I'm really interested in learning about what school of thought people tend to follow, so why don't we try and start a discussion about philosophy!
My favorite philosopher is probably Camus. I read a lot of his works as I was going through a pretty rough time in my life, and his concepts of absurdity really rung true with me. I especially liked how, even though he claimed the world was absurd and meaningless, he still encouraged people to seek happiness for both themselves and others. I feel like this ties in with Sen no Rikyu's ideas involving finding higher meaning in simple things.
When I was 22 I attempted suicide and wound up in hospital and for the next year I walked around in a daze wanting not to be alive anymore. On a rainy London day in the midst of that haze, I wandered into Foyle's. I headed to the coffee shop on the third floor. There was a display of copies of Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. I opened it... ... and didn't close it until I'd finished reading every word. And I sort of got my life back on track after that. So, yeah. I agree with you, Formerly_Me and deepflows, on Camus.
I hope that you don't need to read it for the same reasons I needed to read it... :)Now I really want to read The Myth of Sisyphus.
I had a pretty similar experience. My mom died when I was 14 and I felt I had nothing more to live for. For two years I deeply considered suicide and even attempted it because I didn't feel the world needed me. Sisyphus was the first thing I read by Camus, and it really opened my eyes. I went on to read the Stranger and the Plague as well. I tried reading and connecting with Sartre, but I didn't feel like he understood why life was worth living. Camus did. That's why I feel Camus is one of the greatest philosophers. He may have preached that life is absurd, but he also showed why that wasn't bad. He trekked down the existential path and found something much better than nihilism.
Immanuel Kant, specifically his ideology on ethics. Kantian Deontology was a huge turning point for me in college. I remember learning about the flaws in modern moral standards (Golden Rule (Catholicism)). The categorical imperative at the time I thought was an amazing idea. Mostly his ideals about treating humanity as a means and an end really made sense. He believed in a universal law which in some regard I do believe in. Reading and taking classes on his work played a huge role on my moral standard.
Rahula had some very similar ideas to Kant when it came to the CI and moral ethics. I think you'd probably enjoy some of his works!
No problem! I like eastern philosophy a lot, and it's always cool to share with others.
What sort of stuff have you read on Eastern Philosophy?
Indian: Well, I'm a Buddhist, so I've read the Dhammapada, the Kalama Sutta, the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, and most of the Pali Canon. I've also read some of the Mahabharata (the Hindu epic that includes the Bhagavad Gita). Chinese: I've read the Art of War, the Tao Te Ching, Analects, and parts of the Book of Ritual. Japanese: A few of Sen no Rikyu's poems (most of my information on Rikyu comes from the Book of Tea, though), and I've read of Bushido (I haven't read any primary documents).
I've read the most about the Buddha and his teachings, so that's what I'm most knowledgeable about. I don't know a lot about Mongolian philosophy or Eastern Russian. Everything else pretty much derived from the Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita, Confucius, and Lao Tzu. But I'm always interested in finding more things to read about from any culture! My current interests are in Sub-Saharan African tribes (if you were interested, hahaha). Thanks for asking! :)
And what sort of Buddhist are you again?Theravada,Mahayana or one of the schools of Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism?
I'm sorry, I didn't answer that! I consider myself Theravada, but I guess calling myself a Buddhist is a little insulting to true Buddhists because I really only follow the moral philosophies.
'Theravada Buddhism-influenced' would be more accurate,although quite a mouthful XD.
Yeah, that's why I usually just say I'm Buddhist! :) But it's awesome that you actually knew about the other kinds of Buddhism! Most people don't even really inquire that far into it.
I kinda learned about it from the disputes it had with other (Indian) philosophical schools as well(that part in particular is my favourite about Buddhism).
Definitely Foucault! The everything is a social construct perspective is exactly how I think, plus his geneologies are fascinating. Plus I try to make up for his weakness on gender with a smattering of feminists theorists. This: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Read-Foucaults-Discipline-Punish-Theory/dp/0745329802 Is a really good way to get a lot out of Discipline and Punish without much prior knowledge.
I took a gender in politics course, and my professor had this deep interest in Foucault and his ideals on gender. I took the class a while ago, but what I remember Foucault was very much about the fluidity of structure. He believe that we constructed almost everything in reality, and because of this need to structure/categorize we were holding ourselves down. Although I don't remember us ever deciding what Foucault's end goal was. I'm wondering if you could shed some light on anything I've missed, and your perspective on Foucault. I mean in the class we studied gender and its place in different societal structures across the ages, and I remember distinctly that no one in my class had any idea how Foucault would structure society.
Well you're not massively far off. The need to structure/categorise isn't holding us down, it makes us possible. Imagine life or knowledge with no categories of anything at all. It's senseless chaos. So in that sense you can't throw it out, but Foucault did believe human bodies were subjected to this process to a greater and more deliberate degree in the late modern era than ever before. As an example, older notions of good soldiers emphasised personal bravery or prowess, but in the restructuring of more recent militaries discipline and machine-like consistency are emphasised. He says something in Discipline and Punish about how after the Napoleonic reforms there were 22 discrete muscle movements performed in proper sequence to bring one's rifle to the firing position. So we can see the body being more tightly controlled than brave heart swinging a claymore over his head and hollering about freedom. You were right to miss seeing how Foucault would structure society. He was curiously reticent about a lot of political issues. He was noted for his blase response to the '68 uprisings. He was broadly leftist, but squeamish about party affiliations and pretty idiosyncratic generally.
