Who is your favorite philosopher and why?

[Grains]

Just curious....

[Boerseun]

My dad.

 

He said "If you wait long enough, there will be beer."

 

:shrug:

[modest]

Kant was to philosophy what Einstein was to the physical sciences.

 

“The death of dogma is the birth of morality”

-Immanuel Kant

[Overdog]

Kant was to philosophy what Einstein was to the physical sciences.

 

“The death of dogma is the birth of morality”

-Immanuel Kant

 

I have to agree, Kant was pretty profound. His moral philosophy ranks as some of the most profound thinking I have ever encountered.

 

I guess I'd have to say Arthur Schopenhaur is my favorite, though. His pessimistic view helps me see that no matter how bad I think things are, they aren't THAT bad...;)

 

Arthur Schopenhaur

 

Schopenhauer had an understanding of the Will, which has to separate parts. The Will to Life and Human Will. The Will to Life, was the over all striving that every animal did on a daily basis, the striving for the will to live. Schopenhauer, believed that the nature of life was suffering and that this suffering was manifested in the will to live. However, this will, in humans, was also manifested by Human Will, or striving for that life, such as studying, reading, etc. This human will also lead to suffering and strife, for as soon as humans would reach one goal, another set of problems or suffering would appear. In fact, Schopenhauer believed that if humans recognized how much suffering that there is in life and in the world, that they would want to kill themselves. However, if you look at all that suffering and decide to live anyways then you have conquered the will and you will no longer truly suffer. In quite a Buddhist theme, you have become liberated and redeem...

[coldcreation]

Bertrand Russell,

 

Because he did time for what he believed in.

 

Kant is, of course way on top of the list too, along with Nietzsche, for obvious reasons.

[Jet2]

Chuang Tzu

 

One night he dreamt of a butterfly and he wondered if it might be the butterfly which dreamt about him.

 

I love this thought!

[sanctus]

Don't know if it is my favorite, but it was the most interesting one I ever studied in school:

Macchiavelli, mainly "the prince". It was one of the first political philosophy texts if I remeber right.

In there he explains how to be a good ruler with phrases which go something like: "in front of your people you have to act as being honest, but behind them, if you want to be a good ruler, dishonesty is neccessary".

And also much stronger and dictatorial which I do not remember...but it might make you understand why it is the only italian literature I had in school which I ever found interesting (all the rest were about religion...). It was hard to believe that someone actually wrote such things!

[Thunderbird]

I have to agree, Kant was pretty profound. His moral philosophy ranks as some of the most profound thinking I have ever encountered.

 

I guess I'd have to say Arthur Schopenhaur is my favorite, though. His pessimistic view helps me see that no matter how bad I think things are, they aren't THAT bad...:hihi:

 

I have to agree, Arthur Schopenhaur and one of his students turned teacher, Joseph Campbell.

[REASON]

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. - Confucius

 

I like Confucius because his lessons are simple, yet profound.

[Buffy]

Anyone under the age of 9...

 

I wonder when God will get tired of people and put dinosaurs back on Earth,

Buffy

[Thunderbird]

Anyone under the age of 9...

 

I wonder when God will get tired of people and put dinosaurs back on Earth, :msn:

Buffy

 

 

Goodnight, God

I hope that you are having

a good time being the world.

I like the world very much.

I'm glad you made the plants

and trees survive with the

rain and summers.

When summer is nearly over

the leaves begin to fall.

I hope you have a good time

being the world.

I like how God feels around

everyone in the world.

God, I am very happy that

I live on you.

Your arms clasp around the world.

I like you and your friends.

Every time I open my eyes

I see the gleaming sun.

I like the animals, the deer,

and us creatures of the world,

the mammals.

I love my dear friends.

 

Danu Baxter, age four and a half

[freeztar]

I've given this quite a bit of thought, and it's very difficult to pick one. I love the philosophy of Ralph Waldo (where is that guy anyways? :msn: )Emerson and John Stuart Mills. But I had to settle on Diogenes because he was such a rebel and constantly sought truth. He probably wasn't one of the nicest of people, but I love his arguments, and contempt towards society. I don't align my views with his, but his discipline and tenacity is surely admired.

 

When Plato gave Socrates's definition of man as "featherless bipeds" and was much praised for the definition, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "This is Plato's man."

