Template talk:Infobox Philosopher

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[edit] Proposed Improvements

I'm going to try to reduce the size of this template by taking out at least major works and quote. I'll make sure that this information is not lost, but is moved somewhere else in the article. Also, I might attempt to make this look aesthetically better.

If you have any comments or suggestions please leave them here. Thanks!

Also, User:Silence has made some great suggestions that are on his talk page. I'm copying them here so I'll be able to work from them easier:

  1. Too big.
  2. Largely redundant. Most of the information can be easily gained from the passage of the article, and repeating it in a giant template is a poor use of space. And if any of the information isn't included somewhere in the article already, it certainly should be!
  3. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a baseball card set. Template use is discouraged, just as lists and other fancy non-textual things are discouraged, whenever a viable alternative is possible with just normal articles. Although there are many cases where templates are a big help to an article, in most cases, simpler is better.
  4. It's stylistically similar to a template I hate (though I won't oppose its use in every article, just the ones where the alternative is clearly better): the Biography template. In some ways its better, since it provides much more important information, but in other ways its worse, because it takes up ten times as much space.
  5. I don't mind "School", "Main Interests", "Influences", and "Influenced" much, because they're very interesting and compact ways to summarize how the philosopher fits into the philosophical tradition in general. Honestly, I'm actually a bit tickled by those tidbits of data; they're pretty awesome, whether they're true or not. :) However, remember that many of these things are highly disputable, which is another of the main reasons to avoid providing so much information in a template: it makes it impossible to easily cite sources (and even if you do, it just makes the template ugly and cluttered), and sources are vital to maintain Wiki:NPOV. This is the entire reason Wikipedia uses articles instead of just giant templates of facts in ordered rows: because so many things are disputable, and almost as many are disputed! Putting information in an infobox makes it sound like Wikipedia is stating that these are facts. And often, they aren't. This is a very big problem. Though it's not one I'll focus on, because I'm much more interested in aesthetic and utilitarian concerns than in political correctness. But I bring it up because most other people would, and so you can keep it in mind. Also remember that trying to avoid stating anything controversial in a template is not a solution, but the first steps to another, equally problematic situation: one where a template sacrifices meaning and interesting information for avoiding stepping on anyone's toes, sterilizing and draining the life out of those little boxes of data. In some ways, that's even worse than having a somewhat disputable template. The easiest solution? Just don't use infoboxes for this stuff!
  6. "Quote". If I was to pick one piece of the template to remove (aside from "Philosophers By Era", I'll discuss that below), it'd probably be this one. Long ago a firm consensus was reached that Wikipedia would not pick out quotes to head up each article with. Fun as doing so may be, it's decidedly and without a doubt not encyclopedic to remove someone's words from context and put them up as though they represent a man's entire belief system, when people clearly change their beliefs from year to year, clearly have more depth than all that, and when so often interpretations of quotes are heavily disputed and thus require context and explanation to be at all meaningful—especially philosopher quotations! The entire "quotations" issue is a huge can of worms which was long ago resolved by the creation if WikiQuotes, which was specifically created because of this problem, as a repository for quotations that would give a much fuller view of a person's famous philosophies by not putting them completely out of context (though anything less than WikiSource does that to some extent). Wikipedia needs to continue this trend of moving away from out-of-context quotations as much as possible, not backtrack and include even more quotations. In my view, the only time when quotations are appropriate for any article is when they're part of the article text and being used to explain some view or other significant detail, not when they're just laid out there on their own, though if it's as part of a "Quotes" section or similar I'll tend to leave it alone since it's not completely distinct, even though, really, I should be attacking even those sections and fighting to get them moved to WikiQuote, to minimize the redundancy. Again, Wikipedia is not a baseball card set: it does not need a catchphrase for its articles.
  7. "Famous ideas". If I was to pick two pieces of the template to remove, this would be one of them—in fact, I might even remove this one if I could only choose one to remove, just because it has even more potential for abuse than the "Quotes" idea, by not even attempting to use his worsd against him, but rather using attempts to summarize paraphrasings of his general ideas! Do I even have to explain why it's not acceptable to say "these were Nietzsche's famous ideas"? Many of Nietzsche's "most famous ideas" weren't his ideas at all, but were inspired by misinterpretations of what he said; mentioning this ideas in the article is perfectly fine, because there they can be given their proper context. But just listing them as though they were fact is not OK. Likewise, many of his most important ideas are not his "most famous" ones at all! Wikipedia should not be a place to repeat old quotes and mistaken assumptions about philosophers, but a place to get actual reliable information on them. Moreover, arguably most damningly of all, if these are an accurate, informative, and highly significant summary or excerpt of a philosopher's views, why not just put them in the opening paragraphs of the article? As with much of the rest of the template, redundancy is a big problem here, and with this row there's also the great problem of controversy and, like the quote one, out-of-context problems. Most philosophers simply can't in any way be understood without at least a few paragraphs explaining the context and details of their views. One line simply will not do. And thankfully, it doesn't have to: we have a whole article to put all this information in. So let me ask you:
