darwin, nietzsche and thoreau...

[Theunderground]

More direct than science or literature (which are both second hand mediums needing personal verification.) is personal experience. Benefit can be gotten from literature and even science but both are full of bombast,hot air,wild gesticulations and wishful thoughts. Most writers,theologians,post modernists,philosophers and especially scientists dont even understand themselves,so i will be tickled pink if they have any good advice to give on the human condition. If i need to make mass produce a cup i may ask a scientist otherwise forget it. Shakespeare humbles 99% of what is written to dust.

[russellb]

The end of philosophy will be when as in the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy by douglas adams we realise the only question that really matters is 'what are we going to have for lunch?' Perhaps the intellectual gas chamber of post modernism will finally make us focus fully on our stomachs. This is almost certainly complete rubbish but it seems to fit in somewhere with this thread.

[country doctor]

connect the dots, philosophy chatters, connect the dots...

and you'll soon be joining the doc in the woods...

ROAR!

[country doctor]

have any philosophy chatters found their way to the woods yet?

all you need to do is connect the dots, philosophy chatters...

ROAR!

[country doctor]

the philosophy chatters have the doc's permission to add the name of mann and the book 'the magic mountain' when connecting the dots...a nietzschian influence to be sure...but in the end the dots should still be able to be connected and a return to the woods should still be the final destination, philosophy chatters...

ROAR!

[cafolini]

I say hello, doc, and I'm glad you made your pick. I'm going with Frost, 'cause "I have promises to keep and miles to walk before I sleep."

[Heteronym]

I like all three. Nietzsche and Thoreau have some affinities. Both were deeply contemplative men who wrote from the quiet corner of solitude. Nietzsche from his mountains and Thoreau from his woods, they both went far and deep, getting as near as they could to the truth.

How much truth can social animals find living in self-imposed solitude? You'd think that would actually distort their conception of human nature, no?

[country doctor]

BUCKLE UP!

there's really only one thing you need to do in a post-darwinian world, philosophy chatters...

find your own woods and learn to dance in them...this is how you make a combo platter of herr nietzsche and thoreau...

dance, philosophy chatters...dance...

ROAR!

[miyako73]

May I know why the doc can't spell "existence"?

[Freudian Monkey]

Darwin and Nietzsche tore down my lovely fairy forest, it's all bleak and filthy now. Using Thoreau as a detergent isn't working too well, it only makes me hallusinate from all the fumes that now fill my forest. Dancing is still pretty fun though.

[ralfyman]

For a moment, I thought I read "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx," which is an essay by Foucault.

I'm also reminded of a similar sequence I realized after reading one book on the matter:

Nietzsche: Man is a power-hungry animal.

Marx: Man is a political animal.

Freud: Man is a crazy animal.

Darwin: Man is an animal.

[Tucker Hoog]

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes "....learned cattle have suspected me of Darwinism on account of this word." Nietzsche despised the English. He certainly was not fond of Darwin.

And it was Freud who believed that man was motivated by power and money, not Nietzsche. The Will To Power certainly is not what Freud described.

[osho]

More direct than science or literature (which are both second hand mediums needing personal verification.) is personal experience. Benefit can be gotten from literature and even science but both are full of bombast,hot air,wild gesticulations and wishful thoughts. Most writers,theologians,post modernists,philosophers and especially scientists dont even understand themselves,so i will be tickled pink if they have any good advice to give on the human condition. If i need to make mass produce a cup i may ask a scientist otherwise forget it. Shakespeare humbles 99% of what is written to dust.

Whishing is what our masters do when it boils down to defining the meaning of life and human conditions no matter where they belong epochally. They write from the height they have seen and every height precedes a bigger height and height is only a metaphor and all we do is come up with bulks of metaphors to interpret life. We make allusions and comparison, analogy and end up with absurdity in point of fact. Let us see life from a number of heights and yet height is only one dimension of the object. The object is not always what we sensorily perceive and Quantum Mechanics or the Hicks Boson idea today analyze things differently than the school of materialism in the early twentieth century empiricists

[cacian]

For a moment, I thought I read "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx," which is an essay by Foucault.

I'm also reminded of a similar sequence I realized after reading one book on the matter:

Nietzsche: Man is a power-hungry animal.

Marx: Man is a political animal.

Freud: Man is a crazy animal.

Darwin: Man is an animal.

Now my turn if I may.

Man is man.
and
Animal is well animal.
Two very different spellings. Two different meanings.

[Cioran]

Now my turn if I may.

Man is man.
and
Animal is well animal.
Two very different spellings. Two different meanings.

Man is an animal, nothing but an animal, sharing common ancestors with other animals via evolution.