| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/24/2008 7:09:32 PM | For me, it would have to be Albert Camus and his musings on absurdity.
Man is not absurd, nor is the world, but combine the two?
If you are going to join in with this thread, please feel free to recommend a book.
The question of suicide (as the only truth.) Addresed .
For at least 4000 years the idea of a benevolent ominipresent God has been source of meaning for many, look at what happens when faith is destroyed.
Camus always denied Existentialism as a core belief, and expresses an obvious concern for that his beliefs may have on everday life.
As an introduction to Camus, I would suggest "The myth of Sysiphus." (The Myth of Sisyphus (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)).
In this one see's absurdity, a toil without end, no god, no heaven, no hell, defeated, yet triumphant. Camus poses the question in this work, can we be happy?
"Life is not absurd; the Absurd is life."
Over to you | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/25/2008 12:06:39 AM | Socrates
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
I think it speaks for itself. We live with so many ideals, constraints and thoughts that aren't our own . What he said and is freedom and life. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/25/2008 4:18:04 PM | Popper, Lakatos, Hume, Russell, Kuhn, and others have influenced by thinking on epistemological and scientific issues.
For ethics, I have to say I have a sort of Nietzchean flair, and I find most morality ridiculous, weak, and absurd, just as he did. (I'm not particularly well-read on ethics, but honestly, I never could get behind Kantian deontology or utilitarianism's well-worn attempts to calculate moral worth like an insurance salesman.)
With metaphysical issues, I've found myself highly influenced by Hume and Flew concerning God's existence, Searle concerning the mind/body question, and the logical positivists in general (with the caveats of the postmodern turn taken into consideration). | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/25/2008 4:19:56 PM |
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Rene Descartes
Unfortunately for Descartes, this statement is just the sort of thing a real seeker of truth would find himself doubting! | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/26/2008 3:06:46 AM | | I've read some Bertrand Russell recently but derive most of my deep wisdom from the contents of Christmas crackers. Can't think of any illustrative examples offhand but I'm sure the crackers have shaped my outlook. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/26/2008 8:04:06 AM | Seneca, On anger.
once you realise that there are two ways of looking at things:
This thing has happened and has MADE me angry
or
This thing has happened and I have BECOME angry
You start to take control of yourself and your actions, not relying on blaming outside influences. You then become a person more able to cope with any situation.
I can reccommend the book 'The Consolations of Philosophy' by Alain De Botton | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/26/2008 7:03:22 PM | | I would have to list two philosophers as having the most direct influence on my outlook. These would be Machiavelli and Jean-Paul Sartre. Camus as also an amazing writer and philospher, and I highly recommend his book "The Plague." I personally consider myself an existentialist. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/27/2008 8:39:55 AM | | Why not look a philosophy, like a road map, it can take you to somewhere but when you get there, and you life can start to be seen through the filter of a different lens. Philosophy is speculative as is groping around in the dark, some find their way, some think there is a way and being human feel the need to communicate such. Philosophy can come to an abrupt halt when confronted by the reality of the 3 dimensional world we live in. Philosophy is also seductive as like the good sage one said, that in order to create something original the path is 95% perspiration and 5% inspiration. Philosophies are at best confined to the 5% but that can last decades, ( the maximum number of angels standing on a pin head comes to mind), and as stated by a great author: "if was left to these thinkers mankind might still be debating the merits of coming down from the trees". | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 4/30/2008 2:12:03 AM | i'm with everyone that mentioned the idea of building your own philosophies. use the 'real' philosopher's work as a framework, and then just go off on a tangent!
that said though, when i was younger i would have said sartre, kierkegaard, and nietzsche had between them said everything that needed to be said. as i've been getting older though, i've slowly found myself rejecting a lot of their ideas, but mostly due to how their ideas have been used against us by corporations/systems of power, especially with the whole 'individual' thing. now it's accepted that we're all individuals, but i imagine they would be horrified at where we have ended up. 50 people wearing different styles of puma sneakers are still wearing puma sneakers. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/8/2008 10:21:46 PM | Nietszche I think he tried his best to give a truthful look at the world and a way to deal with it through a philosophy.
Even if that truth was too ugly to stand he still wrote it down and said it. He had to be genuine living in a boarding house and writing despite being sick to death. But eh who knows. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/8/2008 10:34:42 PM | "that said though, when i was younger i would have said sartre, kierkegaard, and nietzsche had between them said everything that needed to be said. as i've been getting older though, i've slowly found myself rejecting a lot of their ideas, but mostly due to how their ideas have been used against us by corporations/systems of power, especially with the whole 'individual' thing. now it's accepted that we're all individuals, but i imagine they would be horrified at where we have ended up. 50 people wearing different styles of puma sneakers are still wearing puma sneakers."
I would doubt the way you say corporations use his philosophy is what Nietszche intended. I think he meant individuality of the self manufactured kind but in balance to nature and the world.
The kind of individuality that spits in the face of others, or the kind thats several people wearing different kinds of the same brand is not what I think he meant at all.
Those philosophies would not be used against us in the wrong way if we were as strong as the type of man Nietszche proposed. Which to me really would be someone who would go and make his own sneakers.
The whole we should be more like artists can be looked in this way in my opinion. Artists give a piece of their soul in creativity. Yet that thing is useless and becomes a materialistic image afterwards. It just shows the great ability of man to be a creative power.
I think Nietszche was arguing more that the qualities of artists should be better adapted to those that do the more useful things in society. That if man could get the power he uses in art and apply it to even the most mediocre thing. He would be more creative and have more ingenuity. | |
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| Which Philospher, if any has influenced you the most, why?
Posted: 5/9/2008 10:10:16 AM | Philosophy is kind of a waste of time. Its too subjective.
In the end you always come back to the same, eternal unanswerable questions.
I think Robert Frost summed it up quite elegantly in his one liner.
"We run around in a circle and suppose, and the secret sits in the middle and knows"
George Carlin. Dont forget about George. | |
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