it answered us with 100 years worth of more questions.

Time is the greatest contributor to philosophy. Not a who but a what.

It seems to me that philosophers don't "answer" so much as they raise (unbegged) questions of 'our political, ethical and intellectual givens' (e.g. assumed answers, perennial questions, normative solutions or intractable / underdetermined problems).

IMO, some of the more profound philosophers from a century ago (more or less) are Peirce-Dewey, M. Scheler, P. Kropotkin, R. Luxemburg, Russell, Wittgenstein, Popper-Feyerabend, Zapffe-Camus, Buber-Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir ...

update (re: 20th century innovations):

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/581566

What paradigms have been broken, altered, or introduced by philosophers in that time period? No fair citing physicists or other scientists who have speculated about their subjects, just philosophers known for their contributions, those ideas familiar to the general public.

Yep, very much so.

One could add Whitehead, James, C.I Lewis, Nagel and so on.

But I'm sure some here will say we are missing the real geniuses, Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, Althusser....

Hah.

What has philosophy answered for use in the previous 100 years? — TiredThinker

Contemporary philosophy has answered one of our biggest doubts:

- Are we, as humans, with or without God, morally good?

And the phenomenological answer that the synthesis of the last century gave us was:

- No.

We live, then, in an age of uncertainty and rediscovery, as metaphysical as physical.

In the end, only one thing is certain: - We will never stop questioning ourselves.

We will never stop questioning ourselves. — Gus Lamarch

(Re: "philosophical suicide") And we're as good as dead whenever we stop. "The unexamined life is not worth living", is it?

But I'm sure some here will say we are missing the real geniuses, Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, Althusser....

Hah — Manuel

Dont forget Foucault, Rorty, Kuhn, Ricouer, Gadamer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl and Nancy.

↪TiredThinker It seems to me that philosophers don't "answer" so much as they raise (unbegged) questions of 'our political, ethical and intellectual givens' (e.g. assumed answers, perennial questions, normative solutions or intractable / underdetermined problems). — 180 Proof

You can’t raise a question if you don’t already presuppose its answer in terms of a wider framework within which the question is intelligible.

“Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.... As questioning about, . . questioning has what it asks about. All asking about . . . is in some way an inquiring of... As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way.”(Heidegger)

J.J. Thomson effectively demolished the case for forced pregnancy in cases of rape.

What paradigms have been broken, altered, or introduced by philosophers in that time period? No fair citing physicists or other scientists who have speculated about their subjects, just philosophers known for their contributions, those ideas familiar to the general public. — jgill

Logical positivism was put into question by the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, structuralism was
critiqued by phenomenology and post-structuralism in continental philosophy and the social sciences, modernism was replaced by postmodernism in political theory, etc…

structuralism was critiqued by phenomenology and post-structuralism in continental philosophy and the social sciences, modernism was replaced by postmodernism in political theory, etc… — Joshs

Motion is not always progress. :wink:

Logical positivism was put into question by the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy — Joshs

Thanks for your answers. I've been reading about LP, finding I knew very little about it.

Contribution to what? Curiously, the list of the great and the good so far on the thread seems to leave out the philosophers of environmentalism, of feminism, of anti colonialism. It is surely not the business of the philosopher to contribute to society but to challenge it. It is not our business to answer to a miserable accountancy that cannot value anything except in terms of convention and complacent compliance.

I nominate Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson for the job.

Much has changed in science since he wrote it. Nonetheless, it brought into focus the divides between models of consciousness currently being pursued.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/

Popper and Rawls would have to be up there. Gettier, too, in an odd fashion. Maybe Singer and Chalmers. I think there's a bunch that may seem to have made great contributions (Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke, Lewis et al) but will end up looking on the wrong side of history.

We will need considerable historical distance to see which of these names mentioned gets historical recognition.

Back in the time of the classics, people like Malebranche, Gassendi, Priesteley and More were as big as Locke and others, but for some reason which isn't clear, they're not much recognized at all, even if they did excellent work, in my estimation anyway.

I think Husserl and Heidegger will make it out, as will the pragmatists, of the po-mo crowd, it's hard to say. Maybe Foucault.

I don't know if Derrida will be a big name in say, 10-20 years. And people like Wittgenstein might end up being over-valued in terms of lasting impact. We don't know.

