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What did Nietzsche say? (What is your favourite western philosophy and why?)

R

Riva

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I understood what you meant immediately.

To an Fi dom, they've already got their philosophy. It comes from within.

To an INTJ, the philosophy comes from "not" having a philosophy. It comes from looking at and understanding the buffet.

+2

So very true.

Picking a favorite philosophy is something that seems really bizarre to me.

The reason you are making this comment is from the way I see it, western Philosophies aren't made to have followers.

Thus the failure of this thread.

When I made the OP Whats your favourite western philosophy and why? I was under the impression that there must be at least a few follower of these philosophies.

It seems that almost all Western Philosophies after Christianity revolves around Christianity or God or interpretation of God or denying of God.

None of them have invited followers but only invited people to accept them.
 

Helios

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“It seems to me that the regulative idea that we heirs of the Enlightenment, we Socratists, most frequently use to criticize the conduct of various conversational partners is that of ‘needing education in order to outgrow their primitive fear, hatreds, and superstitions’ ... It is a concept which I, like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities, invoke when we try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own ... The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment’ is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students ... When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures. Instead, we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank... You have to be educated in order to be ... a participant in our conversation ... So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours ... I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [domination free] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents ... I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause.”

— Richard Rorty
 

KDude

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Existentialism. In the spirit of Keirkegaard, I mean. I've little time for Nietzsche. While I don't know what the destiny of humanity is, a collective one appeals to me. Nietzsche would rather say strong individuals forge that destiny. This envitably produces far too much curbstomping for my tastes. I don't like the idea of seperating people between strong and weak. It's more complicated than that.
 

Zarathustra

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The Guardian's Review of 'Friedrich Nietzsche' said:
As Curtis Cate points out in his diligent biography, part of Nietzsche's attraction is that his work is so varied, so riven with apparent contradictions, that all sorts of people have plundered it to support their special interests and causes. By quoting selectively - as Carey does in The Intellectuals and the Masses - it is possible to turn Nietzsche into a rabid anti-democrat, but not to balance this against the tenderness and courtesy by which he set such store is intellectually dishonest. It was Nietzsche, after all, who thought that instead of praying, the best way to begin each day was, "on waking up, to think how one can give joy to at least one person that day".
.
 

KDude

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Ultimately though, he wasn't very democratic (maybe he was personally.. he never thought of himself as living up to his own philosophy.. he looked forward to someone who could). No matter how varying his views are, his starting point was always the individual. Keirkegaard's was more collective and anthropological. He cared about destiny on some grander scale. A mystery to be uncovered for all. Nietzsche is more about one person thinking he knows destiny, and then dragging everyone into it (whether they like it or not.. it'd just be a matter of overpowering them).
 
S

Sniffles

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I don't know if you can say Kierkegaard is more collective than Nietzsche, since his starting point is the isolated individual before God. He showed great concern about how geniune individuality was being squashed in the social mob -"the public". He does leave more room for authentic forms community than Nietzsche though.
 

RaptorWizard

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I'm a Spinozist!
200px-Spinoza.jpg
 

Jaguar

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Nietzsche is more about one person thinking he knows destiny, and then dragging everyone into it (whether they like it or not.. it'd just be a matter of overpowering them).

Sounds like an insecure asshole.
 

Lark

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Existentialism. In the spirit of Keirkegaard, I mean. I've little time for Nietzsche. While I don't know what the destiny of humanity is, a collective one appeals to me. Nietzsche would rather say strong individuals forge that destiny. This envitably produces far too much curbstomping for my tastes. I don't like the idea of seperating people between strong and weak. It's more complicated than that.

All existentialism is individualistic, that's the whole point, although Nietzsche lends himself more to fascism and objectivism than anything else.

And, no, no it doesnt beat socialism. Not by a country mile.
 

entropie

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Metaphysics is basically the most I like to talk about, in particular rational cosmology. But modern philosophy is intresting as well, like the philosophy of mind and conciencsce, anthropology or game theory. In essence I like theorethical physics or engineering which is in theory philosophy as well. Pondering about the sense of life or if there is a God stuff, I am not so much. Regarding the sense of the universe, I'ld be more intrested in a philosophical approach founded on actual factual research and then to ponder about what we can technically do next.

So something like a pragmatic idealist (Tho aint all idealists pragmatic ? :)).

FlammarionWoodcut.jpg
 

Salomé

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"Favourite Western philosophy" doesn't make sense to me either. Philosophy is a journey, not a destination.
Favourite philosopher, makes more sense. I think that thread exists elsewhere. Anyway, if you are still interested in a primer (and still too cheap to buy an intro textbook) here's a very easily digestible (free) podcast series which will give you the highlights and maybe pique your interest enough to explore further on your own.

http://virtualphilosopher.com/philosophy_the_classics/
 
W

WALMART

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He thought a lot about nihilism, right?


