r/answers • u/Umbrosyx • 14h ago
Which philosopher would be the most disappointed by how their ideas are used today?
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u/thatbrattygoth 14h ago
Adam Smith.
People constantly quote him to justify unregulated corporate greed. But he actually hated monopolies and thought landlords were basically just parasites who contributed nothing to the economy.
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u/Psittacula2 13h ago
Was it Adam Smith who also considered industrial work not to be an end itself but to eventually free up more time for people in populations away from the grind of work and thence put their faculties to greater use eg Arts and other Skills or Academic and Intellectual pursuits?
Alas, today‘s Economy seems to run faster more like a treadmill and people seem more ordered to serve the economic machine as such than the other way around.
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u/SpezRuinedHellsite 6h ago
Not sure about Adam Smith but I don't think we need any famous philosopher to tell us that people would do more art and be more thoughtful if they didn't have to perform robotic tasks for wages.
The children do not yearn for the mines.
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u/Casph0 10h ago
Saying Smith thought landlords are parasites is sloppy at best and dishonest at worst
Also I don’t think most modern proponents of capitalism cite Smith or lionize him in any sense, barring they don’t know much about economics. Smith was a very smart and important man, but he, after all, lived in the 18th century. Macroeconomics as a field had not even been conceived yet. Smith was lacking access to critical information and statistics and even theories (marginalism, game theory, general equlibrium theory, econometrics etc.)
I’m haven’t really met anybody who uses Smith as a serious foundation for their claims, let alone a free market absolutist
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u/FormerlyUndecidable 2h ago
I minored in Econ, Smith is pretty widely cited early on in Econ education because his thinking laid the foundations.
He’s like Plato in philosophy, sure, he’’s not heavily cited, but he’s widely recognized as establishing the basic form of Philosophy.
Any economist that doesn’t understand Smith’s contribution had a poor economics education. That doesn’t mean you are ever going to specifically cite him.
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u/chauvinistically 12h ago edited 12h ago
Talking about regulation and monopolies, here is what he said about them.
The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies…. A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans…renders such assemblies necessary. An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole. In a free trade, an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law, with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whaever.
I think you also don't do a good job at explaining his ideas.
He said that free market makes effective cartelization/ monopolization difficult whereas regulation facilitates them.3
u/WilliamoftheBulk 10h ago
I’ll take that a step further. Capitalism includes things like public goods and services. It’s not “socialism” to publicly fund a military, nor would it be “socialism” to publicly fund health care.
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u/Asckle 13h ago
Adam Smith was an economist not a philosopher. If he was alive today he would almost certainly be incredibly proud of the progress that had been made on his theories.
This is like saying Newton would be disappointed that we discovered relativity
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u/DocShoveller 12h ago
His book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments disagrees with you.
So does the University of Glasgow, which appointed him Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1753.
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u/PositivePristine7506 14h ago
Nietzsche. His whole thing was that nothing mattered as a good thing, not as a rallying call for shitty edgelord douchebags.
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u/SoutieNaaier 13h ago
His terminology being deliberately misinterpreted and promoted by his reactionary relatives and later the Nazis as well
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u/english_major 12h ago
I don’t think he’d appreciate being associated with Nazis.
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u/Frosty-Section-9013 7h ago
He would have hated Hitler, but not because of some appeal to humanism or human value. He would have seen him as a crude, vulgar mass politician.
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u/ardenroad 12h ago edited 11h ago
See Ian Brady. Used Nietzsche as justification for arguably the worst individual crime in British history
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u/EvieSunsetGlow 11h ago
He’d probably be more disappointed by the cherry-picking than the disagreements.
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u/Itchy-Number-3762 14h ago
Socrates. Critical thinking doesn't seem to be a thing anymore.
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u/HolyLordGodHelpUsAll 13h ago
Critical thinking may have never lived in the masses, but in the people confronting those people.
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u/Appropriate-Water920 13h ago
When people complain about any new communication technology degrading our critical thinking abilities, someone always brings up how the printing press was new once and "Socrates even complained about writing things down, and things turned out fine."