  8. Don't you think it's possible that one of the reasons the Nietzsche article is currently so lacking is because people have spent so much time and energy and thought debating and working on a ridiculously huge template for it, rather than working on the article text? Not to simplify a long, complex edit history and an article with a variety of long-standing issues, but just think about it. This massive, brightly-colored, all-consuming template, appealing though it may be, seems to have a decidedly negative effect on its articles, not only on its readers, but also, possibly, on its editors.
  9. "Major Works" takes up too much space, and any author should already have a "Major Works" section on his page with a more complete and less cluttered list of such things. If I was to pick three rows to remove from this template, this would be the third row, after "Famous ideas" and "quote". After those three parts of the template, my main objections are with the template as a whole, not with any specific aspect of it, so removing them (or just removing "Quote" and "Famous idea" and shortening "Major Works", if you prefer) would probably be the easiest way to satisfy my concerns, next to simply deleting the template entirely—which would probably, in the end, be best, though I feel bad for the hard work you've clearly put into it. It's simply not a Wikipedia-ish template. And there's another problem with simply listing a bunch of major works at the very top of the article, before having explained what any of them mean:
  10. What will any of them mean to a new reader of the article? Remember that articles should be designed to help people who have never read anything about these people before. How does listing a bunch of mere names of fellow philosophers, philosophical texts, and philosophical movements tell anyone anything about Nietzsche except people who already know plenty about Nietzsche, and who thus, ironically, are the ones who need this article the least! Wikipedia policy is to assume ignorant readers as much as possible in general-interest articles, and such assumptions are probably far from baseless in many cases. Read up on Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#State the obvious if you haven't already, and reconsider what information a person who knows none of these terms would actually want at the top of biographocai articles like the ones about western philosophers. Sure, I'm a huge fan of the compact and fascinating list of movements and philosophers and all that, but this article isn't being written for me, it's being written for people who have at best only heard the name "Nietzsche" in passing and want to understand the guy's life! A template like this runs directly contrary to that goal. It's written for philosophers, not for the general public, and that's not a good thing.
  11. Inconsistent with the style of all other types of articles. A relatively minor problem, since editors are not discouraged from experimenting with layout and trying to improve article formats or keep things fresh. However, it's important to keep in mind that many people coming to an article that uses this template for the first time will be very surprised by such a massive template immediately confronting them, and I'd say at least some of them will actually be scared off from reading the article by just how huge and complicated it is. Which brings me to the next problem:
  12. Templates work best when they're small and compact, even if that means subdividing one templates into multiple templates so readers don't get overwhelmed. The exact same principle holds true for articles: the ideal article is moderate-sized, not large, because too much of anything will unbalance a page and look terrible and crowded, not giving the article room to breathe and flow naturally and smoothly, as all articles should. A clean, minimalistic article is calming, informative, zen, crisp and clean and refreshing as a mountain spring. An article packed with images or templates is eccentric, rushed, jumbled and chaotic, zipping back and forth and mashing things together in its explosive rush to present too much information too quickly and in too many different ways. And an article with no images or templates at all (or very few) is dry, slow, boring all but the most dedicated people to sleep. So we should both avoid completely stale articles, and also avoid articles that overdo it with the gimmicks, since both will drive away readers by the thousands. As in life, moderation is virtue.
  13. I don't like "Philosophers by era". It doesn't add anything to the template, and belongs more in the articles about movements than the articles about philosophers. For anyone who wants to see that stuff, you should just link to "Western Philosophy" at the top of the template, by which someone can reach History of Western philosophy. Cut it off.
  14. A minor objection: Why so much capitalization? Why "Place of Birth" instead of "Place of birth", "Philosophers By Era" instead of "Philosophers by era" (or at the very least "Philosophers by Era")? Just as article titles aren't capitalized if they wouldn't be capitalized in normal conversation, so are entries in a table or infobox almost never capitalized unnaturally. Also, a related minor objection: why aren't the written works italicized?
  15. An objection I also have with the infamous biography template: why mention when he was born and died, or where he was born and died, when most of that is already mentioned at the very top of the article—in other words, a few inches to the left of the information you're giving is the exact same information! This is a crippling problem with this entire template format: it's supremely, nauseatingly redundant. Furthermore: is it really important for us to have drilled into our heads when and where these people died? Who cares if the guy was born in Saxonry or in Saarland, whether he died in August 25th or August 26th? What difference does it make? Not only is this painfully redundant, but it's also useless, telling us nothing of value whatsoever about the actual person, his views, his life, reactions to his beliefs, nothing! That's why I'll never give up fighting the bio template. But that's a long-term battle, clearly, since it has so much support; this should be a short-term battle, because it's much more clearly a major issue with articles to have such monstropolous templates looming monolithically over a series of extremely important articles on Wikipedia.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to come see me when you found out I had an issue with this. Many people would have reacted much more aggressively, so I'm impressed that you actually messaged me to see what I thought after my less-than-diplomatic criticisms, just as I'm impressed that you came up with a template with so many potential uses, even though I don't think that Wikipedia is quite the place for it. :) -Silence 00:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

