Best Philosopher

[BeBMan]

Noone mentioned Karl Marx. Where's Che when you need him?

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Nietzsche

Niet was a looney.

Thoreau: "Every man is my superior in some way and from that, I learn."

David Ross: "No people ever won a war."

St. Augustine: "God, grant me chastity, but don't grant it yet."

[Imran Siddiqui]

But when the looney is right, he should be listened to .

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by BeBro
Noone mentioned Karl Marx. Where's Che when you need him?

I like Marx very much. But in all fairness, he was not the most brilliant of them, and his eschatological materialism is quite naive.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Bkeela
I don't know about the best, but the one philosopher who deeply resonates with me is Schopenhauer.

Somehow, that doesn't surprise me a bit

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by CyberShy


I do like Nietzsche as a philosopher, eventhough I reject what he says. But his way of reasoning is consistent imho and the conclusions he draws are right. It's just that he has the wrong starting-assumption.

Nietzsche is not someone who proceeds to a deductive philosophy from a set of basic assumptions. He is, above all, an acute critique of human culture. As such, he is an ethicist, in that his philosophy is about analyzing reality and adopting the proper attitude.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by OzzyKP




I don't see how someone can appreciate Jesus and Nietzsche. They appear diametrically opposed to one another.

I detest Nietzsche.

Knowing you, not sure you should.

The parable of the Madman:

THE MADMAN----Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
But when the looney is right, he should be listened to .

"Man is made for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior. All else is foolishness."

I think not.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraiet.

I used to know a little French. Now I look at that and recognize everything up to the last word

Well all but the last are almost letter for letter the same in English.
Even the last one has the same root in English.
Hint: focus on "fr"

[Fake Boris]

The parable is a critique of Descartes' cogito - mocking how vain it is to be looking for God with a lantern (metaphor of the immediatety of conscience) amongst the bright morning sun (Dionysos). He then signifies that truly killing God would require us to "drink the sea", something that has not been done yet (it would require a supermensch to do this).

The church, at the end of the parable, is a metaphor of transcendance - transcendance assumes negativity in the sphere of "being", of which Descartes' skepticism is a prime incarnation. It's transcendance - and its corollary, that there can be a recompense for virtue - that has killed God.

The bottom line is that Nietzsche is not an atheist.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
"Man is made for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior. All else is foolishness."

[Nostromo]

I loved Nietzsche when I was younger, but now I'm ambivalent towards him. His metaphysics (Will to power, Eternal Recurrence) is somewhat lame and naive (as in prekantian), IMO. It reminds me a bit of what Wittgenstein said of Schopenhauer: his philosophy is expressed so clearly that we can see the bottom fairly easily. But if you take away the metaphysics there's still interesting stuff to be found in there.

Kant should definitively figure in the top 20 of most important philosophers of all time.

Spinoza intrigues me, but I never seem to have the time to read him.

Other philosophers I like:

- Hannah Arendt

- Rudolf Carnap and his pupil W.V.O Quine and Quine's pupil Donald Davidson. In retrospect, Carnap is probably a more important philosopher than Popper.

- C.S. Peirce

- John Dewey

- William James

I asked my students to confront and compare William Clifford's "The ethics of belief'" and Jame's "the will to believe". For a different perspective on faith and religion, you should check out Jame's article. Its available online. I'm myself an atheist, but its an interesting read nonetheless.

[Fake Boris]

It's not that obvious that pre-kantian metaphysics should be dismissed IMO. Even post-kantian metaphysics have been succesfully disconstructed by the ilk of Derrida, after all.
Isn't Sartre's evolution from Being and Nothingness to the Critique of dialectical reason a testament to the elegance of pantheism?

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
It's not that obvious that pre-kantian metaphysics should be dismissed IMO. Even post-kantian metaphysics have been succesfully disconstructed by the ilk of Derrida, after all.
Isn't Sartre's evolution from Being and Nothingness to the Critique of dialectical reason a testament to the elegance of pantheism?

I didn't say we should dismiss it. But it needs a thorough kantian housecleaning. And it would seem that even Kant wasn't thorough enough, according to contemporary philosophers. That's where analytical philosophy or people like Derrida come in. But that doesn't mean that we can do metaphysics like the good 'ol days, before Kant and others spoiled the party.

[DrSpike]

Kant obviously, even if he does feature in relatively few posts so far.