Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Article Series

The Great Philosophers

I cut down on the Great Philosophers list quite a bit. I think the intention of this series should be to present a concise guide to the pantheon of the "top ten" (or at most, fifteen) philosophers of all time -- that is, those whose influence is most inescapable. The list as it stands I found in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, which states,

"As that term (the great philosophers) is commonly used, there are perhaps twenty of them. By anyone's reckoning, this pantheon of philosophy includes Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, the blessed Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche."

Of this list, I think the only real omission is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I know that it's extremely difficult to pick and choose in this way, but we can be consoled by the fact that we can make as many more general lists as we want -- Adam Smith would make it into "Philosophers of Economics" to be sure, and Kierkegaard would find a place in Nineteenth Century Philosophy or Continental Philosophy. This list in particular, being a list of the "pantheon" of philosophy, should be as selective as possible. Comments? — Adam Conover † 01:01, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah I agree on that, except I would've included Socrates and Gödel, but yeah that's personal preference. Some of the other general lists I had in mind would be

• The Classical Philosophers - Plato, Aristotle, Socrates
• Medieval Philosophers - Aquinas et al
• 17th Century, 18th Century Philosophers
• and Logicians

Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 02:40, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Well, Gödel is generally considered a mathematician, not a philosopher (though he certainly blurs the line), and I think Socrates is generally left off the list because of his identity crisis with Plato. Since this list is supposed to be highly introductory, however, it would probably be a good idea to include him.

Your suggestions of other lists look great! My only comment would be to rename "The Classical Philosophers" "The Ancient Philosophers" and add some of the pre-socratics. — Adam Conover † 02:50, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

This article is a part of the Great Philosophers series.

The Presocratics

Ancient philosophers

Medieval philosophers

17th-century philosophers

18th-century philosophers

Philosophers after 1800

Eastern philosophers

I put a sample great philosopher series table, if there's a prob just edit it! Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 03:09, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Oh man, I just made one myself:

{{Great_Philosophers}}

It shouldn't be a big problem, though, because our boxes are actually covering different topics. Why don't you call yours "Historical Philosophers" or something along those lines? I was really hoping to reserve "Great Philosophers" for the "top-ten" list, but I'm sure we can work something out.

The only other problem with mine is that it's a vertical list, and we can't really put the box at the top of the article in the style of History of Australia since all of these articles have pictures. I should probably reformat the box to be a horizontal list and put it as the footer to each article. Does anyone agree with that? — Adam Conover † 06:00, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea, a footer box something like Canada to highlight the great ones, and a vertical box for all philosophers in all eras, below the pics. Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 06:31, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

I made a sample page at Baruch Spinoza's article, what do u guys think? Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 07:06, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Hmm. I think the problem is that the links in an article series box are supposed to point to the articles on which the box appears. i.e., the only pages that the Great Philosophers box appears on are the pages linked to in the box, and vice versa. I suspect that including links to a series of articles on the history of philosophy (most of which aren't even written yet) will create confusion rather than coherence. A better plan would be to put the box you've made on the pages linked to by that box, and then to create another series of boxes for each period. So for instance, Plato would have the "Great Philosophers" box and an "Ancient Philosophers" box on his page, while Kierkegaard would have just a "19th Century Philosophers" box. Does that make sense?

For now, I'm going to remove the history box from Spinoza's page, and put the Great Philosophers box on the pages of those philosophers. (Thanks for making the box horizontal, by the way -- it looks great!) — Adam Conover † 19:25, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

That seems good.Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 21:52, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

It this something what you had in mind? Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 22:00, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Definitely, that looks fabulous. I'd add it to those pages straight away.

As for connecting the time periods themselves, it looks like we already have articles on Ancient philosophy, Modern philosophy, etc. Perhaps we should work from those and create a time-period based series about PhilosophY rather than PhilosophERS? — Adam Conover † 22:04, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Big box

I was thinking about that and the only thing I could come up with until just a minute ago would result in multiple boxes on a bunch of pages. If we have them all in one bigger box, though, that might make it a bit more uniform:

This article is part of the {insert philosophical movement here} series

Related philosophical movements Philosophers in the movement List of related movements List of philosophers in the movement

{insert some comment about the time period here}

List of philosophers contemporary to this movement

Its a bit big and busy, but I don't see how we can get all the info we're going to end up having to deal with on the page without taking up some room. -Seth Mahoney 01:47, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Seth, I really like this box. Do you still feel like implementing it for a certain topic? — Adam Conover † 23:26, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

We certainly can. Its just so big, though I guess all the boxes, if we keep using them, are going to be growing in size. Did you have a topic in mind? -Seth Mahoney 17:22, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

Hm. Mightn't it be possible to make the box smaller while retaining the content? I feel that philosophy of mind might be a good subject ot test it out on. — Adam Conover † 20:17, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

We can certainly try, though I can't help but think there may be a better way to do it using categories. -Seth Mahoney 23:26, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)