So, what were his views on lets say morality? Did he find that it was purely structured by the society it resided in? Would he condone what the majority would define as moral? Or would he value all moral codes regardless if it was believed by the majority or not? I mean I know he talks a lot about how he observes society, but it never seemed like he was ultimately deciding on a specific action of the individual to follow. Are we supposed to combat some categories? Are we suppose to accept categories? I wish I still had my notes, and thanks for the responses.
Morality, like all social constructs (I.e., like almost everything) is structured by the society is resides in, mostly non-deliberately. Insofar as morality is one construct at all. That word means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and a lot of things which clearly bear on morality aren't marked as such. That doesn't mean you just embrace cultural relativism. Surely it's possible to critically and politically engage with the various moralities you find out in the world, although Foucault's work (and post structuralism in general, really) kind of begs the question of what perspective you do that from. He wouldn't have committed to a moral code, in my opinion (and I'm talking out of my ass even more so now than I have been) because it's such an inflexible thing to do, and typically it's an uncritical thing to do (I.e., you just accept a socially constructed position without fully appreciating how it came about it what it does, though of course you don't necessarily make that mistake). Better to be primarily an analyst or a historian of modernity as Foucault called himself, taking pragmatic but well researched positions where political issues you find significant arise.
I think I understand a bit more now. Some of what you say already feels familiar, but some of it not so much. I'm not sure I'm in agreement with his thinking especially on an individual level. Things just seem too fluid in his perspective. It seems like at a certain point he doesn't really believe anything is concrete or even approaching concrete. How do you begin to define the self, if at all in that case? Thanks so much for responding so thoughtfully btw.
Bucky Fuller
because who doesn't love a crazy genius dreamer ?
I like Camus, read a lot from him when I also was going through one of my frequent rough times. My favorite would have to be Slavoj Žižek, though. Not anywhere near Camus as far as those fundamental questions of our existence go - but he delivers very sharp and clear observations and explanations of our times. If we could agree to count him as a philosopher, I'd go with Noam Chomsky ;)Slavoj Žižek (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher and cultural critic. He is currently a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University,[1] and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.[2] He writes widely on a diverse range of topics, including political theory, film theory, cultural studies, theology, and psychoanalysis.
I'm going to be really boring here and say Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. Aristotle was the philosopher that I was first introduced to. While he's not write about a lot of things he certainly was the most important philosopher in history, and that's something I respect. I love JS Mill because he was the first philosopher whose work I read from cover to cover and to this day I still agree with him on a lot of topics.
I will go with Karl Jaspers, a Catholic existentialist similar to Kierkegaard, though much more readable. His Way to Wisdom was the first philosophy book I read, and it really turned me on to the discipline. I've always found Sartre inexplicably dark, Camus too, and Kierkegaard practically unreadable, but less heavy. Jaspers is like the slightly tipsy uncle who's the most fun and all the children adore. He isn't as eloquent Sartre, but he can be a lot more fun in academic works. My admittedly fuzzy memory of Way to Wisdom is that it is saying, to a certain extent, "So what if there is no inherent purpose to life, are you really going to let that stop you?" Unfortunately, Jaspers didn't leave many works behind that have been translated to English. And I can't say at this point that I totally agree with his philosophy. But his approach to it, focusing so much on the end goal (wisdom) is something that really appeals to me.
I'm not exactly well-read, but Peter Wessel Zapffe's view of the human condition, as set forth in The Last Messiah, resonated with me. He considers the over-evolved human intellect to be the source of existential anguish, due to its inherent need to find meaning in a fundamentally meaningless world, and identifies four "consciousness-limiting" coping mechanisms by which people stave off panic. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment.
Oh dear, I don't really have any. Plato, Peter Singer and Wittgenstein were the most influential ones when getting into philosophy. Hume has been the latest one I read. Michel de Montaigne is a superlative writer, but I felt a bit difficult to get into his philosophical side, so much that I don't wonder why he's more popular with lit crowd.
Hey,fancy seeing you here as well!(I'm shannondoah on Reddit).
I think anyone is qualified to be a philosopher. I don't have any say as to whom you find most appealing. Hell, if you wanted to, you could consider your grandmother to be your favorite philosopher. What is it that you like about Rumi? I've actually never heard of him, so I'm pretty interested in this :)
Epicurus, his philosophies just resonate with me, existing for pleasure, and avoiding pain, and to go slightly more in depth, short term pain for long term pleasure beats short term pleasure that could lead to long term pain. It's so simple and perfectly describes how I think.
I love him! This is a very very good way of explaining, why the things that deemed bad are really bad. No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.