 

When asked how he wished to be buried, he left instructions to be thrown outside the city wall so wild animals could feast on his body. When asked if he minded this, he said, "Not at all, as long as you provide me with a stick to chase the creatures away!" When asked how he could use the stick since he would lack awareness, he replied "If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead?"

Diogenes of Sinope - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

He used likewise to say, "that when in the course of his life he beheld pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the wisest of all animals; but when again he beheld interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers, and those who listened to them, and men puffed up with glory or riches, then he thought that there was not a more foolish animal than man."

Diogenes Laertius: Life of Diogenes, from Lives of the Philosophers, translated by C.D. Yonge

 

Plato was discoursing on his theory of ideas and, pointing to the cups on the table before him, said while there are many cups in the world, there is only one `idea' of a cup, and this cupness precedes the existence of all particular cups.

 

"I can see the cup on the table," interupted Diogenes, "but I can't see the `cupness'".

 

"That's because you have the eyes to see the cup," said Plato, "but", tapping his head with his forefinger, "you don't have the intellect with which to comprehend `cupness'."

 

Diogenes walked up to the table, examined a cup and, looking inside, asked, "Is it empty?"

 

Plato nodded.

 

"Where is the `emptiness' which procedes this empty cup?" asked Diogenes.

 

Plato allowed himself a few moments to collect his thoughts, but Diogenes reached over and, tapping Plato's head with his finger, said "I think you will find here is the `emptiness'."

TEACHINGS OF DIOGENES

[Thunderbird]

Ah, a fellow Contrarian. I like him.

[REASON]

Anyone under the age of 9...

 

I wonder when God will get tired of people and put dinosaurs back on Earth, :msn:

Buffy

 

There are many things I like that have come from my childhood.

[coldcreation]

.

 

 

 

 

Albert Einstein

 

 

Herr Albert is most well known for his contributions to physics. Less well known, yet of comparable importance, are Einstein's contributions to twentieth-century philosophy of science.

 

Einstein and the Development of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science

(Don Howard, University of Notre Dame)

 

The development of Einstein’s philosophy and the development of logical empiricism were both driven in crucial ways by the quest for an empiricism that could defend the empirical integrity of general relativity in the face of neo-Kantian critiques. But logical empiricism was more than a philosophy of relativity theory' date=' and Einstein’s philosophy of science was more than an answer to Kant.

 

A fuller account of Einstein’s philosophy of science would have to include discussion of his belief in simplicity as a guide to truth, especially in areas of physics comparatively far removed from extensive and direct contact with experiment, as in his own long search for a unified field theory[/quote']

 

 

And this from the same source:

 

Still' date=' the struggle to craft a compelling response to neo-Kantian critiques of general relativity was, in my view, the single most important factor shaping the development of the story about empirical content that defined mainstream logical empiricism, and Einstein’s central role in this development through his personal and intellectual relationships with logical empiricism’s chief architects has yet to receive the attention that it is due in the historical literature. Moreover, understanding Einstein’s role in this history helps us to put into context Einstein’s late and often quoted characterization of himself as an “epistemological opportunist” (Einstein 1949, 684). Yes, Einstein’s philosophy of science borrowed from realism, positivism, idealism, and even Platonism. It might appear to the “systematic epistemologist” to be mere opportunism. But when viewed in its proper historical setting, it emerges as an original synthesis of a profound and coherent philosophy of science that is of continuing relevance today, the unifying thread of which is, from early to late, the assimilation of Duhem’s holistic version of conventionalism.[/quote']

 

 

Einstein gets my vote as numero uno.

 

 

CC

[Thunderbird]

"In order to follow the path of knowledge, one has to be very imaginative. On the path of knowledge, nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be"

 

One of the key reasons that things are not clear on the path of knowledge is that we are relying too much upon reason. We think everything must add up in some Newtonian understanding of the universe. But, we now know things that Newton never knew and one of the things we know is that we cannot ever really know everything. Life is far more mysterious and our lives are governed by forces beyond even our imagination.

 

"The greatest flaw of human beings is to remain glued to the inventory of reason. Reason doesn't deal with man as energy. Reason deals with instruments that create energy, but it has never seriously occurred to reason that we are better than instruments: we are organisms that create energy. We are bubbles of energy.”

 

Carlos Castaneda