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Biographical Information

Favorite Philosopher: Friedrich Nietzsche

Occupation: Philosopher/teacher

Interests: history, ethics, time, martial arts

Biography: The dangers for a philosopher's development are indeed so manifold today that one may doubt whether this fruit can still ripen at all. The scope and the tower-building of the sciences has grown to be enormous, and with this also the probability that the philosopher grows weary while still learning or allows himself to be detained somewhere to become a "specialist" -- so he never attains his proper level, the height for a comprehensive look, for looking around, for looking down. Or he attains it too late, when his best time and strength are spent -- or impaired, coarsened, degenerated, so his view, his over-all value judgment does not mean much any more. It may be precisely the sensitivity of his intellectual conscience that leads him to delay somewhere along the way and to be late: he is afraid of the seduction to become a dilettante, a millipede, an insect with a thousand antennae; he knows too well that whoever has lost his self-respect cannot command or lead in the realm of knowledge -- unless he would like to become a great actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and pied piper, in short, a seducer. This is in the end a question of taste, even if it were not a question of conscience.

Add to this, by way of once more doubling the difficulties for a philosopher, that he demands of himself a judgment, a Yes or No, not about the sciences but about life and the value of life -- that he is reluctant to come to believe that he has a right, or even a duty, to such a judgment, and must seek his way to this right and faith only from the most comprehensive -- perhaps most disturbing and destructive -- experiences, and frequently hesitates, doubts, and lapses into science.

Indeed, the crowd has for a long time misjudged and mistaken the philosopher, whether for a scientific man and ideal scholar or for a religiously elevated, desensualized, "desecularized" enthusiast and sot of God. And if a man is praised today for living "wisely" or "as a philosopher," it hardly means more than "prudently and apart." Wisdom -- seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and trick for getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosopher -- as it seems to us, my friends? -- lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life -- he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game...

Membership Status

Registration Date: Nov 18, 2005

Usergroup: Administrators

Rating: 97

Topics Submitted: 19 topics

Total Posts: 3245 (2 per day)

Replies Received: 279

Shouts: 680

Total Time Online: 65 days, 0 hours and 3 minutes

Submission History

Most recent topics:

• Compostional Nihilism
  
• Utilitarianism is Objectively Valid
  
• Transhumanism v. Existentialism
  
• Eternalism and Libertarian Free Will
  
• Member Profiles
  

Most recent posts:

• Perhaps. But then I can just point to my solution and say that the standard usage does not lead to an irresolvable paradox. ;)
• But the argument does not depend on bivalent logic. It depends on the thesis that an assertion implicitly asserts its own truth. That's why "...
• Yes, he probably did see a rhinoceros. And that is enough to say with equal probability that he didn't see a unicorn. Or are we now going to say...
• You are most welcome. :) It does seem ad hoc to me, at least for the present. Consider a contrasting case. When Kant argued that existence was no...
• First, I want to point out that there is no such thing as or in logic. There is v (sometimes called "vel") and ⊕ (sometimes called "aut...

Most recent shouts:

• Postmodern Beatnik [Aug 29, 2010 - 8:00 AM]: With all due respect, linhuang42, this is an English language forum. You're posts would have been deleted even if the moderator in question could read Chinese perfectly.
• Postmodern Beatnik [Aug 23, 2010 - 5:17 PM]: Most people do quit playing with toys. My point was that the way one goes about it affects one in the future. As for ego, I fail to see what setting so much store in "growing up" does to reduce it.
• Postmodern Beatnik [Aug 23, 2010 - 4:31 PM]: Casting something aside and continuing to be influenced by its previous role are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, that something has been cast aside may become the source of its influence -- like a child who carelessly tosses away a toy and comes to regret it, even though he would have never thought about it again had he waited a month and been more careful about the decision.
• Postmodern Beatnik [Aug 21, 2010 - 12:36 PM]: No one is likely to respond until the moderator who took action gets a chance.
• Postmodern Beatnik [Aug 20, 2010 - 4:30 PM]: It's worth noting that ratings don't mean anything. You can't get banned for having low ratings, and most people don't know anyone else's rating because they only care about their own.