Comrades

Theophrastus

It's true he's not exactly a household name. But when it comes to philosophical buds, they don't come any better than old Theo. In fact, I appointed him as my successor at the Lyceum, even bequeathing to him all my writings. And he dutifully followed in my footsteps, elaborating on my own treatment of a great variety of topics.

Theophrastus' most well-known work is in the area of botany; in fact, he's sometimes even referred to as the "father of botany." It seems to me that the roots of that interest—no pun intended—lie in my own work. But I'll allow that he made some advancements of his own.

Al-Farabi

For those in the know, this 10th-century Arabic philosopher is key—one of the central figures of the Islamic Golden Age. In fact, back in the day he was commonly referred to as "the second teacher." The first teacher is…[drumroll, please]…me.

Now I'll admit I'm not always 100% happy with (You Can Call Me) Al. Yes, he studied my Metaphysics very closely, and helped popularize my ideas, even writing commentaries on my work. He gets props for that. But the man insisted that there was no important difference between my thinking and Plato's!

Excuse me, bro, but did you somehow miss all my criticisms of Plato's ideas? Sure, Plato was good, but I'm an original.

St. Thomas Aquinas

You know you're a successful philosopher when you have saints building on your work. And build on my work St. Thomas did. Plus, the man knew how to show respect, always referring to me simply as "the philosopher." I always liked that.

Aquinas was a good Aristotelian in oh so many ways. He followed me in my theory of perception, in my moral philosophy, and in my analysis of change. He relied on my argument for the unmoved mover as one of his proofs of God's existence. In short, he thoroughly integrated my thinking with Catholic theology. I would never have anticipated my ideas being put to work in that way, but I'm always happy to be of service.

Alasdair MacIntyre

I don't only have followers in the ancient and medieval worlds—they like me in modern times, too. When it comes to modern Aristotelians, Alasdair is about as faithful as they come.

Ever since the Enlightenment, it has been so fashionable to reject my teleological approach (more on that later). But MacIntyre shows that that's a mistake—a big mistake— especially in the field of morality. In fact, he says that contemporary morality is pretty much unintelligible if we take it out of the Aristotelian tradition from which it arose.

Sure, he thinks there are ways in which my thinking has to be updated (they always end up saying that). But this guy has been great for my career. Not only did MacIntyre make a great case for the importance of my "virtue ethics" approach; he also inspired lots of other people to say the same thing.

Rivals

Plato

It's not personal, okay? Plato was a great teacher, and a great guy, too, as I said in my elegy to him. I learned a lot from him, really! But as I remarked in my Nicomachean Ethics in reference to Plato's views, "For though we love them both, piety bids to honor the truth before our friends."

So, yes, I had to throw some shade at Plato, especially when it came to his theory of the forms. The guy got it wrong, over and over again. And so I felt obliged to point out his errors—over and over again. It's just business.

René Descartes

It's great to be the originator of a whole new way of doing philosophy, as Descartes was. But that doesn't mean you have to reject everything that came before. Haven't you ever heard the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater?" Well in this case, the baby is Aristotelian physics and the father of baby—that would be me—is not at all happy about losing his child.

In fairness, Descartes does direct most of his attacks against the Scholastics, who had built on my thinking, but still, in the end, he's rejecting my ideas about how the world works. It turns out that the guy just hates my notion of teleology: the idea that there are purposes built into things in the natural world. That's how I explain motion and change. Instead, old René is enamored with the "new physics" and the idea that everything can be explained in terms of external, physical forces.

Sadly, it seems that Descartes' idea of a cold, fundamentally mechanistic world is still in vogue in the 21st century. I think my view, apart from being true, made reality seem a lot more, I don't know, homey.

Kant

Special K is a smart guy—I'm not going to deny that. His argument against my proof of God in the Critique of Pure Reason is pretty clever. But that doesn't mean I buy his whole picture of what it means to do philosophy. No way.

Kant seems to think that it's pointless for philosophy to directly inquire into the nature of reality—that's the proper aim of the empirical sciences. Instead, he sees philosophy's role as being to describe the logical conditions that make experience (and therefore science) possible in the first place.

Interesting approach, but crazy! I still insist on my naturalistic view, the view that there should be no sharp division between science and philosophy. So it's no surprise that I contributed far more to science than Immanuel "Conditions of the Possibility of Experience" Kant.

Edmund Husserl

What is it with these German philosophers? I thought Kant's writing was bad, but this guy's prose is all but unintelligible. Look, I'm not expecting them to write in Greek, like the truly educated, but still…

Anyhow, when I finally managed to make sense of his writing, it became clear to me that Ed's approach was in certain respects like Kant's. It's that same nasty anti-naturalism. His concern is mainly with the structures of consciousness, which he insists can only be described through a "transcendental" method, as if they are somehow not part of the empirical world.

I'm like, what? There's nothing that is ultimately outside of the empirical world. Now that doesn't mean you can't talk about the mind. I certainly do, for example in De Anima. But his approach is a rejection of my whole idea of what it means to engage in philosophy.

So Ed: learn to write clearly and change your entire philosophical stance. Then we can talk.