--FranksValli 05:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Downhill again?

Looking at the template on Friedrich Nietzsche again, it looks like this template's gotten quite ugly and redundant again, somewhere along the line. Its thinness is nonstandard and very unappealing, its Name, Birth, Death, and School/tradition sections are all redundant (or should be) to the opening paragraph of the article, and its "Notable Ideas" section is again useless without the proper context that a Wikipedia article requires: articles are written for people who don't already know anything about Nietzsche, not for the kind of people who'd gain any useful information from catchphrases like "Eternal Recurrence", "Will to Power", "Overman". I was (relatively) very happy with how this template was shaping up a few weeks ago, but now, again, it seems like the Western Philosopher articles would all become a great deal better if it was simply removed from them all and the article text was used to provide all of that information, as it should be. -Silence 03:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Do what you guys want with it.. I'm gonna try to phase out of Wikipedia, mostly due to the vandals. --FranksValli 08:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Caption styling

I’ve adjusted the line-height for the picture caption to suit the smaller font-size; I’ve also changed the <span> to a <div> and added a little padding above and below. See Thomas_Aquinas for a multi-line caption that exhibits the adjusted line-height. —Goclenius 01:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Cool, nice work. FranksValli 02:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name, twice?

Since the name is the caption to the box (let alone the title of the article), isn't a distinct name field redundant?TheGrappler 22:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I see what you mean. I would support removing it if you really want. FranksValli 00:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Anything that makes it more concise is good! TheGrappler 04:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some changes

I removed the obviously redundant naming to the one with "Name: ..." in the template and increased the width of the template because it was too narrow. I hope this helps.Non-vandal 05:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reduce Size Of Infobox

JA: I'm getting really fed up with not being able to read the leads of articles on major philosophers when I try to refer to them. If the template maker cannot figure out how to make the column width adjustable, or at the very least keep it under 250px, then I will very soon propose this template for deletion. Thanks, Jon Awbrey 16:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't hesitate to propose it for deletion right now if that's your intent. However the size of the box can be adjusted. Non-vandal has recently increased the width - I've reduced it a bit to compensate. FranksValli 07:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

JA: I think that you should look at something like Template:Platonism, that takes up a non-obtrusive 175px of column width. Maybe the sort of info that you want to include could be done with a bold head for each topic followed by an indented line of items under each head. Jon Awbrey 02:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it. FranksValli 04:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Bold text

