You guys like philosophy?

[SOSU]

I sure do :D

I'm a fan of existentialists like Kirkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche but i read stuff from multiple lines of thought, don't agree with many like Marx or Ayn Rand but atleast from Rand we got some superheroes like The Question who is the inspiration for Watchmens Rorschach and i am not sure, never played it but i believe BioShock is inspired by Rand? The place the game takes place in i believe.

So which philosophers do you fellas like?

[DSC]

46 minutes ago, SOSU said:

never played it but i believe BioShock is inspired by Rand? The place the game takes place in i believe.

Not only that, the game's main theme is to criticize objetivism.

[Sunnyfruit]

I mostly like Kant, Spinoza, and Plato. But I don't really have the time to sit down and read some more. I have Emerson on my read-list since a long time.

 

AFAIK Bioshock is a critique of Rand (which is virtually unknown/looked down in Europe) and Rorschach was not so much an aspiration but was supposed to be The Question before copyright questions kicked in and made Moore make up a totally new character. Moore doesn't care about superheroes and did what he wanted so the links between Rorschach and The Question are pretty filmsy.

[SOSU]

@DSC Yeah objectivism is really wacky, i love how like 1/3rd of the book Atlas Shrugged is the main character saying that "objectivism is so cool you guys" xD

@Sunnyfruit The Watchmen origin story is a bit complicated, Rorschach was supposed to be the Question at first yeah but he was supposed to act like Mr.A who The Question is a more "mainstream" version of, Mr.A is "Objectivism Man" so Moore wanted to critique him with Rorschach.

[DSC]

4 minutes ago, SOSU said:

Yeah objectivism is really wacky, i love how like 1/3rd of the book Atlas Shrugged is the main character saying that "objectivism is so cool you guys" xD

I remember hearing about a SCP which condensed books into their most simple and basic premises, or made materials into their most pure form, something along those lines. There was an experiment log were they used the SCP in Atlas Shrugged, and the result was just a small note saying "I hate poor people".

[DRM-MAN]

I'm a bit of a fan of that one dude who said: god is dead, and we killed him, don't really remember his name right now. Maybe ask me later.

[seed]

Fan of Nietzsche myself since his stuff generally lined up with my own thoughts, and I studied a bit of Plato while I was in high school, but haven't delved into much deeper.

[SOSU]

10 minutes ago, DRMman said:

I'm a bit of a fan of that one dude who said: god is dead, and we killed him, don't really remember his name right now. Maybe ask me later.

I think he was german and had a big mustache :D

Maybe it was Karl Marx?

Badum tss

[Hawk of The Crystals]

Not really a fan of it to be honest, not sure why though.

 

[Redneckerz]

Finally a class thread lol:P

2 hours ago, SOSU said:

I sure do :D

So which philosophers do you fellas like?

In no particular order:

• Albert Camus. The Rebel is a great book on the struggles of hardship, along with the Myth of Sissiphus.
• Jean-Jacques Rosseau. I didn't read the Social Contract, but one of his sub books: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. ''Wherever man lives, he is in chains'' comes from him, and he inspired Robespierre, whose influence sparked the French Revolution.
• Plato. Ofcourse, where would we be without him? The basic principles still hold up even today.
• Jean Paul Sartre. The enfant terrible of Existentialism.
• To a lesser degree Carl Jung. Jung is more a psychoanalyst in the vein of Freud, but his theories on archetypes are very interesting.

• Dag Hammarskjöld - Swedish diplomat, Secretary of the United Nations, also was a philosopher at home. His book Markings is a diary centered around his battles and victories through his work as a diplomat.

• Thomas Jefferson. The Jefferson Bible is more like the Holy Bible, but with the myth removed. When it does, it becomes a work of theological interest to me.

8 minutes ago, DRMman said:

I'm a bit of a fan of that one dude who said: god is dead, and we killed him, don't really remember his name right now. Maybe ask me later.

Friedrich Nietzsche.

[continuum.mid]

Another armchair philosophy fan here. I kinda like Camus, and his essay The Myth of Sisyphus as well as the fiction it inspired. He talks about the conflict between the human need for meaning and the inherent meaninglessness of nature ("the Absurd"), and ultimately concludes that it's possible to accept that life is meaningless, but keep on living, and perhaps create one's own meaning. It's a really well-written essay as I recall, though it can get depressing.

 

I've read quite a few philosophical texts, but I almost never find myself completely agreeing with their conclusions, which I take as an indication that my critical thinking skills are functioning. So other than that, I can't pick out a "favorite philosopher."

