sandinista

I was just wondering what philosopher / way of thought anyone here prescribes to the most.

I've just got done reading about a lot of different enlightenment thinkers and I've decided that I like Rene Descartes the most - he seems to be the most level-headed and grounded thinker of the time - what do you all think? Is there any particular methodology to how you tackle the issues that affect you, and the way that you tackle intellectual and philosophical problems?

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"Nature herself makes the wise man rich."
-Cicero

irateplatypus

i just took an intellectual history type of philosophy class... we reviewed the major thinkers from the pre-socratics to neitzsche. after all that there isn't one philosopher i can point to and think... this guy has it completely right.

however, i did identify with the worldview of william james somewhat.

i find that my ethical considerations are often reminiscent of something immanuel kant would approve of.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

sandinista

I like kant a lot too - I just love how Descartes extends the scientific method to every facet of life - it makes it so easy to discern what is right or wrong (to me, at least, lol) - I agree with you, no thinker I've studied has really been "completely right" for me - maybe another good topic would be to right your own article describing your thought process.

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"Nature herself makes the wise man rich."
-Cicero

Suave

So far, mine is Buddha, although I'm very interested in Neitzsche's work as well. Also a big fan of Einstein.

MojoRisin

Neitzsche , but like the platypus said, no ones perfect.

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noodles

nietzsche though i really dig existentialism. he's one of the people who paved the way for existentialists later on, he's not one himself. go figure.

i also like what i read from heidegger so far, but i haven't read much and i don't know how much i could put up with it if i were to continue.

zen_tom

For the way the world works, I like the Emergentist view, a well know proponent of which might be Stuart Kauffman (though there are others), it's a philosophy that reconciles the classical and romantic view-points, allowing for wonder, beauty, logic and science to happily coexist.

For my actions within that world, I like the Taoist and Zen Buddhist views. That to act against the natural flow is wasted effort. Zen encourages clear thought, intuitive understanding and self-reliance. Both encourage that one tries to experience every moment as fully as possible, that one's ego is something that should be replaced with humility and that one's mind holds a full and instinctive understanding of the world from which it is created.

ARTelevision

I appreciate the humanism of Christ and the nihilism and existentialism of the Buddha. As for how to conduct dialog, I appreciate the methodology of Socrates.

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roachboy

this feels to me like building philosopher selections on a barroom juke box.

which hits do i spin most frequently?

later wittgenstein
castoriadis
lefort
husserl
dilthey
sometimes heidegger, which is like playing "into the mystic"
each of which configures and reconfigures the Tradition
and which thereby assumes and requires engagement with
the Great Conversation between isolated Thinkers.



since the teaching of philosophy in america at least is trapped entirely in exegetical mode, i do not see any necessary or direct link between who one reads and how one thinks about the world in "real time"....so here---even here---ways of thinking about the world, of doing philosophy, get reduced to a series of labels in a box that one can interact with when one feels like dancing and leave silent when one prefers continuing to drink.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

qweds

as to nietzsche and existentialism there were actually others before the mad german, kierkegaard namely as a christian existentialist, and then of course dostoyevsky particularly 'notes from the underground'

if you're interested in existentialism one of the most extreme, and completely unkown who worked before all the well known western existentialists, is a Russian Jew by the name of Lev Shestov - irrationality and what not, fascinating stuff.

As a North American it's hard to deny the influence of James and Percy, seeing as that basically is the philosophy lived by %90 of us...

Personally I live my day to day lief as pragmatically as possible and try to run as far intellectually away from Pragmatism as possible. Existentialism, in it's quasi-religious forms is what I'm reading now, Nikolai Berdyaev, another Russian. I'm quite fascinated by the notion that Knowledge obtained through faith superceds that of reason and the implausibility of the objectification of Knowledge...

akk, I've rambled into never never land.

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tim(mah)

GWestling

I find myself becoming more and more engaged in the philosphy of personalism offered by Nikolai Berdyaev. He's also an excellent companion to readings of Dostoyevsky, should you be so inclined.

soccerchamp76

Mine would have to be the German philosopher Emmanuel Kant.

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Chris Griffin: That would explain all the gravity.

Livia Regina

I'm rather fond of Ayn Rand.
With luck I will be getting some Nietzsche and Kant for Christmas and we'll see how endering they are.

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MSD

I'm a big fan of Nietzsche. I particularly like his idea that religion is a tool used by the masses to control the intellectuals who they either consciously or subconsciously fear.

noodles

yeah, there were lots of existentialists before nietzsche, but historically speaking, he paved the way for sartre to define the school of thought definitively. all the older people were labeled existentialists after their time.

Zephyr66

I too would have to say Nietzsche, he had so many amazing(yet kind of exagurated) points about religeon and global leaders.

qweds

nietzsche and other 'anti-religious' philosophers say alot that is true about the negative aspects of religions, yet they by and large fail to address the other side of religion, the spiritual aspect. Clearly religions as a social institution have by and large, if not entirely failed in at bettering man and his situation. But faith and spirituality are all that seperate man from any other evolutionary by-product, one might say...

