It's hard for me to answer this question as my philosophical interests boil down to two distinct areas: political philosophy and theology.

In political philosophy I need to say that my number 1 pick would be Leo Strauss - I definitely don't agree with everything he writes but he gets me to think very hard. Next I'd probably say Montesquieu, and finally I'd say the whole kit and kaboodle of 17th century natural lawyers (ie Grotius, Pufendorf, and Selden). Giuseppe Mazinni also gets an honorary mention - to the extent that what he says can be classified as philosophical.

Theologically, Maimonides is the beating heart of my religious thought. However, I do incline somewhat towards a philosophical mysticism, and as such I am very into Moses Hayim Luzzatto's many writings. I find Proclus to be very enlightening as well, and Pico della Mirandola is one of my favorite Christian authors.

I should also add that with regards to political virtue, Plutarch's Lives was the probably the single greatest influence on me throughout my teenage years.

 I actually remember seeing some of that vid some time ago, that whole channel has very nice resources on variety of metaphysical topics. Thanks for sharing it , I had almost forgotten about it. And I also remember that this Briceno has written thesis on defending Humean metaphysics from variety of opponents like Aristotelians, OSR-ists etc.. 

John West wrote:

I see. Do you think ontic structural realism is a tenable position though, that we (and the rest of the world) are composed of relations and nothing but relations? Or is it more of an "academic curiosity" for you?

For now I think I should say the latter. Can't really say much about the former, it doesn't seem intuitively plausible to me(which is the first thing some of its defenders deny relevance of) but there is lot written in its defense.   
Much of it has to deal with some serious hard sciences which I lack that much knowledge of .

Last edited by Calhoun (7/14/2018 10:29 pm)

I think a lot of our Thomist members took it for granted that we already roughly know their influences. But also, the forum can be a tough place, and occasionally new Thomist members disappear the moment they face the least bit of pushback.

(I sometimes give Thomists here a hard time. The reasons for that are (i) I don't want the forum to become a sort of dogmatic swamp where people just hang around inflating their egos going after easy targets, (ii) I think the Thomists here can handle it, and (iii) people ask me questions and I feel obliged to tell them what I really think (What would you have me do? Lie?). But I wouldn't do all that unless I thought they (and Thomism) were worth the time.)

Hypatia wrote:

John West wrote:

I see. Do you think ontic structural realism is a tenable position though, that we (and the rest of the world) are composed of relations and nothing but relations? Or is it more of an "academic curiosity" for you?

a wild deconstructionist

 
Come on now bruh