Bad PhilosophersPhilosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself. —H. L. Mencken
With rare exception, the entire corpus of recorded philosophy is utterly useless. The only exceptions are Aristotle, Peter Abelard (with reservation) and John Locke (with reservation). All the rest are not only wrong but so distort truth that to be influenced by any of them is tantamount to self-induced insanity.
All philosophers are bad, but the worst are Plato, Rene Descartes, Spinoza, George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer. Auguste Comte, Søren Kierkegaard, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, Willard Quine, A.J. Ayer, John Austin, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Avram Noam Chomsky, Ronald Myles Dworkin, and Roger Penrose.
These are the worst because they have, historically, most influenced what is called philosophy today and are held as authorities in philosophical matters. The philosophy of today, which they spawned and made possible, is a total disaster.
The worst of all philosophy today is what is being promoted in every academic institution, including every logical positivist: like Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, and Friedrich Waismann; every cultural Marxist: (critical theory, Frankfurt School), including Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin. Ernst Bloch, and Jürgen Habermas; and every post modernist: such as: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Douglas Kellner.
Finally there are the millions of little, "philosopherets"—every professor, psychologist, economist, social/political ideologist, pseudo-scientist, and religious teacher who dabbles in, "philosophy."
Bad Philosophy
Philosophy was originally defined as, "love of wisdom," meaning the kind of knowledge required for living successfully as a human being. It originally included all knowledge, like the physical sciences. As the successful branches of intellectual inquiry (like the sciences) were established, philosophy was refined to mean those aspects of knowledge that were fundamental to all other knowledge. While the sciences were discovering the nature of the physical universe, philosophers were attempting discover the nature of existence itself and what reality is (metaphysics); what the nature of material existence, (the physical, living, conscious, and mental), are (ontology); what the nature of knowledge itself is (epistemology); what principles determined how individuals must guide their lives to live successfully (ethics); how human beings must relate to each other (politics); and what the ultimate meaning of purpose, value, and happiness are (aesthetics).
While the sciences have been phenomenally successful, philosophy is a complete failure. Instead of discovering and explaining the ultimate nature of existence and reality, philosophy denies the existence the sciences successfully study is real and describes reality as some kind of illusion. Instead of discovering and describing the nature of reality that makes it knowable, philosophy denies that reality can ever be truly known. Instead of discovering and describing the nature of knowledge, philosophy denies that any certain knowledge is possible. Instead of discovering and describing the principles by which individuals can guide their lives successfully, philosophy denies there are such principles or reduces them to some kind of mystic mandates or mere custom. Instead of discovering and describing how individual human beings must relate to one another, philosophy denies any significance whatsoever to individual human beings, declaring their only meaning or purpose is as members of collectives—their community, their country, their society, or all mankind. Instead of discovering and describing what a life worth living is and how to achieve it, philosophy denies that true success and happiness are possible and reduces human life to a constant stuggle against evil and defeat.
There is almost no point of philosophical enquiry philosophers have not botched.