[edit] Influences and Influenced Fields

I think we should remove these two fields. I've noticed on the pages I watch that use this template, there is almost constant alteration to the fields that describe who influenced the philosopher and who that philosopher influenced. These alterations go back and forth, and are the subject of rather petty debates. You can see this on the Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche (see talk), Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke pages, among others. The trend seems to be toward naming every philosopher before and after in the influences and influenced fields. In addition to this, I'm not sure how much these fields really contribute to the articles as a whole. Given their low information value and high revert magnetism, I think we should consider eliminating them. Because of the number of pages this would affect, I'm calling for a discussion to be concluded one month from now. RJC Talk 13:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose/Strong Keep: Influences are highly relevant to philosopher articles, and are relatively easy to cite given the vast reference material available (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for example).–Skomorokh 14:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose/Strong Keep: per above. What we need is either clear guidelines so people do not get carried away (one possibility: requiring as we would for an article a verifiable source that x was inflouenced or influenced y), or, if such a guideline already exists, more vigorous compliance. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Keep – establishing criteria for influences is much better than just doing away with them. --Blainster 18:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Endorse/Strong remove These lists are poor substitutes for explaining the intellectual development and influences of these philosophers. Such information should be included in the article if it is important. Also, since some of the lists contain mutually exclusive names because there is scholarly debate over the issue, they can be confusing for the reader; the article is the proper place to explain such debates. But the strongest argument against these fields is that they privilege a philosopher's influence on other philosophers - this reflects philosophical criticism and is POV. Some philosophical works have greatly affected culture and that "influence" is totally ignored in these boxes. Let me use John Locke as an example. Ian Watt, a scholar of the novel, has argued that Locke's theory of the self made possible the rise of the modern novel, with its focus on individualism. He uses Samuel Richardson's Pamela as the quintessential example, but Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne, has been invoked by subsequent critics as an even better example of philosophy entering texts for the lay reader. Shandy alludes to Locke's definition of the self in its very first sentence and questions that definition throughout the text. Locke's ideas were reprinted in, discussed in and adapted in a variety of genres throughout the eighteenth century: periodicals, grammars, books on how to write letters, conduct books, children's books, pedagogical texts, commonplace books, etc. To ignore the tremendous influence that Locke had over an entire culture is to present a particular narrative of intellectual history, the narrative that philosophers speak only to each other and influence only each other. I would thus argue that the infoboxes as they are currently structured privilege a "high culture" and "great books" view of literature and culture, a view no longer endorsed within mainstream literary studies or history. Since wikipedia is supposed to represent current scholarly opinion, I believe that it should take into account the opinions of literary critics and historians as well as philosophers. Awadewit 19:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)-Awadewit
Keep these fields are important, in my opinion. --Revolución hablar ver 20:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose/Keep: I agree to an extent about abuse of the influences/influenced but I feel that if properly sourced they should definitely be kept.--Johnbull 01:27, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Several people have now made this argument, so I am going to force the issue. What does "properly sourced" mean? We all know that you can find a source, even a reliable one, to say just about anything you want in this area, so I fail to see that this argument is going to rein in the boxes (also, this argument does nothing to address any of the issues I laid out above).

