If there was one philosopher one should study the entire body of work, which would it be?

Plato or Epikur.

I feel like this is a bad answer just because of the prerequisite readings necessary to understand him.

All of them

Hegel.

Anything but this.

Don't listen to these trolls Hegel alone would bring you literally nothing of value.

EPICTETUS

the republic is a meme

Shoo shoo shills go away.

Blanchot

Not only that but his body of work is so extensive OP might as well give up and start selling blowjobs on craiglist.

I don't think you should ready any one philosopher's full body of work just for the sake of it OP. Read a lot, and when you find someone you feel like you want to know more, keep reading that person until either you're satisfied or you're done with the whole thing.

Mind you, most of the contribution a philosophy book will bring to you happens inside your head and only there, AFTER you read the words. The development itself was important to the philosopher, not to you. Philosophy is what will happen after you absorb it and think "your own" thoughts in some sense.

Epicurus
Stirner
Anything else is for philosophy majors.

>my personal favorite, Kierkegaard.
Of course you thin Aristotle is the most important thinker.
How is he relevant?

Husserl, or possibly Heidegger.

>If there was one philosopher one should study the entire body of work,
dude pls learn to english better

leibniz

Augustine

>"asserting Truth through systematized intuition", by philosopher x,y,z
Hurr which husbando do I choose guise?

Let's stop being silly. There is only one man deserving of such a time sink and his name is Immanuel Kant, just by virtue of you being able to categorize subsequent philosophers into two camps aka the ultimate litmus test of modern philosophy

>read and understood Kant-- potentially has something intelligent to add to the discourse
>read and had intuitions about Kant and tries to fit him in his goofy nu-philosophy -- is a fraud to be comitted to the flames

Just imagine the time you will save dropping Hegel plus afterbirth, Nietzsche plus afterbirth, Heidegger plus afterbirth and most Frenchies after two pages, never contemplating them again

Choose the one and only insurmountable pleb filter of a guy. Choose Kant.

I laugh for you are wrong, horribly so. What you are seeing is the future of English. You must not know how language functions, nor know that it always, necessarily so, progresses and radiates into new forms. You are a close-minded caveman far away from the frontier of new avant-garde English, so strange and so exciting, it will dumbfuck the types of you.

Good luck in the Holocene peasant, for the future of the language is on the frontier of the Anthropocene, not behind it.

I've realized the worst possible answer is Fichte and came to share that.
>Aristotle
>Complete Works
You enjoy reading outdated biology and physics that much?
His complete works are small, dense and vital to understand what came later.

plato
descartes
emerson,

Berkeley, then you won't care about the rest

Nigga please. How far are monads gonna get you life?
>Kant catch me

more like Cant

t. Nietzsche

I want to choose Kant, but my knowledge of philosophy is barebones, I probably won't be able to comprehend the guy.

I really, really like this image

The fragments from the pre-socratics. Afterwards proceed with an introduction in physics and chemistry, and continue their legacy.

Well played.

dfw

Aquinas

kendrick lamar

It's Aristotle or Plato. Every other philosopher is their derivative or too caught up in history.

This. OP's question is basically "if we exile all other philosophers, which one philosopher do we keep and teach for all time".

It would benefit man and philosophy both to keep Aristotle. He helped establish the fundamentals of semiotics, logic, morality, literature, etc etc. Any choice but Aristotle is wrong. Runner-up: Plato.

Fortunately Archimedes was a scientist first and not a philosopher. We could've been headed for a real dark age.

Have to agree with Aristotle. His ideas are so far-reaching, it could be argued that a lot of modern philosophy is just getting back to Aristotlean metaphysics.