] 1999439 pages.
Well, fine, but I can't read German. And yes, there will be and are many interpretations. Thank you, anyway, because I welcome them. The more the merrier. But is there a translation? What is its title in English and I will search for it in the British Library?
Leave leaders of religions.
All those people wanted to force everybody to admit his leadership by creating fear of killing among people, contributed in the idea of 'cleansing' of others.
Other some person followed that idea and contributed far more in spread of such idea.
Still today, you will find many people who differentiate human depending on color, race, country of origin, religion etc. from the core of their heart.
It is the idea which impacted human civilization terribly continuously for thousands of years .
What about Locke-his views surely established the bourgeoisie, providing it with philosophical underpinnings based upon possession and materialism, provided the underpining for the extermination of nomadic groups when colonisation began in earnest, provided the template for modern psychiatry and psychology-both of which tend to reject imagination and spirituality for material phenomena only?
I'm very sorry: there is no translation of the book of Volker Henning Drecoll, at least: I do noty know such a translation. - But if you are interested in a fine book about Augustine [and, of course, about his doctrine of grace] in English, you may be interested in: Peter Brown: Augustine of Hippo, 1967. There may be later editions of this very renowned book. - The book of Drecoll did appear in 1999 and has 439 pages. I'm sorry a comma [decimal point] is missing in my first contribution.
Thanks Christoph, I''ll definitely look. Of course I know of Augustine's other ideas, but I will certainly try and find the Drecoll book.
Jack, why Newton?
yes. they managed to take over north america with little opposition, and it went to their heads
they thought they had a special place in history
the british were the same, but put it down to race
Thomas Carlyle was a Victorian Scots who developed the idea that history was dependent on Great Men: 'History is but the biography of Great Men.' 'In fact, all great men are surrounded by people who have either remained anonymous or are considered of lesser gifts. All great men nevertheless tend to believe they did and do everything by themselves.
Great men, for Carlyle, were the heroes of old and the present. The semi-divine of ancient epics-or similar.
This theory encouraged and supported fascist dictators in the 20th century, particularly Mussolini and Hitler. It still gives credence to people like Putin, yes, even Trump, and every sordid little politician crawling out of the earth to surprise us.
Of course, the theory was not new, even in Victorian times. But it corrupted history writing for awhile. Many people now considered the idea relevant for religious founders, leaders, etc. But it isn't true. Great men are a mirage blocking up our view of reality.
Another to affect modern politics negatively was George Bernard Shaw the Irish playwright and thinker. I have immense time for Shaw, many of the prefaces to his plays are remarkable, often better than the plays themselves. He was a very intelligent man-in the sense of very lucid and with the ability to clearly present his ideas.
He took up I suspect Carlyle's ill-thought out notion of Great Men (no mention of women of course) and developed the idea of Man and Superman. Some people were superhuman in their characters and talents! Of course, Hitler, whom Shaw visited, lapped it all up. He praised Hitler and also Stalin as stand-alone supermen that the world required. He went on trips to USSR and didn't once notice starvation or gulags.
I choose philosopher Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (1941-1989) at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. He promoted an uncompromisingly belligerent interpretation of jihad that he said was incumbent on all Muslims: "Jihad and the rifle alone. No negotiations, no conferences, and no dialogues.” Azzam inspired his student Osama bin Laden, who became one of the first Jihadists, calling for a worldwide campaign of jihad against “the West” (including all mainstream Muslims) and overseeing the events of 9/11.
Thanks Kirk. Broaden the discussion quite a bit. Intellectuals have a lot to answer for!
William Sargant. Now largely, wisely forgotten. He was considered when alive an extremely important psychiatrist who strongly advocated deeply invasive treatment such as psychosurgery, insulin shock and ECT, usually without a patient's permission. Now known for a destructive dogmatic temperament.
He was right, everyone else was wrong. Rejected all other kinds of therapy, such as talking therapy.
He famously gave a young girl, an adolescent, ECT at the behest of a controlling mother who wanted to stop her relationship with a boy. Her memories were subsequently destroyed.
He has a formidable heritage in modern psychiatry, and has a responsibility for the extraordinarily widespread, dope-a-rope, intense, invasive use of drugs.
To answer this question, I would need to know everything about every important thinker that has ever lived throughout the ages and I don't!