Awadewit Talk 02:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

For example, Wittgenstein abstains from citation in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In his Preface he states, "How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before my by another." How would one go about "properly sourcing" Wittgenstein's influences during the writing of this work? One certainly could not cite a quote from Wittgenstein, and a quote from any third party would be inferential and uncorroborated. But any respectable "influenced" box should contain those who influenced Wittengstein during the writing of his Tractatus, because he explicitly tells the reader that they existed and were extensive. The only logical step is to eliminate the "influence" section altogether.--Heyitspeter 23:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Keep This is very helpful for the reader. It is, of course, true that listing philosophers in the infobox would be a poor substitute for explaining the intellectual development and influences of each philosophers. However, I just don't see this as any kind of substitute, and I don't think anybody does. This isn't supposed to replace discussion in the main text of the article but rather supplement it, give a quick overview and (to an extent) help the reader navigate. And as such it is helpful. Regarding the problem of selecting names to list: Naturally, some cases will be well known to most and others will not be. Those that are common knowledge (at least among people who know something about philosoophy, e.g. Wittgenstein influenced Anscombe, Quine influenced Davidson etc.) don't really require any sources. In other cases it's ok to ask for sources; for that we have the discussion pages. What else are we going to do? This is exactly the same thing as we do regarding the discussion in the main text: some claims will be quite obvious whereas others will be obscure or even debatable and in tose cases we require sources. I don't think it's helpful to suggest that "you can find a source, even a reliable one, to say just about anything you want in this area". However, why should we be concerned to list every influence of a particular philosopher? It's ok to list only the most important or only those that are relevant for the history of philosophy etc. in the infobox, we don't need to list everything. --D. Webb 05:14, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
But my most important point is that the "history of philosophy" is no longer restricted just to philosophers. To list only philosophers in the infobox implies that people like Locke influenced only philosophers or that their only important influences were those on other philosophers. There is a strong case to be made against that. If Locke helped create the conditions for the rise of the modern novel, for example, certainly the novel has affected far more people than some of the philosophers Locke influenced. My argument still stands that in listing only philosophical influences, the boxes are privileging a particular narrative of intellectual history and that is POV. Awadewit Talk 05:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Endorse/Strong Remove
  • There is a very real danger that the lists of "influenced" and "influences" will take on a "digg" function.
  • Many philosophers may be implicitly influenced by an earlier figure, and yet explicitly abstain from citation.
  • As stated above, if the influence was extensive, it would be mentioned in the article.--Heyitspeter 03:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Support It doesn't really provide any useful information. How could someone who has not read the rest of the article use this information? And if they have read the rest of the article then the information is redundant. It is just not appropriate for a template. Do we list influences/influenced for biologists? Misodoctakleidist 23:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

alternative proposal: the list of influences should be limited to people mentioned in the article. This ensures that they will have to comply with NPOV, V, and NOR standards. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Support This would probably solve most of my concerns with these fields. As to Awadewit's concern, non-philosophers are listed in both fields currently. There is a sect within the historical community whose dogma is that intellectual history is insufficiently historical in method, but the pages relating to the philosophers they treat already bear the influence of this school. I don't think the problem with these fields is that they are POV by nature. For me, it's more a matter of signal-to-noise ratio and accountability. So, for example, one of the people that Epicurus apparently influenced was Thomas Jefferson. Disputing this is really the sort of thing that leads to pointless and frustrating revert wars over someone's idée fixe. I'd prefer the fields be eliminated, but some sort of policy to point toward would also be good. RJC Talk 15:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
But it doesn't address the larger issue. Is "novel" listed at John Locke? How would that even work? My entire point is that philosophers don't just influence people and sometimes their most lasting influences are the ones they make on the broader culture, not the ones they make on individuals. (Is it that intellectual history isn't historical enough or philosophy? The intellectual history I've read tends to be historical; its the philosophy that is not - it is logic devoid of history (which produces really bizarre readings sometimes, in my opinion.) Awadewit Talk 17:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this is an absurc point. An infobox on philosophers makes a claim - it does not make an exclusive claim, no infobox does. Moreover, a discussion of how Locke influenced the rise of the modern novel simply belongs in the article itself. There is no need to put it in any infobox, let alone one on philosopher. Let's not put the cart befrore the horse. The main place to discuss anything regarding Locke is the article on locke. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
It makes an implicit exclusive claim, especially to readers who only casually glance at the page. That is precisely the problem. And I agree that the place to discuss influences is in the article itself - I just think that all influences belong there to avoid POV and privileging. Awadewit Talk 20:37, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Endorse: Ideally of course followable guidelines would be great, but I'm sceptical about how well they would be applied. And currently they are certainly pretty useless. E.g. Aesop and Protagoras as influences on Plato?! Rubbish.
Oppose If these boxes are limited to those mentioned in the article, then it will likely miss important influencers/influences that don't warrant discussion. Also, doesn't address most of the concerns mentioned by those in the above poll.--Heyitspeter 01:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose/Strong Keep: If you are giving valid information about such topics like influence/influenced for a philosopher, especialy if philosopher himself/herself was wiling to convey that information, then there is no reason not to mention it. Wiki article on a philosopher is not about his philosophy, but about the philosopher, so such fields/topics giving valid information should certainly be there. In case you are not sure about this information you can mention so in the article itself. But why censor valid information about a philosopher, like Schopenhauer, who himself boldy stated it in his writings?? What is the purpose and intent in such a censorship and how do we know better than the philosopher himself/herself about what should be known about him/her and what not? Also, you can not simply give excuse that such headings will be or are misused. The whole article can be misused, that is why we can edit it and decide whether something is factual or not, so why you confuse misuse of a field with its validity in template structure?Skant (talk) 04:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another alternative proposal