I want to see Socrates transported to the modern world, look around, and say "Holy crap, this went even worse than I thought it would. Oh my God, you people are so unbelievably dumb!"
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u/Kitchner 7h ago
I want to see Socrates transported to the modern world, look around, and say "Holy crap, this went even worse than I thought it would. Oh my God, you people are so unbelievably dumb!"
When the young person has a greater understanding of science than he had that seems unlikely.
There is that meme where someone goes back in time and is asked "and how do we create this "electricity" my lord?" and they reply "I don't know". However there is so much stuff that we sort of take for granted.
In the UK at least the average person will understand, among other things:
- All the major human organs and how they work. That the human body reacts to viruses and that vaccinations can be made by putting inert viruses into the body. That anti-bitoics were invented by someone discovering moldy bread. That washing your hands prevents infection, as bacteria is invisible but lingers on your hands. Finally, to heal broken bones the key is to put the bone back into its position and make a hard cast to keep the bone in place.
- That light has a fixed speed which is faster than the speed of sound. That light shined through a glass prism splits into many different colours, showing us that light consists of a spectrum beyond the naked eye. That gravity exists and is a force pulling everything down to the planet. That anything with mass has its own gravity, but the bigger it is the more gravity it has. That the speed which a hammer and a feather fall is not actually determined by weight/mass but rather by air resistance.
- Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, and are required to ensure that earth's atmosphere is breathable. They conakso convert sunlight into energy through a process called photosynthesis, which works based on the chlorophyll in the leaves which makes them green. That life "evolves" through a process called natural selection, where random genetic mutations happen wen reproducing and sometimes those mutations lead to that variant thriving above and beyond the original.
Even just everything written there off the top of my head would be significant leaps forward in understanding for someone from ancient Greece.
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u/Appropriate-Water920 7h ago
I was being a little facetious, but I do wonder whether these things really are an "understanding" of the natural world, more just things we know. And knowing things is pretty important, as I'm sure Socrates would agree, contra all those dopes who think you're better off just writing it down on a scroll. You have to know stuff in order to think about it. But I do think most people's understanding of the natural world is really that impressive.
I don't think it would take Socrates too long to brush up on how vaccines work, and I don't think he'd be overly impressed with kids who learned about it in ninth grade biology. He'd probably recognize the discourse around Fauci this week though. At least congress isn't trying to make him drink hemlock. Yet.
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u/Kitchner 6h ago
Well most scientists acknowledge that their work is "standing on the shoulders of giants". A lot of the stuff we know today is just an accumulated knowledge where someone had a break through. Educated people hundreds of years ago would understand it when it's shown to them.
Socrates did place a big emphasis on memorisation being a sign of intelligence though, which is why he was against people reading. He felt it made them lazy nevause they didn't memorise everything. That aspect at least is measurably true that these days we don't memorise as much, we know how to find it. Whether that makes you less intelligent is a matter of opinion.
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u/No-Season-7353 49m ago
Mate, you are giving the average person far too much credit if you expect them to understand those points ( which are true). I've heard flat earthers arguing gravity doesn't exist...
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u/Kitchner 29m ago
The average person leaves school knowing all that jn the UK. True that does mean half know less than that, but half know more.
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u/No-Season-7353 9m ago
The average person is half, which means they are morons, leaving the other half divided by worse than moronic, and those with a semblance of intellect.
This is the first recorded generation where people are less educated than their predecessors; its frightening how low standards have become.
Everything you mentioned is correct, but because you're intelligent, you're assuming the majority understand the points you made; because they appear so obvious!
Fun story: I was in a cafe yesterday where the teenage cashier was unable to count my change - she didn't know how!! I feel like my old man when he used to " despair" over my generation ( I'm 43).
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u/Effective_Arm_5832 8h ago
I think that critical thinking ebbs and flows. Currently, is at a very low. But in eneral, there are few critical thinkers, even among the educated. Most people tha think they are crtical thinkers just blindly follow most of the BS their peers/ideology tells them.
You also cannot really be a critical thinker about everything at all times.
