How do I get my philosophical ideas as well known as Pascals Wager?(Unique idea)

[monolith94]

"Didn't he come up with the philosophical idea that anything that can happen has happened and will happen again."

I really like that idea. Gives me a sense of hope, and makes me feel part of the commonwealth of mankind.

[Kaak]

hmm... this is kind of depressing, but i think it could be argued that no one has ever had a truly original idea.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Kaak
hmm... this is kind of depressing, but i think it could be argued that no one has ever had a truly original idea.

What about Ung? He was the first to contemplate peeing while standing up.

[Caesar the Great]

Originally posted by DaShi


What about Ung? He was the first to contemplate peeing while standing up.

i'll believe it when i see it

[Imran Siddiqui]

I thought that was Bung!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Big Crunch

Didn't he come up with the philosophical idea that anything that can happen has happened and will happen again. He had some story about the eternal recurrence of Zaroastra's journey, or something like that, to explain it.

He did, but, at root, eternal recurrence is really a very old idea (not with quite the spin Nietzsche puts on it).

Empdocles thought that the world alternated between elements being brought together and torn apart.

In Plato's Statesman there is a myth where the world is like a giant spring which God winds up and lets go, only for it to spring back on itself when it reaches the extremity of its extension.

The Stoics (Zeno, Chrysippus, etc.) believed that the universe is periodically destroyed by fire and reborn, phoenix like, from the ashes. Since God plans the course of history from rebirth to conflagration for the best it seems that each cycle will be identical. There is some dispute over whether this means that we will be reborn or whether mere copies of us will be reborn.

As for Plato, I don't think he's that bad. After all the Theaetetus consists, IMHO, of a complete refutation of any non-naturalist or non-Platonist foundationalist epistemology. (Phew!)

In any case, all you have to do to accept Platonism is the thesis that there can be two different things which are really the same in kind. From that the rest follows.

[monolith94]

"He did, but, at root, eternal recurrence is really a very old idea (not with quite the spin Nietzsche puts on it). "
Not only that, but it's a common idea as well. The maya beleived it too. Of course, they used it as an excuse to make war - I use it as an excuse to make sweet, sweet love.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Big Crunch
Didn't he come up with the philosophical idea that anything that can happen has happened and will happen again. He had some story about the eternal recurrence of Zaroastra's journey, or something like that, to explain it.

Do you mean Zarathustra, as in Neitzsche's book Thus Spoke Zarathustra?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Agathon
In any case, all you have to do to accept Platonism is the thesis that there can be two different things which are really the same in kind. From that the rest follows.

You mean Dualism, as set out in "The fire in the Cave?"