| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/9/2008 7:48:29 PM | Carl Jung, because understanding the dynamics of people has helped me a lot when dealing with other people and understanding myself.
For the most part, I don't really pay attention to historical philosophical figures. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/9/2008 11:31:06 PM | Philosophy can't be a waste of time as it's the basis of all the other sciences!!!
I don't think anyone has mentioned Marshall McLuhan. In my opinion he has come up with some of the most important concepts of our age. Also kirkegaard and jean-paul sartre just cause I try to maintain an existential point of view. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/16/2008 8:27:25 AM | | I have to say, even though it sounds corny, that the most philosophical influence I have ever seen came from toddlers. Very few judgements, great energy to explore life in ways adults don't understand anymore. We could all benefit from learning from toddlers. Just my opinion. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/17/2008 6:37:11 AM | Darwin is first and foremost in showing me a way to understand human beings. He was an observer, and everything he said has been more and more made and proven true by everything we have found out about ourselves. Hume I adore for his ability to presage psychological truths before Darwin, and to be right bang dead on. I like Andrew T. Szemeredy for his ability to make Darwinism align with and solve such ancient philosophical problems as the paradoxes of ethics and happiness.
The picture would not be complete if I did not state the three I don'd like the most. One was Henry VIII. He discarded an entire world view that was a good crutch for many of his contemporaries, and replaced it with a new one, forcing it on everyone, only in order to satisfy his own sexual and reproductive needs. That's unfair, stupid, and bully-like. I don't like Immanuel Kant for he created an ethical system that is completely useless, both from theoretical and from practical points of view. And I don't like Savonarola, either, but that's a personal vendetta between the two of us. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/17/2008 8:20:28 PM |
Philosophy is kind of a waste of time. Its too subjective.
In the end you always come back to the same, eternal unanswerable questions.
You don't enjoy questions that may never be answered?
Then stick with religion and accept answers that may never be questioned.
Anyways, nietzsche is empowering, I enjoy rand's quasi-religious self righteousness, but I'd have to say Socrates was the man. I'm open to almost anyone really. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/17/2008 9:49:17 PM | I was influenced by Zippy the Pinhead. He asked "Are we having fun yet?"
That question applied to any situation drives straight to the elemental truth, and is in that way a reliable guide for living and the thematic obelisk of meaningful consciousness. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/17/2008 10:03:20 PM | I'm going to say Albert Einstein. I don't know if he was a philosopher in the traditional sense but I guess science is a kind of philosophy too
Trial and error.. philosophy is science.
Socrates/Descarte | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/17/2008 10:36:35 PM | "Are we having fun yet?"
That question applied to any situation drives straight to the elemental truth, and is in that way a reliable guide for living and the thematic obelisk of meaningful consciousness.
Dispense with the philisophical dogma - simplistic, how cool is that! | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/17/2008 11:06:16 PM | Arthur Schopenhauer: pragmatic, realistic and deep.
Life is a constant self-assertion of the will, a long desire which is never fulfilled. It is either pain or boredom.
Like Aristotle said "it is not wealth but character that lasts". Our "happiness" depends on our spirit: it is not what things are in themselves, but what they are to us.
' The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people. This is why a high degree of intellect makes a man unsocial" . " " A hundred fools together will not make a wise man" ( from the Wisdom of life, 1/ Division of the subject). | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/21/2008 11:07:23 PM |
Our "happiness" depends on our spirit: it is not what things are in themselves, but what they are to us.
Is the spirit separate from us? It almost seems as if Aristotle implies this?
' The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people. This is why a high degree of intellect makes a man unsocial"
Wouldn't being unsocial hinder the mirrors of social interaction, which are required to move beyond intellect into wisdom. How do we experience? | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/25/2008 4:11:45 PM | Epicurus:
"If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires".
"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life".
"Don’t have children; they bring much trouble, toil, and sorrow. What few advantages there are to having children rarely outweigh the disadvantages". | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/26/2008 9:17:15 AM | I remember what Camus wrote on the nature of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus very clearly.
Personally I don't think it possible to name one particular philosopher.
I try to combine the more critical "Continental" approach of Sartre and Camus but the more logic, "analytic" approach of Russell (a very British approach to philosophy). Although an atheist now, I try to look into many of the Islamic philosophers from the past (always the "past" - I don't think there even is such a thing as an "Islamic philosopher" anymore) to get as many different view points as possible.
One thing I do a lot of in life (where it often gets me is another matter) is play Devil's Advocate with a lot of people on all sorts of issues. I like this because it reminds me of Socrates in The Republic. The way you can get what seems like such a straight-forward common-sense statement and slowly take it to a ridiculously absurd conclusion (just to point fallacies in people's notions of "common sense"). Combine this approach with politics and religion actually makes very passionate debates. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/26/2008 7:50:59 PM | In answer to message 42.
This is my interpretation: the spirit is the mind, that which feels or senses. We can have a mind without having a body ( in other realms of consciousness, according to Buddhism at least). The more your mind is developed, the less you need others to keep the practice going, meaning that the highly trained mind is able to sustain itself, in other words, it is above the world.
I especially like Schopenhauer because his best work originated from the study of eastern classics; he was disillusioned about the world, yet realized that we, as humans, need zeal, energy and focus to achieve our full mind potential......in other words we need faith in the power of our own mind. Even Aristotele said that our happiness depends on our spirit, meaning that it depends on our mind and on our ability to detect and interpret -that is - to experience- mental activities. Happiness, he said, is self sufficiency (meaning: having and independent and secure mind).
As Schopenhauer put it: happiness is the middle way between pain and boredom.
There is no point in being excessively 'happy' and succumb to our 'happiness" because soon it will become boredom, neither it is useful to excessively suffer and succumb to our pain as it will only bring discomfort.
Either way, if you go to the extremes, you will feel uneasy.
Therefore, to summarize the concept: happiness is peace of mind, solitude the best blessing.
This is why a man of high intellect is quite often an outsider, because he went beyond, he is above the pain and suffering of the world ( according to Arthur Schopenhauer - and to early buddhist scriptures as well -) | |
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