How Would They PPC?

How would Hegel PPC?

What is the Hegelian Dialectic and how would that inform Hegel as a PPC, to see if he would be a good PPC or not?

How would Heraclitus PPC?

Heraclitus, Heraclitus: widely remembered as one of the early (even by Plato's standards!) Greek thinkers of antiquity, we're told, and most widely remembered for the every pithy: "no man ever steps into the same river twice." He is less remembered, however, for a bunch of his other--still insightful--arguments, such as: everything is fire.

How would Aristotle PPC? (Part II)

Eudaimonia, that word that's right out there with the Tetragrammaton for its elusive inability to be defined. "Happiness" is probably the most common way we translate Aristotle's classic concept into English, although some seem to prefer "flourishing."

How would M.M. Bakhtin PPC?

Okay, M.M. Bakhtin isn't quite a "philosopher" but more a half-way point between a "philosopher" and a "literary critic" but what, really, is a philosopher anyway? Who would put, "Philosopher" onto his LinkedIn (without getting laughed at for the pretentiousness of it)? Whichever he was, he was one of my favorite thinkers whose works I absorbed Way Back When and he has at least one idea worth sharing: heteroglossia vs monoglossia.

How would Max Weber PPC? (Part II)

We've previously analyzed how Max Weber would PPC, but we focused entirely on his approach towards bureaucracy. Today, we're going to rethink Max Weber as a PPC, but using his more famous idea, that of the Protestant Work Ethic.

How Would Plato PPC? (Part IV)

Continuing our series on how the great philosophers would do as PPCs, I'm returning yet again to Plato, as I've done three times before. Half because Plato stands so far above any other thinker--all other thinkers are just footnotes to Plato, as the philosopher's adage goes--and half because I enjoy reading him and half because he's probably the classic thinker whom I know the best. So today, we're going to examine another aspect of Plato's worldview, to see how it would influence him as a PPC: his argument in Phaedrus against writing, because it harms the more-important memory (and this has ramifications on our soul).

How would Adam Smith PPC?

Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations--published in the same year as the American Revolution, no less!--is the book that convinced the world to scrap mercantilism and adopt more "free market" approaches. Or so we're taught.

How would Plato PPC? (Part III)

I've written a few previous pieces about how Plato would PPC. Plato is the first big-time and greatest thinker in the western canon, which of course doesn't mean he is the most correct, it just means that he cast a shadow in which all thinkers since have lived. So we could write most of this "How would they PPC?" series on different aspects of Plato's ideas. Indeed, that's what I'm doing today, in the third series, by focusing on one particular idea of his that he proposes in the Symposium.

How Would Friedrich Hayek PPC?

Friedrich Hayek will always have a place in my heart. When I first read the Road to Serfdom, in my 20s, I thought it was a book of penetrating insight, and the winning example of how an intellectual could write for a mass audience. Now, too long later, I revisit those same ideas and they feel obvious to me, they feel partially misleading, and partially I feel like the ideas were never quite as popular as I imagined. This is, however, more a symptom of me growing up in a little intellectual bubble than anything else. So let's recap Hayek's most influential idea.

How Would Jeremy Bentham PPC?

Jeremy Bentham! Most widely remembered today as the Father of Utilitarianism. I remember him for a much more idiosyncratic reason: when he died, instead of burying him, they stuffed him like they used to do to hunted animals and put his body on display at his beloved University UCL. What a perfect ending for the father of Utilitarianism: truly wanting the whole world to benefit equally in everything, so why not give the whole world the equal opportunity to see you, even in death? But of course, the body-on-display suffers from the same problems as utilitarianism itself: in practice, it turns out to be kinda gross and creepy and even fails to live up to its high ideals (to get access to see the body, you need to be able to afford to fly to London). So, this leads me to wonder: if Jeremy Bentham were alive today, what sort of PPC would he be? Would I hire him to PPC for me?

How Would Plato PPC? (Part II)

So we've already analyzed how Plato would have been as a PPC. But the oeuvre commonly attributed to Plato is so vast and deep that we can dive into many different aspects. Last time, we focused mostly on The Cave. Today, we will focus on his observations on metals.