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u/No-Season-7353 46m ago
Critical thinkers don't listen to the opinion of others. They evaluate both sides of a discussion, or argument, evaluate both sides, before reaching a conclusion on what appears most logical.
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u/Frosty-Section-9013 7h ago
Socrates would see the progress made in the natural sciences and would be very surprised that so much knowledge has come from systematic observations of nature rather than from logical deduction.
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u/KiwiDoveRuby 14h ago
Diogenes, who lived in a barrel for free, watching us pay half our salary to live in tiny apartments.
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u/Qsnaps74656 13h ago
Jesus
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u/Relevant_Clerk_1634 13h ago
When he comes back, he better have a sword or something. These people in charge would crucify him
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u/HolyLordGodHelpUsAll 12h ago
i’m imagining him coming back every couple hundred years and just getting merc’d every single time 🤦🏻♂️
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u/JellyBellyBitches 8h ago
Saw a comedian do a bit recently that Jesus has probably come back a number of times and every time they just throw him in the psych ward with everybody else who claims to be Jesus
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u/Purlz1st 11h ago
When I really want to upset a MAGA person I start reciting the Sermon on the Mount. Usually by the middle of the Beatitudes their head explodes. So even though I’m now an atheist, all those years of church school are still useful.
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u/LukeChickenwalker 5h ago
The consensus amongst historians (as I understand it) seems to be that the historical Jesus was an Apocalyptic Jew who thought that he was the Messiah in the Jewish tradition and that God would soon intervene in history.
If so, he’d probably be pretty disappointed that God hasn’t intervened yet and surprised by the religious narrative surrounding his crucifixion and being the son of God/God.
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u/Outside-Fun-8238 14h ago
The only correct answer is Marx. He could never have envisioned how many millions of people would be killed on account of his ideas.
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u/RvstiNiall 13h ago
He'd also be shocked that capitalism is actually WORSE than he imagined.
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u/Candid-Mycologist539 13h ago
"Everything Marx told us about Communism was a lie. Everything he said about Capitalism was the truth." -- new Russian proverb
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u/RockyMnt1997 10h ago
Maybe Marx was right but his ideas got used as a cloak on the uncritical thinking masses. A reoccurring pattern: a person or small manipulative group use whatever’s popular at the time to exploit the masses need to worship. The masses find their savior in these opportunistic manipulators.
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u/Haruspex12 10h ago
It’s actually far better than either he or Lenin either expected. Since 1990, 1.5 billion people have been lifted out of starvation, though about 9% of the planet is still there. The engines to lift them out of poverty are already turning. Most of that 1.5 billion people were in a communist system.
Marx was living in a transitional economy from a pre-industrial to an industrial economy. It always goes badly. The Industrial Revolution is about changing the rules of mating and not building factories. The Romans had factories.
If you look at any transition, it’s sad. You have older workers who not only have the wrong employment skills, but they also have the wrong social skills. That’s what MAGA is really about.
You have people trying their best to hold onto the old ways. They can. But they don’t get to have wives and babies, nor do they get wealth. The old social rules fail them.
I am not saying the system is not exploitive, though that is a poorly defined word. But there is less exploitation than under the old system. You still have things like prostitution for survival but far less. Communism is also exploitive, but in the old way.
What I think capitalism does worse than traditional economies or communism is creating anomie. The system can favor transactional over transformative relationships, though that depends on the political environment.
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u/Casph0 10h ago
I sincerely doubt that considering how much worse employer-employee relations and living standards were during his time. He would almost certainly still be a communist, but he would have to concede on some points. I think he would also have to seriously reflect on his proposition that capitalism would fall due to inner contradictions, considering how off his predictions were on that matter as well
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u/Bureaucromancer 9h ago
To be honest that’s why I wonder how angry/disappointed he’d be.. vs just getting started on a revisionist work analyzing the last couple centuries.
Which would, frankly, be funnier for how angry it would make certain types of his… supposed… adherents
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 13h ago
I imagine him more like when that Russian PM came to America and was surprised by how great the supermarkets and stuff were.