[SOSU]

@Redneckerz

I delved (?) quite deep into Jung myself, just didn't mention him in the thread opener because of him being a psychoanalyst, he's pretty hard to get into since you slowly need to get into his ideas and have to have knowledge of Freud ans Adlers schools of psychotherapy to really get him, not to mention knowledge of esotericism for his more "out there" work.

 

And since you mentioned Camus and Sartre:

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/58

@northivanastan you too ^ ;)

[SiMpLeToNiUm]

Is this bait to pull me back in again lol?? Holy fuck, I love philosophy, especially the existentialists. I got a lot out of it from a university course and it's helped focus lots of my thoughts over the past few years since. Sisyphus, Dostoyevsky, Camus, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir...you guys are tickling my philosophy spot, hahaha. Someone mentioned "God is dead and we killed him." That's Nietzsche, I believe. I also loved his thoughts on "Master vs. Slave" morality. Unfortunate usage of terms, but it had a lot to say about how people's jealousy can get in the way of happiness and how the cycle has been perpetuated since the early days of humanity.

[Redneckerz]

5 minutes ago, SOSU said:

@Redneckerz

I delved (?) quite deep into Jung myself, just didn't mention him in the thread openee because of him being a psychoanalyst, he's pretty hard to get into since you slowly need to get into his ideas and have to have knowledge of Freud ans Adlers schools of psychotherapy to really get him, not to mention knowledge of esotericism for his more "out there" work.

 

And since you mentioned Camus and Satre:

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/58

@northivanastan you too ^ ;)

I did read the Letters between Freud and Jung, which is really entertaining and too heavy on the reading :)

[SOSU]

14 minutes ago, SiMpLeToNiUm said:

Someone mentioned "God is dead and we killed him." That's Nietzsche, I believe. I also loved his thoughts on "Master vs. Slave" morality.

I love that there are two "Friedrich s" who talk about "Master and Slave", Hegel and Nietzche :D

 

@Redneckerz

I am responding in memes lmao

[Stupid Bunny]

Camus can do but Sartre is smart-re!

 

There, that about concludes my knowledge of philosophy, you can all go back to your smart ppl conversation now

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Meh, I don't like philosophy that much, I mean, the ideas of the most known philosophers are very interesting. But, IMHO, I find it boring

 

(just my opinion, I don't want the thread to become a rage bomb)

[P41R47]

I like philosophy, too.

Camus pretty much, Nietzche, too. And maybe the one from where Kierkegaard took ideas from, Thomas Carlyle, as Sartor Resartus is one of my favourite books.

 

Glad to see other members liking philosophy, too.

''But you are covering Doom with your writing!''.

 

HINT: there is a dog on that philosophy :)

 

My favourite kind of philosophy is the one that appeard on a different form of a simple monologue.

Thus, Francoise Rabelais's ''Gargantua & Pantagruel'' is not only one of my favourite novels of all the time, it is also a creative output where the man poured his philosophy in.

In line with him where writers like Miguel de Cervantes, Lawrence Sterne, Johnathan Swift, Thomas Carlyle and Walt Whitman.

More recent ones may be Gustav Meyrink, John Fowles, Umberto Eco, but over time, the satire loose steam it seems, and it become something more like a diatribe.

 

And echoing Al Pacino on ''The Devil's Advocate'', i will go with this quote to close whats my philosophy:

 

''I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I've nurtured every sensation man's been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist... Maybe the last humanist''.

 

[DuckReconMajor]

I had to take a couple philosophy classes in college and ended up loving them. I briefly considered minoring in it.

We read Plato's Republic and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the whole thing with the five regimes.

Aside from that I haven't sat down and read the big brain classics. Along with a million other books I hope to read someday, we'll see how that goes lol. 

Usually this type of stuff I'll just read about it on Wikipedia and my brain is like "ok done"

[HQDefault]

No.

 

But I can never seem to stop thinking about it so I guess I like it on some subconscious level.

 

It gives me anxiety and yet I cannot escape it.

[continuum.mid]

41 minutes ago, HQDefault said:

No.

 

But I can never seem to stop thinking about it so I guess I like it on some subconscious level.

 

It gives me anxiety and yet I cannot escape it.

The thing about philosophy is that some of it is about finding reasons not to let philosophy harm your mental health, but the debate on which reasons are good ones itself causes harm to mental health.

 

I feel for you.

