Know-thy-self

What do you think? - a light hearted look at some serious questions...

Who are you?

Know thyself, O divine lineage in mortal guise.
Why not work out your own philosophy?
Where does the world come from?
What is the most important thing in life?
How ought we to live?
Should man get carried away with his feelings?
Is it reasonable to ask the question "do feelings matter?"

What is man?

You are only a miniscule part of an enormous whole.
Children are a gift from God…but they are also very expensive.
To help you understand the world, think about how people think, rather than what they think.

"Love thy neighbour as thyself because you are your neighbour. It is an illusion that makes you think that your neighbour is someone other than yourself." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 

Horses are born - but human beings are not born, they are formed.
Don’t wait until realising you are going to die before thinking how incredibly amazing it is to be alive.

Do not take the world for granted.

Where did the world come from?
Not knowing is a step toward new knowledge.
Is it true that at sometime something must have come from nothing? Or do you believe that:
Nothing can come from nothing.
Nature is in a constant state of transformation.

Clear thinking is the first step toward scientific reasoning.

How do we solve the problem of change?
Everything flows.

Heraclitus reminded us that:
"You cannot step twice into the same river." 

"Rationalism is just an unshakeable faith in human reason." 
"Reason is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety."

Does a slave have the same common sense as a man of rank?
Or are the opinions of most people like the playthings of infants?

Understanding will always require some effort.
Wisest is he who knows he does not know.
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom.
How do we narrow the gap between reality and idealism? 
“Going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way.” 

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”  - Goethe. 

How do we solve the problem of evil? Where does evil come from? 

Do we live in a world of opposites?

Love and strife, substance and force
What is the value of equilibrium?

Go to the source.

Carpe diem - seize the day.
Memento mori - Remember that you must die.

"Life is one big question mark." - Danny Bateson 

"To be or not to be-that is the question."  - Hamlet 

"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts." 

"Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more, it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing." - Macbeth         

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep… 

"What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, and the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream…" - Calderon de la Barca 

"Once I dreamed I was a butterfly, and now I no longer know whether I am Chuang-tzu, who dreamed I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang-tzu." - Chuang-tzu

Is there a God?

Is there any will or meaning behind what happens?
Is there life after death? 

"God is God if every land was waste, God is God if every man were dead." - Peter Dass 

A Russian astronaut and a brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian the astronaut was not. The astronaut said “I’ve been out in space many times but I’ve never seen God or angels”. The brain surgeon replied "And I’ve operated on many clever brains but I’ve never seen a single thought. But that doesn’t prove that thoughts don’t exist”.

Sub specie aeternitatis - see everything from the perspective of eternity.

Where do we get our ideas from?

Can we rely upon what our senses tell us?
Is what you see what you always get?
If it is, why do you always get it?
Are you a slave of the expectations of habit?

"A chicken which experiences every day that it gets fed when the farmer’s wife comes over to the chicken run will finally come to conclusion that there is a causal link between the approach of the farmer’s wife and feed being put into its bowl. One day the chicken doesn’t get its food. One day the farmer’s wife comes over and wrings the chicken’s neck." 

Never jump to conclusions; assume a state of unconditional open-mindedness.
What is the cause of ‘everything in everything’ and which ‘all things consist in’?
Does time and space have any absolute or independent existence?

"True enlightenment is to man
Like sunlight to the soil"  - N F S Grundtvig 

Is it OK to say I don’t know what to think?
If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, would we still be so stupid that we couldn’t understand it?
Does the path of mystery lead inwards?
Is the reasonable only that which is viable?
Are we totally responsible for everything we do?

Are all men transcendent?
Are all women immanent?
Is absurdism counter intuitive?
Is hyper-realism absurd?

At what point do questions become absurd or just plain silly?

Should I eat meat?
Should I eat you?
Should you eat me?
Should we eat each other?
Is it OK to eat me if I was close to death and we were stranded in an open boat? 

Is everything as it seems? How do you know what you know represents reality?
Does it make sense to be sceptical?
Is it true that if you know that you know nothing you must know something?

Philosophers' Corner

A history of western philosophy...a philosophy timeline

Thales from Miletus 625 - 545 BC set the ball rolling.
Anaximander of Miletus 610 - 540 BC.
Anaximenes of Miletus 570 - 526 BC.
Parmenides 540 - 480 BC: "I can’t believe what I haven’t seen. But I don’t necessarily believe what I do see."
Heraclitus of Ephesus 540 - 480 BC.

Deism

God as a supreme being who only reveals himself to mankind through nature and natural laws, never in any supernatural way.

Empedocles 490 - 430 BC.
Anaxagoras 500 - 428 BC.
Democritus of Abdera 460 - 370 BC: "Many a mickle makes a mackle. Everything is made up of minimal parts."

The sophists began to get to grips with it.
Protagoras of Abdera 485 - 410 BC. 

Rationalism

Socrates 470 - 399 BC was the 'Big Daddy' who never wrote a word.
Plato 422 - 347 BC.
Aristotle 384 - 322 BC: founded the science of logic; the correlation of terms.
All living creatures are mortal; my dog Henry is a living creature. Therefore Henry is mortal.

Hellenism

The Cynics.
Antisthenes 455 - 360 BC.
Diogenes of Sinope 320 BC. He lived in a barrel and owned nothing but a cloak, a stick and a bread bag. Happy days!
The Stoics.
Everything happens out of necessity.

Monism

Zeno of Citium 355 - 263 BC.
Marcus Aurelius 121 - 180 BC.
Seneca 4BC - 65AD.
The Epicureans - 'The Garden Philosophers'.
Aristippus of Cyrene 435 - 366 BC: “The highest good is pleasure; the greatest evil is pain.”
Epicurus 341 - 270 BC: “Stranger, here you will live well. Here pleasure is the highest good.”

Neoplatonism

Plotinus 205 - 70 BC.

Mysticism

Angelus Silesius 1624 -1677.
The Semites
Israel.

Materialism

Jesus of Nazareth.
Religion of reason.
Wholesale recognition of the value of love. 
Paul 64 AD.
The Creed.
The Manichaeans.
St Augustine 354 - 430 AD.
Hildegard of Bingen 1098 - 1179.
Albertus Magnus 1193 - 1280 AD.
St Thomas Aquinas 1225 - 1274 AD.

Renaissance Humanism

Individualism

Marsilio Ficino 1435 - 1499 AD.
Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press process 1440.
Pico della Mirandola - 1463 - 1493 AD.

Pantheism

God was present in his creation

Anti-humanism

Nicolaus Copernicus 1473 - 1543.
Empirical method.
Francis Bacon 1561 - 1626.
Galileo Galilei 1564 - 1642.
Johannes Kepler 1571 - 1630.
Isaac Newton 1642 - 1727.
Mechanistic world view.

Reformation

Martin Luther 1483 -1546.
Erasmus of Rotterdam 1466 -1536.
Marsilio Ficino 1433 -1499.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 -1519.
Giordano Bruno 1548 - 1600.
Thomas Hobbes 1588 - 1679.
Rene Descartes 1596 – 1650: the father of modern philosophy.
Certain knowledge.
The relationship between body and mind.
Cogito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am.
The Baroque Period 1600 - 1750.
The Copernican Revolution.
Baruch Spinoza 1632 - 1677: he spent much of his time polishing lenses to earn a living. His work is not easy to grasp.

Idealism

Locke 1632 - 1704.
The Enlightenment.

British Empiricism

Division of Power.
G W Leibniz 1646 - 1716.
George Berkeley 1685 - 1753.
Montesquieu 1689 - 1755.

Determinism

The birth of liberalism

Voltaire 1694 - 1778.
David Hume 1711 - 1776.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 -1778.
Immanuel Kant 1724 - 1804: a professor who brought things together nicely. He drew a distinction between ‘das ding an sich’ (the thing in itself) and things as they appear to us. He also believed that reason operates beyond the limits of what we humans can comprehend. But we can ask questions about a totality of which we are only a very small part. Two things filled his mind: the starry heavens and the moral law.

The law of morals

French Enlightenment Age of Reason.
Back to nature.
Marquis de Condorcet 1743 - 1794: recognition of equality of the sexes.
Johann Gottfried von Herder 1744 - 1803.
Marie Olympe de Gouges 1748 -1793.
The Encyclopedia in 28 volumes 1751 - 1772: "Everything is to be found here from the way needles are made to the way cannons are founded."
J. G. Fichte 1762 - 1814.
Georg. Wilhelm. Friedrich Hegel 1770 - 1831: he put philosophy in to an historical context.
Novalis 1772 - 1801: "The world becomes a dream and the dream becomes reality."
F. W. J. von Schelling 1775 - 1854.

Romanticism - 1777, early 'flower power'

Treatise on the Rights of Women 1787.
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
The French Revolution 1789.
Human Rights: ‘The inviolability of the individual’.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 1789.
Declaration on the Rights of Women 1791.
Perpetual Peace 1795. Kant advocates the formation of a league of nations.
John Stuart Mill 1806 - 1873.
Charles Darwin 1809 - 1882.
Theory of Evolution 1859.

Neo-Thomism

Soren Kierkegaard 1813 - 1855.
Absurdism.
Karl Marx 1818 - 1883.
Friederich Engels 1820 - 1895.
Discovery of the eggs of mammals 1827.
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 -1900.
Revaluation of all values.
Communist Manifesto 1848: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Thy have a world to win."
Sigmund Freud 1856 - 1939.
Swami Vivekenanda 1862 - 1902.
Bertrand Russell 1872 - 1970.
Martin Heideggar 1889 -1976.
Andre Breton 1896 - 1966.

The birth of social democracy

Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 - 1980.
Simone de Beauvoir 1908 - 1986.
Leninism.
Surrealistic manifesto 1924.
The Second Sex 1949.
Arne Naess 1937 - 2004.
Eco philosophy 1980.
World Wide Web. 1990.

Bibliography

Sophie’s World - Jostein Gaarder. ISBN 1-85799-291-1.
The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. ISBN 0-00-686129-6.
The Philosophy Files - Stephen Law. ISBN 1-84255-053-5.
Philosophy - The Basics (4th Edition) - Nigel Warburton.
     ISBN 0-415-32773-3.
Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy.
101 Philosophy Problems (2nd Edition) - Martin Cohen.
     ISBN 0-415-26129-5.

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