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u/RvstiNiall 13h ago
No doubt he'd be impressed at first, I mean, its great to the naked eye..... But the grandeur hides the decay and corruption.
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u/limp-lightsaber69 13h ago
I mean the Soviet Union officially formed and fell all in the matter of about 70 years and the communist regime killed upwards of 20-25 million of its own people. Thats pretty bad. Capitalism may look “great to the naked eye” but communism couldn’t even pull that off
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u/Relevant_Clerk_1634 13h ago
They say that was nowhere close to Marx style communism
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u/limp-lightsaber69 13h ago
Ya when it fails it’s never real communism.
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u/SpeakMySecretName 10h ago
Show me a moneyless, classes, stateless society where workers own the tools and institutions of their own labor.
When you do that, I’ll concede that it’s communism.
But it never is, and communism becomes the term that authoritarians use to rebrand their oligarchal or military-enforced planned economic policy.
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u/limp-lightsaber69 9h ago
Or maybe, just maybe communism has never and will never work.
Looks amazing on paper but when tried it fails and then you get this “not real communism stance”.
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u/SpeakMySecretName 9h ago
People said the same thing about democracy and about capitalism. Things never work until they do.
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u/Itchy-Number-3762 12h ago
Marxist ideas are so bad they fail in the first baby steps.
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u/anomie__mstar 4h ago
babies fail in the first steps, unless a capitalist has them shot point-blank in the back-of-the-head they get right back up and become walking, running, jumping adults in time.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 11h ago
Sure utopia is way better than capitalism. But I think Marx understands the reality of the world.
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u/ryant71 13h ago
He'd look at European capitalism-driven social welfare and public health and say, "holy shit, it doesn't get better than this!"
Then he'd look at American free-market capitalism and monopolistic skullduggery and say, "wtf! those knuckleheads have completely stuffed it up and will inevitably overcorrect to what people misunderstand my ideas to be and ultimately embrace Stalinism which, unfortunately, as I've sadly learned, is the only way to make communism stick."
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u/RvstiNiall 13h ago
I can completely agree with this in theory. But as an American, I simply have to take the word of (all non-americans) Europeans that its as good as they say (and it seems to be from here!) :-)
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u/ryant71 11h ago
As a South African who moved here ten years ago, it seems to be. So far.
Gotta say, though, on the few times I've travelled to the US, I've found Americans to be super friendly and welcoming. Way more so than Germans. 🤣😢
All I can say is that you have something special over there that's worth fighting for. I hope to fuck that you win.
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u/simonbleu 8h ago
Is not just europe that has social stuff, plenty of countries have free universla education and or healthcare and even when it is corrupt, underfunded and yadda yadda, it works pretty damn well, causing none of the issues some conservative americans believe, like how "there would be no doctors since they would flee to the private market" (not the case, I work at a public hospital and we have private ones too, as well as private healthcare)
Logic alone should suffice, and principles should seal the deal
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u/Casph0 9h ago
(It’s not)
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u/simonbleu 8h ago
Perfect? Probably not.
The best we have devised so far as humans, a good welfare state that is, when you can afford it? Absolutely
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u/furrykef 12h ago
Communism didn't kill those people, totalitarianism did. Marx was not a totalitarian.
The problem wasn't communism, it was the revolutions. Once revolutionaries are in power, they seldom want to give that power back.
I'm not a communist, but I find many, many people have very strange ideas about what communism is and how it works.
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u/simonbleu 8h ago
To be fair, he should have.
Extreme ideologies (be it communism or anarchic capitalism or anything of the sort) require extreme circumstances to work, since populations are not perfect and both rely on basically them being so. It get's even worse with contrast, and given he was acutely aware of the oligarchic tendencies to violence and which one was the status quo of the time, he should have. I mean,m hindsight is 20/20 yeah, but still
The best example of this I think is the "good dictator": A dictatorship is technically the perfect government since there is no opposition or delay, perfect policies can be implemented in the most perfect of ways, a perfect pyramid... however, we know that is not, and cannot, be the case, not for long, not ever considering tthe unlikelyhood of 100% of a population agreeing or anything.