I've often wondered at the usefulness of these lists myself, and I agree with the rationale behind the original proposal to remove these lists from the infobox. I might also add, too, that the term "influenced" is far too ambiguous to be useful: every serious philosopher must, in one way or another, respond to or elaborate upon the ideas proposed by all major figures in philosophy, past and present, and so their own ideas are shaped -- or "influenced" -- by those figures. But is it really helpful to say that any given philosopher was influenced both by Hobbes and Locke? Or Plato and Aristotle?

I don't think so. And for that reason, I would suggest replacing the "influenced/influences" sections with a "Tradition" or "School" section. So, for example, in the article on Camus one could put "Tradition: Absurdist", even though such labels can't exactly capture all the proper nuances of the individual's philosophy (but that's what the article is for!). And even though there's bound to be debate over precisely what term to use here, I think that debate is almost entirely one of refinement: I don't think anyone will seriously argue that Camus doesn't belong to the Absurdist/Existentialist "school" in the way we're currently arguing over who may or may not have influenced him, and whom he in turn may or may not have influenced. --Todeswalzer|Talk 22:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Endorse. Sure. That sounds much more reasonable.--Heyitspeter 23:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Most important writings

How about adding the most important writings for each philosopher to the template? --D. Webb 05:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Not in the infobox, please! These boxes are huge as it is and often take over page. Put a requirement to list the philosopher's writings in a template for the page. Besides, who gets to decide what the "most important writings" are? What a disaster. Awadewit Talk 05:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
But then based on what you're saying, we should also not mention notable ideas; for who gets to decide which of the philosophers' ideas are most notable? What a disaster! And by removing them from the infobox we'd make these excessively large infoboxes a little bit smaller... But seriously, this could be optional and in some cases it is quite clear which publications are the most notable ones. For example, Kant's Critiques are clearly more important works than his Essay on Illness of the Head, Russell's Principia Mathematica and, in fact, his "On Denoting" are more important than his On the Philosophy of Science or Our Knowledge of the External World, Quine's From a Logical Point of View is more important than his Pursuit of Truth or Time of My Life, Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia is clearly more important than his Socratic Puzzles... --D. Webb 15:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I think we should also delete the mention of "notable ideas." All of the things discussed in the article are going to be more or less important in context. I will use John Locke again because he works so well as an example. During the eighteenth century, his most influential book was without a doubt Some Thoughts Concerning Education; what I mean by "most influential" is that more people read it and more of its ideas became a part of European culture than any of his other works. We live with the results of that book in education today. The Essay, while important in philosophy and perhaps indirectly important in the rise of other literature, was not as important. Yet, when discussing Locke from a philosophical perspective, the Essay is often called his most important work, because it led (eventually) to the development of empiricism as well as other things. Finally, Locke's Two Treatises have been claimed as the philosophical underpinning of the American Revolution (although this is really in dispute). Now, for someone interested in politics, clearly the Two Treatises is much more "notable." I will stop there. "Notable" really only means "notable" in some particular context. I, personally, would argue that Locke's Some Thoughts is far more "notable" and deserves far more attention on his page than it has been given since almost every pedagogical system to arise in Britain after it was based on Locke. But that is not the tack taken by the editors who seem to have privileged the Two Treatises at the moment. I think that the infoboxes should be restricted to factual information rather than interpretative information. Users can read the article and decide what ideas they feel are most "notable." In listing them this way, you are predetermining the outcome of that decision. Awadewit Talk 17:31, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mystic/spiritual teacher template

Might there be a case for creating a mystic/spiritual teacher template? There are a number of figures that fit neither the philosopher bracket nor the religious leader bracket. Examples might be Jakob Böhme, Meister Eckhart, or among more recent figures, Idries Shah, Gurdjieff, Osho, Alan Watts etc. Content could be

| century = xth-century mystic/spiritual teacher

| color =

| image_name =

| image_size = 200px

| image_caption =

| name =

| birth name =

| pseudonyms =

| birth =

| death =

| school_tradition =

| main_interests =

| notable_ideas =

| major works =

| influences =

| influenced =

| signature =

Any thoughts? Or is there an existing template covering this field? Jayen466 00:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

There's Template:Infobox Writer. — goethean ॐ 17:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] One column after Name/Birth/Death?