I cannot think of any concrete contributions philosophy has made to our understanding of Creation/nature. It is interesting but not very useful. Only our faith in the Creator offers us any real hope for the world. IMHO.

You can’t raise a question if you don’t already presuppose its answer in terms of a wider framework within which the question is intelligible. — Joshs

So what's your (Heidi's) point? How does it relate to my previous post which you've quoted?

What has philosophy answered for use [sic] in the previous 100 years? — TiredThinker

For the last 100 years, it's the role of the individual in society.

All the important metaphysical questions have already been written and defended vigorously prior to this period. Most especially the ultimate reality and the self.

Arne Naess.
Contribution studiously ignored.

Audre Lorde.
Contribution studiously ignored.


But what did the Romans ever do for us?

If philosophy only raises new questions has science answered anything other than by way of discoveries that give philosophers more to ask questions about?

Contribution to what? Curiously, the list of the great and the good so far on the thread seems to leave out the philosophers of environmentalism, of feminism, of anti colonialism. It is surely not the business of the philosopher to contribute to society but to challenge it. It is not our business to answer to a miserable accountancy that cannot value anything except in terms of convention and complacent compliance. — unenlightened

You're right unenlightened. A philosophers role is indeed to challenge convention, to deduce where such convention would logically lead and inform the public on that impending outcome.

In this way philosophy is about navigating the "thought-scape" based on the assumptions of the collective (society) and reveal where that goes. To venture metaphysically down each path, before the physical has to make the choice. In that way philosophers may guide them, as our ancestors (chieftains, sages, druids, prophets, oracles, wise ones) have done so before us.

Philosophy is a guardian of informed choice. A neccesity. A passive one but a neccesary one.

Your contribution to philosophy exists so that physical contributions to error/misjudgement may not. Do not take your responsibility lightly.

If philosophy only raises new questions has science answered anything other than by way of discoveries that give philosophers more to ask questions about? — TiredThinker

In order to raise a new question a new assumption must first be established. Science lends its hand to concretising such assumptions. Philosophy takes what is learned and addresses the ethical and rational implications of that.

It is a "to-and-fro". A symbiosis. Without philosophy, science is blind to the ethical applications of its objective discoveries. Without science, philosophy can only merely speculate, is blind to the objectively rational.

A complimentary system indeed.

I cannot think of any concrete contributions philosophy has made to our understanding of Creation/nature. It is interesting but not very useful. Only our faith in the Creator offers us any real hope for the world. IMHO. — Photios

Is philosophy not the contemplation of such a creator? Philosophy can (as far as I know) be applied to all human pillars of society - medicine, language, politics, education, science, faith.

Philosophy IMHO is the transcendence of all human spheres of thought. All disciplines. And thus the only true way to unite them, and elucidate the true nature of creation, reality and truth.

It is up to philosophers to work constructively (through discourse) to bind and solidify the meaning of what it is to exist. And what existence is. If they cannot do it, no one can.

Such is the broad scope of thought and its applications (philosophy).

If philosophy only raises new questions has science answered anything other than by way of discoveries that give philosophers more to ask questions about? — TiredThinker

In the main, I don't think so. Science solves problems (re: fact-patterns, phenomenal processes, computations), philosophy questions – with grounds – its own questions as well as the framing of scientific problems (re: aporia, ideas, interpretations, criteria, methods). In this way, it seems to me, 'science and philosophy' complement and may inform / influence one another.

Kudos to David Lewis for saying out loud that there is no difference between a possible world and a "really real" world.

Kudos to David Lewis for saying out loud that there is no difference between a possible world and a "really real" world. — litewave

The "ideal" (potential to be) and the "real" (what actually is currently) are mutually dependent. The ideal is the goal whilst the real is what we have at our disposal to get there.
Utopia is brought into existence through advancement: taking current problems, making them a thing of the past, and then facing/challenging the remaining issues, working our way through what stands between us and our ultimate and deepest desire.

One can create a personal utopia, or they can attempt the behemoth task of creating one for everyone. The choice is up to the individual and how egalitarian they are in character. They may be unsuccessful but they can give it a go.

"really real" — litewave

What does such a redundant modifer even mean? As compared to 'not really real' or 'unreally real'' :roll:

Well but I was referring to logically possible (consistent) worlds, not ideal ones.