http://selectsmart.com/PHILOSOPHY/

1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)
2. Kant (91%)
3. Nel Noddings (83%)
4. St. Augustine (81%)
5. Aquinas (72%)
6. Spinoza (71%)
7. Ayn Rand (69%)
8. Cynics (60%)
9. Nietzsche (59%)

[ 15 December 2003: Message edited by: Courage ]

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Originally posted by Milo_Hayes:
Why did you accept the questions as posed?
Pointless, surely. Fun, maybe.

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That's what I was wondering the entire time, in fact. The auto-fascism inherent in my own behaviour was, in part, visible to me. You aren't the only one in the world who is watching from the "outside". Though you like to pretend that's the way - your discursive subterfuge speaks volumes.

Your insistence that no one else took this as 'fun' in the same 'detached' way you did is fascinating as it ignores virtually all the responses above questioning the make-up of the questions, the design of the program, etc. It seems an attitude designed to assure your own feelings of superiority rather than give anyone else any credit for intelligence.

Wasn't it Goethe who said that to the intelligent man everything seems ridiculous, but to the sensible man barely anything is?

[ 15 December 2003: Message edited by: Courage ]

The common capacity to reason allows all humans to achieve virtue and wisdom.

The external circumstances of a person's life are irrelevant.

One can achieve virtue by becoming indifferent to external differences.

Passions must be rejected all together in deciding what is good and what is bad.

Reason alone must be used in deciding what is good and what is bad.

The common ability of humans to reason is why ethical relativism should be rejected.

I was quite surprised to see my Sartre ranking as 100%. I certainly never intended to choose answers which led to a perfect Sartre score. However, when I have read philosophy (low-intensity), I have sensed that the French Existentialists are rather close to my political and philosophical dispositions.

I'm not surprised that I scored so low on Plato. Reading the "Republic" in PoliSci, I could never figure out what made this man such a "genius"!

quote:

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Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:
Hmm. Apparently this thing thinks I'm a moral absolutist.

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Given the way the questions are skewed, Nietszche didn't even rate on my list, although he's the only philosopher I read for fun.

I remember liking what Spinoza had to say whenever I read him. I thought he was a lot like Erasmus, who I often agree with.

So ..... who shows up on my ethical-o-meter?

1. Aquinas (100%)
2. Ayn Rand (89%)

3. Jean-Paul Sartre (89%)
4. John Stuart Mill (88%)
then [...]
5. Jeremy Bentham (85%)
6. Plato (83%)
7. Aristotle (82%)
8. Kant (80%)
9. Ockham (57%)
10. Prescriptivism (57%)
11. St. Augustine (54%)
12. Cynics (46%)
13. David Hume (46%)
14. Epicureans (46%)
15. Spinoza (45%)
16. Nietzsche (41%)
17. Thomas Hobbes (37%)
18. Stoics (34%)
19. Nel Noddings (16%)

[ 18 December 2003: Message edited by: Geneva ]

1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%) Click here for info
2. Nietzsche (80%) Click here for info
3. Epicureans (74%) Click here for info
4. Aristotle (70%) Click here for info
5. David Hume (70%) Click here for info
6. Spinoza (66%) Click here for info

But Spinoza moved to #6. Weird. However, I have found both times taking the test that I'm not altogether happy with two or three of the sets of answers given - and I think both times I answered them in ways that I'm not happy with, and both times I answered them differently in ways that I don't really think are "me". For instance, I wouldn't consider myself an Aristotelean, really. I think I probably have more in common with Spinoza philosophically than Aristotle.

Also, I don't see how I'm getting Epicureans every time. I don't see myself as an Epicurean at all - I definitely don't believe that pleasure is the ultimate moral end. But then again, as I said above, there were two or three questions where I wasn't really completely happy with any of the answers, so I chose the one I was least unhappy with rather than just keep hitting "doesn't matter/don't like answers".

I kept finding myself saying, "Well, I suppose this answer could be right, but what about such-and-such a consideration?"

quote:

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1. Spinoza (100%) Click here for info
2. Epicureans (91%) Click here for info
3. John Stuart Mill (84%) Click here for info
4. Kant (82%) Click here for info
5. Stoics (74%) Click here for info
6. Jeremy Bentham (73%) Click here for info
7. Aquinas (69%) Click here for info
8. Nietzsche (69%) Click here for info
9. Aristotle (66%) Click here for info
10. Jean-Paul Sartre (65%) Click here for info
11. Ayn Rand (64%) Click here for info
12. David Hume (57%) Click here for info
13. Prescriptivism (53%) Click here for info
14. St. Augustine (50%) Click here for info
15. Thomas Hobbes (50%) Click here for info
16. Cynics (39%) Click here for info
17. Ockham (38%) Click here for info
18. Nel Noddings (33%) Click here for info
19. Plato (30%) Click here for info

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I was thinking about that Ayn Rand thing... perhaps you guys don't hate her as much as you would like to?

Her three main points, as quoted by the author of the quiz:

quote:

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We should all act with our own interests as the ultimate goal of our actions.
We have free will.
Moral standards are objective, and can be known rationally.

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I'd expect the first to be rather disagreeable with most babblers, but what about having free will? Objecitve morality?