Hi — I've been seeing this template regularly now for a while and have started thinking that its space might be better used if there was only a single column after the Name, Birth and Death entries, i.e. each heading followed by list underneath using the full width of the template. Signature would be an exception. Yes, no? Sardanaphalus 20:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Are there any other biographical templates that use that format? I'm not sure that such a change would reduce the clutter of the infobox, and I find the current format at least aesthetically pleasing. RJC Talk 21:22, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Update

Western Philosophy
20th century philosophy
Image:Camus NYWT&S.jpg
Photograph of Albert Camus taken in 1957, part of the New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress
Name
Albert Camus
Birth November 7, 1913
Mondovi, Algeria
Death January 4, 1960 (aged 46)
Villeblevin, France
School/tradition Absurdism
Image:Nobel Prize.png Nobel Prize in Literature (1957)
Main interests Ethics, Humanity, Justice, Love, Politics
Notable ideas "The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."
"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth."
"I rebel; therefore we exist."
Influenced by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Søren Kierkegaard, Herman Melville, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone Weil, Victor Hugo, Pascal Pia, George Orwell, André Gide
Influenced Thomas Merton, Jacques Monod, Jean-Paul Sartre, Orhan Pamuk, Mohsin Hamid

User:Sardanaphalus/Template:Infobox Philosopher

I'm wondering which RJC and/or anyone else finds (1) a better use of space; and/or (2) (more) aesthetically pleasing...? (Example of Camus not specially chosen beyond being lengthy.) Sardanaphalus (talk) 05:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I personally think the two-column box is easier to read and better looking, but for a couple of philosophers with a large number of people (with long names) in the influenced by/influenced boxes, the single column is almost certainly a better use of space. The two-column version allows only one or two names per line, and so the list goes on forever. RJC Talk Contribs 19:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Prizes Section

Considering many philosophers have been awarded prizes(eg Nobel Prize), does anyone think we should add a Prizes section? Exiledone (talk) 19:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the infobox is too bloated as it is. Also, the practice of awarding prizes is a relatively recent phenomenon, while the infobox covers philosophers from all periods and milleux. Any significant prizes can be listed in the article's body. RJC Talk 20:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] box needs fixing

can someone remove the spaces between Name, Birth, Death, School/tradition, etc.? This infobox is much too big with the spaces, and the spaces really don't bring anything to the article. Kingturtle (talk) 13:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Check out the French version that doesn't have the extra spacing and looks nice. French Infobox Sharnak (talk) 13:23, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Well I removed a bunch of carriage returns from the template, to remove the gaps between the table rows. Whether or not this is an improvement, I'll let others decide. Singinglemon (talk) 14:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Much nicer! Great work! Kingturtle (talk) 15:18, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The results seem a little erratic to me - on some philosophers it works and on some it doesn't. Singinglemon (talk) 17:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
On the ones I've seen it looks good. See for example Immanuel Kant. It seems very clean. Sharnak (talk) 00:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it's working fine now. Sardanaphalus fixed the problem. Some weird problem with the "line-heights" in the CSS not getting applied consistently. Singinglemon (talk) 01:37, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BUG: Caption without image

I've had the ImageRemovalBot recently remove a link to an image from an article I edit. While this by itself was okay, it's shown a bug in this template: if there's something written in the |image_caption= field, but the |image_name= one is empty, the caption is still shown, now in a big font size and inside the header (example). So, could someone please fix the template to completely ignore the caption text when |image_name= is empty? -- alexgieg (talk) 12:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. I'm not sure why the template is implemented the way it is (with conditional HTML table markup nested in a wikitable), but I left it as was, just moving the end of the image name conditional a couple of lines further down. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! -- alexgieg (talk) 15:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)