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tim(mah)

Paradise Lost

I've always taken a liking to the great Greek minds, Plato, Aristotle, etc... Mainly, at least to me anyway, their way of conducting themselves, their philosophies, the answers to any question, can be found through pure logic. Seems rational enough. I have not read many actual philosophical texts, and it's tough to make a decent opinion on the writer's works, their views, etc, but I normally don't "use" anything one of them says. I try to adapt what others say to my own philosophies. Makes life easier and you don't get put into any category of philosophy either.

Also, unless their philosophy is actually proven through logic, like the old Greek philosophy, or that of Kant, most of the stuff written is just opinion, or some set of morals that one thinks others should live by... and for the most part, I don't care for opinions - unless supported by facts, but even then, I use the facts and form my own opinion.

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belkins

People might not call him a philosopher but I do and that's Voltaire.

My favorite quote is attributed to him, "Common sense is not so common."

chromanin

Very much appreciate Nietzsche's life-affirming bias. If you're looking for meaning -- for a guide -- there's no need to reach further than your existence within the context of humanity, and life in general. It's evolution, baby.

Strange Famous

Would it be a surprise to anyone if I said Karl Marx?

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"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

filtherton

I most prefer the philosophy of filtherton, it reads as a greatest hits of many of those also mentioned, but lacks the cost of a name brand compilation.

Tophat665

Nope. Merry Christmas, SF!

For me, I like Hume's ideas about the subjectivity of experience, Diogene's thoughts about human nature, Robert Anton Wilson's take on mysticism, and Twain and Zappa for just living life.

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Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

roadkill

For ethics probably Kant, he seems right on the money there for me. And for politics Marx.

Pax131

My philosophy professor tried to convince our class to go to the annual get to know the students party that the philosophy department puts on and ask the other professors this question. He said that if you do it in a large enough group of professors, someone's favorite will be someone else's most disliked and you get to sit back and watch them fight. I loved his class. It's interesting that Nietzsche is common in this thread, his Thus Spoke Zarathustra is currently my favorite piece of philosophical writing. I like the book because it is broken up into small chunks on different topics. I can flip to a random page, read for a few minutes and have something to think about. However, I think I enjoy Hunter S. Thompson's worldview the most...

Dbass

In terms of morality, I prefer Immanuel Kant - he held the "A Priori" theory, that everything we can learn, including morals, exists before we learn it. Despite pinning him into a Transcendentalist category, it says morally that what we hold as ethical and moral isn't necessarily right because we can't make the truth, we can only learn in eventually.

MuadDib

I was big into Kant in high school, but kinda started digging Neitzsche in college (I was a freshman/sophmore... thats who we are supposed to like so that we are cool, right?). But anymore I've been mostly interested in Derrida and Foucault.

If anyone is into psychology a bit though I would highly recommend reading some Carl Jung or Ken Wilber. These guys tackle a broad range from psychology to philosophy to religion that will really blow you away.

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mbchills

Ayn Rand is my favorite

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rawr.

Strange Famous

I also very much like the method of thought of Thomas Hobbes - trying to be logical, to take everything into account, to build from one stage to the next, to be reasonable and always sceptical of human nature and mysticism of any kind. Nowadays Hobbes is often reviled in academic circles (or at least the ones I was aware of) for his belief that only an all powerful state could keep a society from civil war - but if he was writing a theory of how society IS, then we should judge him by such a standard, and how many major societies do exist or have existed, where there is not a Great Leviathan? How often has it proved that when a power vacuum is created, both looting and rioting, and civil war breaks out?

The power of the state shouldnt just be measured by despotic power, but also in infrastructural power, the degree into which it infiltrates the life of the citizen. The American state today, while the people are protected by many checks and balances and so on, is far more powerful than the most autocratic medieval state, because it is so much bigger and reaches so much farther and deeper.

As a communist myself, the idea that by nature people are violent and selfish, and that without rule life will be "nasty, brutish and short" is both difficult and depressing, Marx & Engels certainly did contradict Hobbes, saying that after the initial revolution and overthrow of capitalism (which I believe with complete certainty will occur) their will be socialist state, and this state will wither away as power becomes totally decentralised. Perhaps the Hobbsian way of looking at it would be that the people themselves become the state - that the leviathan actually consumes the entire society. To some people perhaps it is a nightmare, I dont know.

I certainly believe that Hobbes theory of state has been proved completely correct, and that Marx's theory of capitalism and its collapse was also correct, and in fact capitalism as Marx uinderstood it has collapsed, in the revolution of 1914-1918 (WWI) - Marx did not anticipate the rise of a new form of capitalism, social capitalism - but the same inherent flaws exist in the present system and I believe it too will be crushed, either by revolution or climate disaster. In terms of what follows capitalism, my own belief if that for the good of the people I hope for Marx to be proved correct, and if this belief is shared, then it shall become a self fulfilling prophecy.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

thinktank

Mark me down for ol' Jean Paul Sartre. I know he ran pretty much parallel with so many of the other great existentialists, but i've just always favored his style.