In recent history, Karl Marx real mission in life was to contribute to the overthrow of capitalist society and state institutions. Examining the degree of success of his philosophy today would indicate failure.
Marx wasn't quite so destructive, intending to put something in his place. An idealist he thought that the world could be made better and was appalled by industrial heartlessness. There remains a religious quality to his thinking, the resurrection of the world with a higher ethical core.
Saint Paul. He utilised the following of previous charismatic professional preachers/teachers/physicians to create am ambitious project that reflected his own intellectualism. He propagated himself as a leader, when he probably wasn't. Based his own authority on the image of a dead preacher-with whom he probably had limited contact-whom he reconstituted in ideal form. Took attention away from James, Jesus' brother (maybe) and the known disciples, and made a nuisance of himself interfering within several early self-directed churches.
While I agree with you of course, Peter, that idealism has killed billions, certainly when attached to religion or religious behaviour, and Marx cannot therefore be excused, also he did not intend what happened under the Bolsheviks, who made a particularly violent approach to Marx's ideas. There's something of the early Islam in Bolshevism, that its ideas can be forced onto others. Here I'm talking about the early conquest tropes, where the message and morals were so absolute that day to day morality was bypassed. Bolshevism was not the only approach, just the worst.
Marx's writings in general indicate a highly moral personality, shocked by poverty, injustice and suffering (to an extent) of others.
Personally, Jaques Lacan and his approach to psychoanalysis. His work had little clinical or therapeautic value, is theoretically uninteresting, except for the times he is rehashing a common sense point in his obscurrantist writing style. Despite all of this, his work had infected the academy leaving a substantial, and irritating, legacy. The John Ghotti of psychoanalysis, flashy and stylish but a short lived fad who is given more attention than he deserves.
Interesting on Lacan, someone I studied doing a psychoanalytical psychology diploma years ago. The lecturer had written a book on Lacan's ideas and had decided he was the only one who understood his-remind me, was it dissouance-the nature of which I found unconvincing.
I must read Lacan again!
It seems to me though that Lacan did nothing terrible, apart from perhaps being a poseur-an irritation rather than a crime. William Sargant, the psychiatrist, actually destroyed people's lives and died, then not now, revered.
Of this persausion, surely Melanie Klein is more worthy of inclusion, although again there is no evidence of her causing actual damage? Klein believed that psychosis was initiated during the period when the baby began to separate its identity from the mother, become autonomous, or object of dependency. The process involved a new concept of original sin, it seened to me, inadvertantly bringing morality into mental illness. The baby, hardly able at that age to gauge such matters, was it appears capable of malevolence and the 'object' usually mother suffered from accusations of motherly incompetence (or is that the extension of Klein's work-object relations?) Anyway, it dragged a strange morality into the discussion.
The institution of Greatness testifies to relationships with others-that is someone is accorded Greatness because a country requires a great man of a specific kind at a particular time.....We project onto figures, in the past and present, ideals, often dodgy ideals.
Benjamin Franklin was/is USA's choice. He emulated the protestant work ethic of the self-made man, showed brilliance (sic) in science that hardly compared with his European peers, personifying the smooth, intelligent rough-neck in European society in a way Jefferson, for example, could not. He was a Lockean hero to later Americans but fell asleep during important meetings, and rambled with excessive egotism. His achievements were of his time, often the result of hard work not genius.
Worse than all this he promoted the genocide of Native Americans and the thieving of their lands on the basis that they did not farm the land, they did not use it as it should be used.
Rupert Brooke: Most of you would not have heard of him. A minor poet who died young in the First World War. How Brooke? He developed, although did not invent, the idea of violent death as romantic, and worse bestowed on it racialist characteristics: Line 4. Englishmen are specifically related to god: line 10. He encouraged his peers to believe death in war was glamorous.
The Soldier
Rupert Brooke, 1887 - 1915
If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
I've been doing more reading in Augustine and again I must underline the immense harm he did, not just to the core of Christian belief, but to humanity as a whole. Of course, he had no idea of the effects his ideas would cause-or did he?
Again, Augustine changed the core of Christianity from a pacifist religion to one of potential violence. His belief that even extreme violence was fine, causing the massacres of men, women, and children in Italy during the Renaissance, if it wiped out evil (as usual evil was understood as disagreement). This is in the end the thinking behind the holocaust.
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