Your Philosopher of Choice is ...

[Small Town Girl]

I personally like Will Rogers.

 

[Harp]

Will

I personally like Will Rogers.

Okiedoke.

 

[Harp]

Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, author of Man's Search For Meaning,
founder of the Vienna School of Logotherapy, as much a philosopher as physician.

Col. David Hackworth, a "mustang" who rose from the ranks and always
spoke his mind; irrespective of career consequence. He authored, Steel My Soldiers' Hearts.
Soldiers like Hackworth are more common than supposed, but Hack was still exceptional
and unique, and should have worn the stars of a general officer.

 

[Diamondback]

Amen on Hack, Harp. I may not agree with everything he said, but the courage to speak one's mind no matter what is always something more people need.

 

[Harp]

I don't think I've ever met anyone who likes that combination before... Is that later Wittgenstein, then?

I sympathize with Wittgenstein more so now. Less so with Foucault---
nothing original seems to have emerged from France since WWII....

 

[Harp]

My favorite philosopher is Derrida.

I think Sartre is overrated.

Derrida, though intriguing in his own way, seems to traverse over ground
covered by Nietzsche, Heidegeger and others with little demonstrable truth
and an ambiguous deconstruction fixed firmly on perpetuating nihilism.
Sartre is another loose cannon, but his socialist perspective still holds
continental appeal.

I believe Emile Zola is more of a philosopher than scribe.

 

[cgab1]

I like Manly P. Hall.

 

[Harp]

I like Manly P. Hall.

Hall is considered more the Masonic than original, and being more
Thomist Catholic, I haven't read his work.

 

[Harp]

Alexander Hamilton, provocateur philosopher, soldier, lawyer, statesman
who penned many of The Federalist Papers; and whom, despite the
salutary paternity awarded James Madison, is more the rightful
Father of the American Constitution, a document Gladstone remarked to be
the "most splendid work struck by the mind of man."

 

[Harp]

Tossed Rousseau's Emile away; again.
Though a glimpse of his embittered conscience is worth a quick look.

 

[Harp]

Kant, Lady Philosophy's "little gnome," neither atheist like Schopenhauer,
nor saintly as Aquinas; stuck within noumenal limbo, a Cartesian agnostic's
Hades.

 

[luvthatlulu]

Larry the Cable Guy

 

[DominusTecum]

I love St. Thomas Aquinas... some think the Summa Theologiae is pretty dry, but there's nothing like cold, hard, inexorable logic of absolute truths to get the blood going.

Bonaventure's philosophy is interesting too, but I don't have as much time as I'd like to read it. He was an Augustinian, whereas Thomas was somewhat novel for his time, following his mentor into Aristotelianism.

 

[Harp]

I love St. Thomas Aquinas... some think the Summa Theologiae is pretty dry, but there's nothing like cold, hard, inexorable logic of absolute truths to get the blood going.

It's all straw, as Aquinas himself reputedly quipped.

 

[Dr Doran]

Derrida, though intriguing in his own way, seems to traverse over ground
covered by Nietzsche, Heidegeger and others with little demonstrable truth
and an ambiguous deconstruction fixed firmly on perpetuating nihilism.
Sartre is another loose cannon, but his socialist perspective still holds
continental appeal.

Agreed except I don't find Derrida intriguing. But that's my problem, not Jackie's. My friend Morgan was in a seminar led by Derrida at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris just a few years before Derrida passed away, and he said Derrida was an immaculate dresser complete with pocket square, "and very handsome." So he has that in his favor.

I am fond of the pre-Socratics, esp Herakleitos; but part of this is because they wrote so little that you can say almost anything you want about their little nine-word gnomic aphorisms.

 

[ShortClara]

AYN RAND 1905-1982


-dixon cannon

Amen. She changed my life. Although, I'm not a true objectivist, as I am a Christian. Go figure

 

[Harp]

Agreed except I don't find Derrida intriguing. But that's my problem, not Jackie's. My friend Morgan was in a seminar led by Derrida at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris just a few years before Derrida passed away, and he said Derrida was an immaculate dresser complete with pocket square, "and very handsome." So he has that in his favor.

I am fond of the pre-Socratics, esp Herakleitos; but part of this is because they wrote so little that you can say almost anything you want about their little nine-word gnomic aphorisms.

Derrida smoked a pipe too; just like Sartre, very professorial and somewhat
reminiscent of Tolkein's briar; albeit without the English don's humor.

Coppleston's excellent primer, Pre Socratics is a Jesuitical Cliff Notes.

 

[Flora]

Socrates, Plato, and Voltaire. Who else is there to love?

 

[Fletch]

Nietzsche-keen!

Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

 

[Dr Doran]

Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

NIETZSCHE IS PEACHY. Except for that VERY last sentence, which for years I have considered the most adolescent, romantic, irrational, melodramatic silliness ever written.