girldetective

Back in the day of the toga, and long before too, villages were small and people tended to congregate and talk. Philosophy was born. With globalization we are exposed to many more people and more thoughts. Some of these can be profound and shape not only our personal views, but now can sometimes shape a whole world's view. I like to think of the Dalai Lama's message of peace world-wide, and Gandhi before him; MLK's words of hope nationally; and sometimes even various song lyrics personally. Thinking about the Greeks' contribution and posterity and importance, makes me wonder: Whose words in more recent times do you think will have a lasting effect hundreds of years from now?

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As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons...be cheerful; strive for happiness - Desiderata

lotsofmagnets

that´s a bit of a tall order but one i have been exposed to, possibly because of my ancestry, is a philosopher who is apparently all the rage at the moment, a slovene named slavoj žižek.

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mother nature made the aeroplane, and the submarine sandwich, with the steady hands and dead eye of a remarkable sculptor.
she shed her mountain turning training wheels, for the convenience of the moving sidewalk, that delivers the magnetic monkey children through the mouth of impossible calendar clock, into the devil's manhole cauldron.
physics of a bicycle, isn't it remarkable?

Baraka_Guru

I'll second this one. I've been meaning to read more of his work. But then again, I've been meaning to read a lot of things.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

zizek? why?
i've read alot of his stuff, and i don't see him as that interesting. but hey, maybe that's just me.

contemporary philosophers means what exactly?

for what i'm up to, cornelius castoriadis, claude lefort, maurice merleau-ponty (not exactly contemporary as he died in 1961), especially his later work...all are interesting and to my mind important thinkers. michel foucault as well, but his stuff has been caught in that curious cycle of academic fashion, marked as someone who has been "done" even as i don't think his work has been particularly well read or understood. henri atlan is interesting as well.

alot depends on where you are working and what you define philosophy to be. most contemporary philosophical work happens as commentary. i think that's a problem. there are a number of experimental writers whose work is a kind of philosophy--working with performative sentences--but i don't know if they'd count here or not because i don't know where philo starts and stops in this context.

now the list of the over-rated is much longer.
we could start with john rawls.
maybe it's better not to.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

roachboy, I had the same thoughts you did but didn't have the energy to articulate them. By "contemporary" I thought: "Currently doing their work." By "philosopher" I thought: "Anyone using reason in an attempt to find truth from a platform that has yet to actually see it."

I admire Foucault but didn't consider him contemporary enough. He was at his height when I could barely walk.

Thanks for your input. There are several names there I don't even recognize.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

snowy

I wasn't even born, but he's still one of my favorites. His work is like brain candy. It's so incredibly dense, a treasure trove of knowledge, questions, and examination.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Baraka_Guru

And still extremely relevant! One of the first things I read was the interview "Friendship As a Way of Life," I think it's in the History of Sexuality. Even today, it is a powerful message to the LGBT community when it comes to relationships within the context of wider society--society, it seems, is still preoccupied with gay sex and marriage and not so aware (or caring) of gay love.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

ring

The words that each of us speak,
can have a lasting impression on those we are not even aware
have heard us.

Those who spoke their ponderings in 'our' past,
were once considered contemporary.

You are the genius of yourself.

thespian86

Can I say Me?

Yes?

Okay... me.

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EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

Daniel_

Jim Henson:

“Stay away from women, that's my motto."
"But I can't."
“Neither can I: that's my trouble." - Rowlf and Kermit

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╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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grumpyolddude

Alfred e Neuman and George Carlin (and punkmusicfan21). Call me shallow, but I think satire, irony, and profoundly indignant skepticism have a deep philosophical impact. Making them incredibly entertaining makes them more accessible to the masses.

Long, dry scholarly theses rarely get the airing they may deserve, and often leave less complex minds, such as my own, more confused and foundering than they were. In our current ADD culture, one could hold the secret to the life, the universe... everything, and take it to the grave with them unless they could find a way attract, then keep the attention of the wider audience.

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"Regret can be a harder pill to swallow than failure .With failure you at least know you gave it a chance..." David Howard

albania

I don't think I can intelligently comment on the posed question, but I do have a related question of my own(which isn’t rhetorical). Why can't the answer be “no one's words”?

Is there a more satisfying answer to my question other than: because it’d be too sad if that were true?

So I guess I lied that's two questions.

little_tippler

I rather like John Dewey and Pierre Bourdieu for their take on art and society but they are not exactly "contemporary", though many of their ideas were.

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

simulacrality

I too have heard that Slavoj Žižek is a great read - i started reading Bauldrillard and his theory about simulation, simulacrum and "the real" or the copy - kind of interested in time travel as an way of talking about academia - and a friend told me that Žižek is "the man"! I must read and report back.

snowy

I had to read Baudrillard in my course on literary criticism, wherein we used Baudrillard's theories as a framework in analyzing Don DeLillo's White Noise. I also read more of him in a class I took on travel writing, because so much of good travel writing (and this extends to food writing as well) attempts to capture the authentic experience--and it begs the question of how does one truly capture an authentic experience with the written word--is it even possible? Thus, Baudrillard provides a good framework there are well. Definitely recommended.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau