read the 100 most influential books ever written: the history of thought from ancient times to today by martin seymour-smith
there is certainly no room here for the archdunce dawkins
the i ching really originated in the 2nd millenium b.c.e., when the shang and chou people used turtle shells for divination. heat was applied to the shells until they cracked, and the lines thus formed were "read"
the author of the iliad..was very well aware that he was creating a legend
an awareness that injuries to either side of the head manifest in effects on the other side of the body
a pagan greek, his philosophy became the pillar of christian doctrine (but luther called him "stinking")
a born categorizer, we owe to him the very way we classify knowledge: with his huge library, one hundred and fifty-eight constitutions of greek states, his scientific specimens, he introduced logic, metaphysics, biology, meteorology, politics, ethics, rhetoric, psychology, and physics to the world. it is here above all that he is not just a footnote to plato
all societies, with their religions, customs, traditions, and laws, have had their professional chroniclers or remembrancers. many of those have been, and still are, professional liars, obedient bureaucrats, or "statisticians" - while others, mostly as ungifted, have done and still do their honest best
all poetry was resolutely banned from plato's ideal city
anarchy - used here in the broad sense of the idea that human beings could get on better without such things as flags (tolstoy called a flag a "dirty piece of rag on a stick"), the media, central governments of polite psychopaths
since possession of such books had by then been made into a criminal offense, some monk - between about 350 and 400 c.e., the date of the making of the books - hid them from the marauding soldiers of the church triumphant
is augustine's "god" no more than the hysterical projection of a passionately intelligent man who has finally given up on making sense of his life?
augustine is the key figure in the transition from pagan to christian philosophy, but is nonetheless more a theologian than a philosopher proper..he argued that election (to heaven) is by god's grace and therefore predestined; it was left to calvin (whose theology is peculiarly weak) to invent eternal and arbitrary hellfire
everything apart from love of the most beautiful god is anguish of spirit, even if it is sugar-eating
by 1323 he was canonized. though he had not performed the necessary miracles to qualify for this, the pope simply pronounced that the answers he had given to each of the vexing questions was in itself a miracle
but erasmus would not change sides: he saw that the consequences would become as disastrous as their causes - as they very soon did in the person of the demonic calvin
the prince (il principe) was supposed by many to have been written by the devil himself
rabelais's method was laughter. there is no laughter, there would be no reason for laughter, if life were reasonable and just
the rest of his life, travels apart, he spent in his library tower, which may be visited today. on the walls of its small study he had engraved (in latin), "in the year of christ 1571 . . . michel de montaigne, long wearied of the courts and of public functions, while still in health, retires to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in quiet and security he hopes, if the fates allow, to pass what may be left him of a life already half spent, consecrating this ancestral dwelling and sweet retreat to his liberty and tranquility and leisure
in 1609, the year in which a crooked publisher issued a pirated edition of the sonnets of shakespeare, kepler published the new astronomy..that mars moved around the sun not in a circle but in an ellipse (a figure regarded at that time as imperfect and inappropriate because it has two foci)..by 1619 in the harmony of the world, kepler could clearly enunciate all three of his laws: the last was that the square of a planet's year (the time it takes to orbit the sun) is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun
je pense, donc je suis
no philosopher of any nationality has surpassed him in the writing of prose (only a very few, such as schopenhauer, have equaled him)
hobbes will only say that the worst despotism is better than anarchy (he means by this word total disorder, not what anarchists mean)
spinoza is the father of modern rational bible study. he thought of jesus as no more than the last of the great hebrew prophets..he refused an offer of a chair of philosophy at heidelberg on the characteristic grounds that a philosopher needs to be independent
experimentation in science is uncertain simply because we can do no more than imitate nature when we test her alleged laws
it was poetry, not philosophy, that the ancients had possessed
the church refused him burial, but he had prepared for that and so was buried surreptitiously in consecrated ground..in 1791 his remains were transferred, in triumph, to the parthenon
refusal to accept any kind of explanation of existence
in 1741 he met therese le vasseur, a hotel servant girl with whom he stayed for the rest of his life; he married her in 1768. he had five children by her, all of whom he placed, to - as we read in the confessions and elsewhere - his eternal and bitter regret, in the orphanage of the enfants-trouves
rousseau is not an anarchist
a thinking man's life must be a series of retractions
hegel was at the university of berlin from 1818 until his death in the cholera epidemic of 1831 (from which schopenhauer escaped)
his philosophy is precisely - this is its only precise feature - an account of the unknowable
(edmund burke gave an english definition of schadenfreude when he wrote, in on the sublime and beautiful: "i am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.") schopenhauer shrewdly saw this as a further perversion of envy
søren said that "humanly speaking," he had been "insanely brought up"
he was himself constituted of a number of different and even warring selves
the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it
is there maybe a kind of "logic of the heart" that does not resemble the logic of reason?
his paper was not rediscovered until 1900, thirty-four years after it had been published, and sixteen years after his death. the discovery was made by hugo de vries, a dutch biologist then in his fifties, and by two others independently. yet, fearsomely complex though the modern science genetics is, mendel's findings have on the whole stood up so remarkably well that he is universally regarded as its father. it was not until his paper, with its clearly expressed mathematical arguments, was rediscovered that progress could be made in what was to become genetics
he freed, or tried to free, his serfs, who were not grateful to him and did not understand him
only to die shortly afterward at a railway station
nietzsche, as well as being quite astonishingly acute and wise, probably the greatest aphorist who ever lived, could all too often be - to use a rare word that is, however, simply too apt to avoid - horrisonous ("sounding horrible"). he had humor, irony, and wit; but with tact he dispensed entirely, as quite beneath contempt
a death wish, which represents freud's direct and well-acknowledged debt to schopenhauer
the man who became his greatest rival, on the grounds that freud exaggerated the importance of sex over spirituality, carl gustav jung, had a good deal more varied experience of it as an extramarital activity
neither of these men, to the considerable irritation of some psychologists, were qualified psychologists
little of it is really original, but jung was one of those (like freud himself in psychology or adam smith and keynes in economics) who can sum up the concerns of an era at a stroke, and in a convincing manner
it is not altogether fanciful to see wiener's work as a whole as an effort to defeat chaos, or, rather, to limit its influence. his own philosophy, considering who and what he was, has been somewhat neglected. for, although he was not a philosopher, his work continually impinged upon what philosophy at least ought to be
it has even been reliably shown that the crime rate in particular communities has been substantially improved by the practice of transcendental meditation
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