The only study I've done is the study in my mind, but I'll go with Nietzsche.

Life can just be so pointless.
 

xisnotx

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I really dislike this question....
It's like asking me which of my children is my favourite. It's almost inappropriate.

I liked Kant. He was nice and clear...no minxing issues. Made his point, provided context, gave examples, and answered dissenters. But that has little to do with his actual philosophy. His style was effecient.

Ayn Rand, simply because she was from a different school than what had been traditional. Even though her philosophy I have never gone in depth with, she still represents value. In fact, I think I'll be reading her for the next couple years..

Mill because his attempts at justifying ethical issues is comical. 'Hand of god'...guy had balls to suggest that...

Nietzsche because he slept with prostitutes...at times I want to be like 'fuck it, I'll pull a Nietzsche as well'...

Then you have guys like Richard Dawkins publishing crap like 'The God Delusion'...to be fair I've never read it, and I never will, not with that title...I mean, if the devil had a bible, he'd name it 'The God Delusion'. And to think, my own country man?


What about this Sun Tzu guy, his book is like entj on cocaine. I got half way through it and was like 'I don't know how he died, but I hope someone killed him'..

Liebniz, never been able to wrap my head around him. Must have had some really good substances available to him..

Berkeley, Spinoza, Hume, they all seemed tolerable...nothing exciting really. Just contemplating mind body issues, and proving god.

Then Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed...I mean, those are the 'real' philosophers, right? Others just write crap down in indignation...

So yeah, favourite philospher?
 

xisnotx

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For what it's worth, I enjoy...
Ethicists that favour the autonomy of the self.
Physicalist metaphysicians, it's almost a contradiction...but they exist. It's funny to watch them work around unworkable concepts.
Value philosphers, I find more poetic, and that is a criticism. Don't go on and on about something's beauty, or the nature of love, or the virtues, and call it philosophy. It's poetry...and a bad attempt at it at that.
Logic based philosophy is fun, but limited.
Social philosophies are exciting, I enjoy them...
Cultural based philosophies, I dislike.
Aesthetics, I've never been drawn to. 'Yes, it's beautiful, so?'. Though perhaps I'm being too harsh...I mean I imagine it had a hand in the discovering of the golden ratio.

Anyway, dividing philosophy into two:truth seeking philosophy and value seeking philosophy, I always have found the truth seeking philosophies (or conceptual frameworks) entertaining, and the value seeking philosophies dangerous, though necessary. The problem with value philosophies (anything social, moral, ethical) is that their main domain is people and people are sacred...it hits home deeper for a lot of people...and talking about stuff, even speculatively, can lead to a horrible human reality.

Truth seeking philosophies, it's just about things, more, so it's a lot freer in the sense that you don't have to be as careful..or considerate...or wary of being branded a marxist for no other reason than you thought it would be fun to speak on it.
 

Mal12345

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I really dislike this question....
It's like asking me which of my children is my favourite. It's almost inappropriate.

I liked Kant. He was nice and clear...no minxing issues. Made his point, provided context, gave examples, and answered dissenters. But that has little to do with his actual philosophy. His style was effecient.

Ayn Rand, simply because she was from a different school than what had been traditional. Even though her philosophy I have never gone in depth with, she still represents value. In fact, I think I'll be reading her for the next couple years..

This is the first time I have ever seen Kant accused of being clear and concise.

I like Kant for his ideas, and the beauty of the Critique of Pure Reason.

"For example, if we take away by degrees from our conceptions of a body all that can be referred to mere sensuous experience--colour, hardness or softness, weight, even impenetrability--the body will then vanish; but the space which it occupied still remains, and this it is utterly impossible to annihilate in thought. Again, if we take away, in like manner, from our empirical conception of any object, corporeal or incorporeal, all properties which mere experience has taught us to connect with it, still we cannot think away those through which we cogitate it as substance, or adhering to substance, although our conception of substance is more determined than that of an object. Compelled, therefore, by that necessity with which the conception of substance forces itself upon us, we must confess that it has its seat in our faculty of cognition a priori."

Rand acted like her ideas were sui generis. She argued against the view that a concept is only it's definition, and for the idea that a concept subsumes all attributes of a thing, whether those attributes are real or only possible. But here you have Kant subtracting all that is thinkable, which he called "conceptions," from an object in space. It is impossible to think an object that is not occupying a space. The space is not part of, or an attribute of, an object; an object is part of space. When the object vanishes, only the space it had formerly inhabited remains.
 
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