Nietzche is the Patron Saint of Edgy Retard Teenagers.
Albert Camus.
This is a megamind who wrote the following:
["There is only one really serious philosophical problem — the problem of suicide. "To decide whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy."]
His philosophical idea of asburdism (i.e., the lack of meaning of human existence) is what I consider one of the reasons for the current sad state of affairs.
I figured I'd see my favorites here; man y'all just seem to hate the existentialists.
This line of thinking all stems from the Schopenhauer line of thinking that "life sucks" -- "in fact there's way more suffering than pleasure, more disappointment than satisfaction, more sadness than happiness" etc. It's all that "woe is me" suicidality that I think of as the Edgy Teenage Retard stuff, the nihilist-pessimist stuff.
That's not really where either Camus or Nietzsche are going, not Nietzsche at all certainly. They're the ones struggling against the pessimists. See, the problem is,
Schopenhauer was right. The real confounding problem of life is that without religion [the "Edgy Teenage" list needs "Atheist" for completion], the logic isn't immediately evident as to why immediate suicide
isn't the answer.
And so, those two set on their philosophical quests to find that answer. So Nietzsche finds that experiencing struggle and adversity and triumphing, exercising mastery in life, exercising your will, your agency, in day-to-day life, and the satisfaction that comes with it, brings meaning (without a lot of the
edginess usually ascribed to him -- it's hard to argue that Nietzsche was anything but a friendly guy more fully knowing his works, although talking in metaphor as he always did makes a lot of quotes easy to [often intentionally] misinterpret ["you say a good cause can even sanctify war, I say a good war sanctifies any cause!"] Again, in a sense, it's really a quote about personal growth more than it is of actual war if you want to think of him in a life coach sense. Just really feels the opposite of
edgy to me.
And Camus on the other hand I think to similar conclusions, but far more focused on individual liberty being what brings satisfaction -- don't really know him nearly so well.
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The problem for me with the OP question is I'm gonna tend to read philosophers I like, not ones I don't like. Chances are the ones I'd like the list are shitty and forgotten anyway, so I'd never run into them to name them.
I guess I'll go with Freud: it's not really wrong to call him a sort of philosopher, he was doing it at that point where psychology and psychiatry were strongly linked to philosophy. He had a seriously twisted mind to try to tell everyone else
why they were doing what they did, while deciding to take the stance of not telling people
why they should do things. Certainly an inadequate philosopher!
Or maybe Plato gets my vote for least favorite, that true proto-proto-commie.