[Aaron Blain]

I enjoyed Plato as a teenager, but I think philosophers are people who don't understand that conceptual thinking is only a tool, and that reality is irreducible. We need models, but a model is just a model.

 

I prefer:

 

The Bhagavad Gita

The Tao Te Ching

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Zen Buddhist teaching such as Only Don't Know

 

etc.

[SOSU]

4 minutes ago, Aaron Blain said:

I prefer:

 

The Bhagavad Gita

The Tao Te Ching

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Zen Buddhist teaching such as Only Don't Know

 

etc.

Looks like someone is a fan of religious and mythic ancient texts :D

Schopenhauer loved the Upanishads so much, they are his main inspiration :)

[Aaron Blain]

1 minute ago, SOSU said:

Looks like someone is a fan of religious and mythic ancient texts :D

Schopenhauer loved the Upanishads so much, they are his main inspiration :)

Ok I did take in a little Schopenhauer by way of Borges, but he's a little bit outside the fold, isn't he?

 

I guess I should add Emerson while we're at it, who was also a fan of Indian scripture. He wasn't a proper philosopher either.

 

P.S. Karl Marx was an economist, not a philosopher. He analyzed the important works in the field up to that point (Adam Smith, for example), and expanded upon them. Fun fact -- he worked as a reporter for the Union during the United States Civil War, because the abolition of slavery in the US was seen as a great step forward for the global working class.

[ReX]

From Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

 

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd .....

.... How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use....

.... Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.....

.... Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

The philosophy of aging.

[Taw Tu'lki]

I prefer: Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Herbert Marcuse, Noam Chomsky, Antonio Gramsci and Mao Tse Tung.

 

[Biodegradable]

I tried to get into it once upon a time. I had a friend in high school who was had Asperger's Syndrome and his main obsession was philosophy. He always had a few big philosophy books with him at all times and would spend each class with his nose in 'em rather than paying attention to whatever the teachers were yammering about. I'd try to read some of the books he'd recommend me and just talk to him, mainly about Metaphysics because at the time I found that particular school of thought to be the most interesting. Admittedly, I didn't understand most of the stuff he was reading. Hegel was especially confusing and I found the illustrated book of his life far more interesting because of the humourous, abstract art in it.

 

I can't say I ever got into it, but I guess I have my own weird association with Philosophy and all those boring, weary-looking men who questioned everything in existence because it was just a way of connecting with my friend to try to get to know him better.

[SOSU]

@Aaron Blain Wouldn't call him an "outsider", his pessimism is his character trait but he was a giant inspiration to Nietzsche and both had a lot of inspiration from hindu philosophy so they have like 2000+ years of thought behind them :D

 

@Taw Tu'lki You like Slavoj Zizek :D?

And so on and so on rubs nose.

 

@Biodegradable Don't worry Hegel is notorious for being hard to read, it's pretty much a meme :)

[Martin Howe]

I also cannot stop thinking about anything and everything when there is nothing else to do, and it's easy to get depressed by the world, especially there's nothing one can do to fix it as humans are a broken design (moral evil), we don't have the technology to do much about the world at once (natural evil), and there is only one lifetime and we cannot possibly do everything that we are capable of; this is apparently known as 'existential depression'.

 

My interest in philosophy, however, tends more to the theoretical side, foundations of mathematics, than human existence; we can't fix stupid but maybe we can reformulate arithmetic :p 

[Sunnyfruit]

19 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I didn't read the Social Contract, but one of his sub books: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. ''Wherever man lives, he is in chains'' comes from him, and he inspired Robespierre, whose influence sparked the French Revolution.

 

"Man is born good, society turns him evil" I would rather have this quote hammered in the head of children rather than the "Homo homini lupus" of our pseudo-cynical Hobbesianism.

 

4 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

I can't say I ever got into it, but I guess I have my own weird association with Philosophy and all those boring, weary-looking men who questioned everything in existence because it was just a way of connecting with my friend to try to get to know him better.

 

Plato is everything but that. It depends on the different types of philosophy and I feel like the word is pretty much devoid of meaning nowadays.

Philosophy is hard to define anyway. Many people mentioned in this thread would rather be sociologists or clergymen, but what philosophy means? Is Aquinas a philosopher? Are Averroes or Al-Ghazali philosophers? What about Confucius, or Henri de Man, or Leibniz? What about Guenon or Joseph de Maistre who conspued the word "philosopher" each in their own way?

It's a tricky domain.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Sunnyfruit