It is difficult to appreciate, given our tendency to regard philosophy these days as a dry academic pursuit of no great relevance to everyday life, just how radical and dangerous philosophers have been judged in the past. Socrates provided a classical model for many who followed, and though execution through voluntary hemlock ingestion may not have proved a popular method of eliminating them from society, various other methods have proven equally effective in the meantime, from burning alive to social ostracisation. Victims en route, or atleast authors whose works were labelled as "dangerous philosophies" have included such eminent and diverse thinkers as Plato, Galileo, Freud, Erasmus, Nietzsche, Rand and even - would you believe - C.S. Lewis, who was actually sentenced to death in absentia in Albania (a country which idolised Norman Wisdom, though that's by the by).

What I have been wondering is whether our blasé attitude in western society these days towards philosophers' influence could well be misplaced, and that everyone else has been correct to see these people as valid threats - be it to the particular interests of the ruling elite or even to society as a whole. Whatever the perception of the nature of the threat must it not be true that at least some of these peoples' published views were indeed dangerous, and that some of that danger may even linger still in relation to our own societies? And if so, who would you list as top of the danger pile?

Possibly Adam Smith. It is said that Maggie Thatcher carried a copy of The Wealth of Nations in her handbag. In that same tome he both praises then later decries 'the division pf labour.' Upon such rocks have the theories of economics been built. The many philosophies of economics seem to have got us all in quite a muck-sweat now.

Wittgenstein could be a bad bugger when crossed. He once went for Sir Karl Popper with a poker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein's_Poker

I don't think philosophers are dangerous in themselves; it's usually the disciples who cause all the trouble.

I suppose Nietzsche is the obvious, but probably unfair, choice for a dangerous thinker. But for me personally the existentialists of the 20th century have a lot to answer for - all that indifferent universe stuff. Not even Sartre himself could cope with it. He said, "That God does not exist, I cannot deny; that my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget."

And the awful Derrida, whose ideas have been described as the intellectual equivalent of crack, apparently spent the last decade of his life fretting about religion. I actually find the conclusion he came to before he died as strangely comforting rather than dangerously frightening: "Religion*," he declared, "is impossible without uncertainty."

I think, by religion, he meant *spirituality*, not the lunacy of organised religion.

"Derrida is only to be derided" as RD Laing once remarked. Like Laing, I cannot see how such a reactionary thinker obsessed with context could ever be considered "dangerous", merely a nuisance.

Smith, I agree, is a good candidate, if only because his theories have been used as justification for such extreme economic policies - and not necessarily "right wing" policies at that. Keir Hardy, for example, never doubted Smith's assertions regarding economic return and used them to justify his own vision of a socialist Britain and how labour should be rewarded within it. Quite a degree away from what Thatcher used them for. For sheer manipulability therefore Smith must rank as dangerous - he provided rather indiscriminate ammunition for various ideologies (and ideologists).

Quite an interesting - and short - piece here. I wonder if the supposed influence of Nietzsche on the development of the Nazi party has indeed been exaggerated? I knew Hitler admired Nietzsche, but I had no idea that it seems likely that AH "never actually read any of his work."

http://philosophy-compass.com/2011/01/19/can-philosophy-be-dangerous/

The philosopher's sister, Elizabeth, did her brother no favours if she really did edit and distribute his writings "in such a way as to intellectualise her own rabid anti-semitism."

What about Marx? The lone poster after the article poses an interesting question when he/she asks whether Marx could be held responsible for atrocities committed by, among others, Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. As the poster points out, "They all owe an intellectual debt to Marx, and at least three of them were avowed Marxists in the formative part of their lives."

It is not what they say, it is how the 'lunatic fringe' interpret it, in many cases. Look at the trouble that Jewish Fella has caused over the last 20 centuries - preaching 'Love' and 'Peace', indeed! Dangerous nonsense, that has needed a lot of 'sensible chaps' over the years, to tell us who we have to love and be peaceful to, and who we need to burn at the stake to prove it!

My last candidate is plural actually - the unseen political party people in UK who have taken it upon themselves to mould educational philosophies to suit party manifestos. In the last 42 years there has been too much of it, too often and damaging. I once took on the Chief Inspector at a conference. Had I not been an overseas private course member my fellows said I would have lost my job - but that they thought I was right. Since then I have since been proved right in a very serious matter about which it is too late to do anything.

Machiavelli proved dangerous not because he came up with anything new, or even anything resembling a coherent philosophy, but because he provided a convenient rubber-stamp of credibility for an impressively wide range of activity which hitherto had been judgeable only against one standard - a moral one controlled by the church. When even the church of the day was behaving in a rather reprehensible way by this standard it was necessary for some other set of criteria to become available by which political activity could be assessed without that exercise straying into morality. Outside of China, Machiavelli and the rapid dissemination of his treatise provided this. The danger lay in the licence this then afforded political players, a lot of which was in fact quite un-Machiavellian in its nature (we still employ the term incorrectly by and large) but which had been "enabled" as valid alternatives due to his work.

I agree also that a philosopher's true danger to society is actually often one posed by his acolytes, or subsequent interpreters. But this is a phenomenon normally associated with a philosophy which fails to answer all the questions it itself poses. Christianity, not really a philosophy in any case but a blending of several with religious overtones, was always going to be a prime candidate for this. In more recent times the same could be said of Marx once the "ism" had been applied to his name. This happened during his own lifetime and caused him much anguish as it simply proved that he had failed, as stated above, to provide comprehensive or comprehensible answers to the questions he had raised about societal imbalances caused by its control under capitalist principles. His famous disavowal that he himself was a "Marxist" was designed to hilghlight this, though by the time he made it so many others reckoned they knew Marxism better than Marx that it went unheeded.

In fact, if one reads Marx now and puts out of one's mind the history of Marxism it all sounds rather tame. The collective principle which was the basis for much of what was most ugly in the Soviet Union (a society Marx could never have envisaged as ready for the developments he forecast) is also the basis for much of what works best in our still largely capitalist society. For this reason I would absolve Karl Marx from any charge of being "dangerous" at all, and until a common definition of what "Marxism" might actually mean is ever arrived at (not looking ever likely at this stage) I would be loath to apply the term there either.