Modern classicist?

[IrishCanadian]

Would anyone consder Aldous Huxley a philosopher, or just a philosophical thinker? His ideas are seldom brand new.... just different in their classical roots. So is he a good writer with interesting ideas or a philosopher of the twentieth century?

[rachel]

In my small opinion huxley was both a philosopher and a brilliant writer with more than interesting ideas.
There is a scripture in ecclessiates that states' there is nothing new under the son.' he might not have originated certain thought and idea but it was his from his soul nonetheless. yes i would have to say both

'and i came to the conclusion that all was vanity and striving after the wind' the teacher, ecclesiastes

[IrishCanadian]

Cool, I like the way you think, I'd say he's both too, but maybe even (to a small degree) a bit prolific. Brave new World is practically happeneing...sort of. That why i wanted to know

[PJ-]

I think that Huxley is best described as a public intellectual. Whether one wishes to describe him as a philosopher or not, one can hardly contest that he had one of the most penetrating analytical intellects of the twentieth century, which he applied to a much broader range of topics than was common amongst the British philosophers of his time.

[libernaut]

the thing is he loves explaining old ideas in a new way thats all. you can see it in the way he rights down to the very syntax. precision is his style and his original ideas are quite great. one collection i read moksha taught me a lot about his visionary experiences with psychedelics and i saw in that he was revolutionary. he brought to a world of science and technology a glimpse into the past. a realization of connection to it and all of its teachings and the necessity to learn from it. he opened eyes to trends and exhibited what is happening and will happen if we dont have the will to change for humanity itself.

[muazjalil]

I somehow find similarities between the writings of Bertrand Russell and Huxley, although i can't seem to pinpoint where in lies the similarities. Care to share your opinion on this?

[The Atheist]

I somehow find similarities between the writings of Bertrand Russell and Huxley, although i can't seem to pinpoint where in lies the similarities. Care to share your opinion on this?

Two intellectual Britons of the similar age, both from privileged/upper class background, writing in the same time period abd both being outspoken atheists. I think it'd be surprising if there weren't some similarities.

Welcome to LitNet!

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:D

[Virgil]

Two intellectual Britons of the similar age, both from privileged/upper class background, writing in the same time period abd both being outspoken atheists. I think it'd be surprising if there weren't some similarities.

I'm no expert on Huxley but I thought he was a mystic. This is basically how I have always thought of Huxley:

Whilst in the United States, Huxley wrote the Perennial Philosophy (1945), perhaps his most important non-fictional work. The Perennial Philosophy takes it's title from an expression that may have been coined by Leibniz in association with a belief that there was much common ground between religions. This book of mysticism and universal teaching of spiritual insight was regarded by the New York Times as, "The Masterpiece of All Anthologies."

In David King Dunaway's biography Aldous Huxley Recollected we read:-

"Huxley's studies with the Vedanta Society of southern California had taken him into the realm of mysticism, and he was ever more serious about his meditations. Out of this hermitage and spiritual deepening came The Perennial Philosophy, an effort to combine in an anthology what Huxley perceived as the unifying substance of the world's religions: Mysticism."

"Religion is for people who have not yet had a spiritual experience." - ALDOUS HUXLEY

In May 1953 Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gram of mescaline. The mystical and transcendent experience that followed set him off on an exploration that was to produce a revolutionary body of work about the inner reaches of the human mind. Huxley was decades ahead of his time in his anticipation of the dangers modern culture was creating through explosive population increase, headlong technological advance, and militant nationalism, and he saw psychedelics as the greatest means at our disposal to "remind adults that the real world is very different from the misshapen universe they have created for themselves by means of their culture-conditioned prejudices." Much of Huxley's writings following his 1953 mescaline experiment can be seen as his attempt to reveal the power of these substances to awaken a sense of the sacred in people living in a technological society hostile to mystical revelationshttp://www.escapefromwatchtower.com/adoushuxley.html

Or here:

In 1946 Huxley wrote a Foreword to Brave New World in which he said he no longer wanted to make social sanity an impossibility, as he had in the novel. Though World War II had caused the deaths of some 20 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union, six million Jews, and millions of others, and the newly developed atomic bomb held the threat of even more extensive destruction, Huxley had become convinced that while still "rather rare," sanity could be achieved and said that he would like to see more of it. In the same year, he published The Perennial Philosophy, an anthology of texts with his own commentaries on mystical and religious approaches to a sane life in a sane society.
http://somaweb.org/w/huxbio.html

and from Wiki on The Perennial Philosophy:

The Perennial Philosophy
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The Perennial Philosophy is a 1945 book by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK, and by Harper & Row in the US.

According to Huxley, the perennial philosophy is: "the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions" (The Perennial Philosophy, p. vii).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perennial_Philosophy



He certainly wasn't conventioonal, but I would not consider that atheism.

[muazjalil]

Yeah i guess there are sufficient reasons for finding similarities between the two, Russell and Huxley. Btw I dont think we have Russell on the Author list. If that's the case, shouldn't he be there. I mean he did win the Nobel in Literature!

[The Atheist]

I'm no expert on Huxley but I thought he was a mystic.

He certainly wasn't conventioonal, but I would not consider that atheism.

Buddhists can be atheists as well. Atheism is simply lack of belief in god/s, which I think is what Huxley had. He just had some peculiar beliefs instead. Lucky he never tried salvia divinorum


Yeah i guess there are sufficient reasons for finding similarities between the two, Russell and Huxley. Btw I dont think we have Russell on the Author list. If that's the case, shouldn't he be there. I mean he did win the Nobel in Literature!

Good point!

[muazjalil]

I have opened up a thread on Russell but nobody seems to be in the mood of writing about him lol