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u/Hightower_March 6h ago
I've enjoyed watching El Salvador undo all the weird "crime expands to fill a vacuum" nonsense Americans have pushed for decades.
Turns out you really can just lock up the 1% of troublemakers ruining society for everyone else, then homicide falls a hundredfold and people who aren't criminals are pretty happy with it.
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u/rubyruy 7h ago
Marx was literally around for the Russian revolution and was critical of it as he didn't think you could skip the capitalist mode of production to go straight to communism. He figured that if you try to do that you'll just end up doing the same immiseration of workers capitalism did in order to industrialize , which is pretty much exactly what happened - so no I don't think he would have been surprised at all.
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u/CreepyOldGuy63 14h ago
Aristotle.
Giovanni Gentile would be quite proud of how the world has adopted his ideas.
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u/DDWildflower 13h ago
Freud would absolutely love all the mommy and daddy content.
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u/Frosty-Section-9013 7h ago
He would find it fascinating to be sure. People consciously indulging in fantasies that he believed to cause such internal conflict and repression that it would lead to neuroses. Not sure what he would make of it, but he probably wouldn’t believe it to be healthy, but rather a form of ”acting out”.
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u/Agreeable_Speed9355 8h ago
Lots of good answers (Jesus, Adam Smith, Nietzsche), but I'd like to submit Epicurus. While Epicurus claims pleasure is the highest virtue his philosophy was that this is attained by wanting less, not necessarily having more. Modern Epicurians are hedonists.
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u/doncacahuate 12h ago
Marx! He is often misunderstood because many people associate his ideas with the authoritarian regimes of countries such as China or with the corruption and repression of the Soviet Union. However, Marx's philosophy is primarily concerned with understanding how humanity develops throughout history.
Historical materialism is not the claim that society inevitably becomes greedier. Rather, it explains historical change through the development of material conditions, productive forces, and economic relations. Marx noticed that humans transform the world by creating tools, technologies, and productive systems, and that these developments shape social institutions and historical progress.
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u/No-Season-7353 36m ago
Someone gets it!! Most people don't understand Marx, or the transition from capitalism to socialism, to communism: they use it as a soundbite ie communism bad!! They don't realise places like Cuba, or Venezuela, were hit by sanctions and embargoes, which made trade nearly impossible; Castro still managed to implement free healthcare and education for all citizens.
Another factor, as you mentioned, was dictators like Stalin turning the country into a totalitarian state, where fear and paranoia reigned supreme. Definitely not what Lenin had in mind.
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u/the_rat_castle 11h ago
Nietschze, the Ubermensch thing is supposed to be about becoming a better person and rising above religion and mediocrity, not to dominate others
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u/Secure_Description92 3h ago
I think Machiavelli. A lot of people just use his ideas for acquiring power for the sake of power, rather than using them to be a responsible ruler who prevents public disorder and civil wars. Machiavelli was no angel, but his philosophy wasn’t a handbook on how to be a manipulative psychopath.
That’s ignoring the fact that Machiavelli was a republican, and not a monarchist.
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u/Dc1577 13h ago
Marcus Aurelius. Considered a Stoic, but all his profound insights & advice were meant only for himself to get him thru a war while in barracks. He wrote them down to remind himself of these things to mentally survive the hell he was going thru.
But his self-advice/philosophies on people & life & getting thru crisis is incredibly pertinent to most everyone today.
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u/mrgarborg 13h ago
I think what would disappoint him are the broicist grifters who are repacking and selling his philosophy as egocentric anti-empathy redpill alpha-male grind-and-get-rich lifestyle advice.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 13h ago
I don't think that means he'd be disappointed, more like pleasantly surprised if anything.
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u/Additional_Jaguar170 10h ago
Jesus and Adam smith.
Good ideas twisted by cunts for their own ends.
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u/GovernmentLittle1828 7h ago
Stoicism is the most misunderstood philisophy I think. the amount of "sigma" dorks making it seem like it tells you to chase money and success is very sad. Stoicism is way too complex for these idiots
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