Philosophers According to Wikipedia

Philosophy as a profession doesn't really exist. I'm taking an Intro to Philosophy class, and i was interested in what each philosopher really does / did for his/her career. So i looked up on wikipedia what each person is known for first, and this is what i found.

Saint Anselm "The Ontological Argument" - monk

Saint Thomas Aquinas "Whether God Exists" - priest

William Paley "The Teleological Argument" - British Christian apologist

David Hume - "Why Does God Let People Suffer" - Scottish philosopher

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Russian writer

Soren Kierkegaard "The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason" - Danish philosopher

William James "The Will to Believe" - American psychologist

John Wisdom "Gods" - British philosopher

Plato "Myth of the Cave" - Classical greek philosopher

Rene Descartes "Meditation" - French philosopher

Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass" - English author

Bertrand Russell "Appearance and Reality - British philosopher

John Locke "Where Our Ideas Come From" - English philosopher

George Berkeley "To Be is To Be Perceived" - Anglo-Irish philosopher

Lorraine Code "What Can She Know" - (not on wikipedia)

Jonathan Swift "Getting Rid of Words" - Anglo-Irish satirist

Ludwig Wittgenstein "Meaning as Use" - Austrian-British philospher

Benjamin Whorf "Language, Thought and Reality" - American linguist

Steven Pinker "The Language Instinct" - Canadian-American psychologist

Stephanie Ross "How Words Hurt" - (not on wikipedia)

Epicurus "The Pursuit of Pleasure" - Ancient Greek philosopher

Confucius "The Analects" - Chinese thinker

Aristotle "Happiness and The Good Life" - Greek philosopher

Immanuel Kant "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" - German philosopher

John Stuart Mill "Utilitarianism" - English philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche "The Natural History of Morals" - German philosopher

A.J. Ayer "Emotivism" - British philosopher

Claudia Card "One Feminist View of Ethics" - (not on wikipedia)

Bob Kane "Through the Moral Maze" - comic book artist

Baron d'Holbach "Are We Cogs in the Universe" - French-German author

John Hospers "Meaning and Free Will" - presidential candidate

Jean-Paul Sartre ""Freedom and Responsibility" - French philosopher

B.F. Skinner "Freedom and the Control of Men" - American psychologist

Hmm... 16/33 are actually philosophers (or at least known as philosophers according to wiki). Since i'm still officially a math major (and not a philosopher yet), i can reliably tell you that is just under 50%. Although i had originally wanted to research what their actual occupation was, i suppose using wiki's first vocation only tells us what they are knows for, and since philosophical writings are really cool, thats what alot of them are known for. I imagine the only real philosopher by vocation isn't on this list: Socrates. He didn't write anything down. He didn't make any cash. But then again, neither did Jesus. Hmmm...

It's good to be back on th'internet.