I once took an on line survey that said my beliefs were close to those of Immanuel Kant. I couldn’t understand much of what Kant had to say, and what I think I understood I didn’t particularly agree with. So much for online surveys 
. I don’t know anything about philosophy beyond the names of a few greek philosophers. Oh, there’s Friedrich Nietzsche. He said one of the stupidest things I ever heard. “What fails to kill you makes you only stronger.” Maybe it’s out of context, or I don’t understand the under lying meaning, but it’s my experience that just because something doesn’t kill you doesn’t mean it can’t seriously damage you both physically and mentally. The nazi liking him doesn’t seem a good recommendation either. Any who…just curious, who are some philosophers you like?
I took only a year in philosophy at university. Most of my reading of philosophy occurred years later.
***That may be why I like Plato so much. We read Crito and The Republic. I was enthralled by Plato’s lucid thinking.
Read 'Egoism and Altruism ’ by Ronald Milo. I guess he influenced me more than any other thinker I’ve read.
Also read and enjoyed “Why I Am Not A Christian” by Bertrand Russell. He didn’t so much shape my thinking as help crystalise my thoughts .
***at the time I strongly disagreed with Plato on democracy. Today I disagree a lot less.
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PS I have not read Nietzsche. It has always been my understanding that the Nazis misunderstood him, intentionally or otherwise. I’m of the opinion that Hitler wasn’t smart enough to deliberately misunderstand Nietzsche. I’m not aware that there were any first rate minds in the Nazi leadership.
CAVEAT: Keeping in mind that I have not read Nietzsche, I’m unable to make any comment about the veracity of what follows. Could be quite wrong for all I know.
"Nietzsche’s ideas were used by the Nazi’s to justify their atrocities, but did Nietzsche actually support Fascism? "
"If there was one philosopher the fascists of the mid-20th century loved, it was Nietzsche. He was so adored by them that Hitler gifted Mussolini the complete works of Nietzsche for his birthday. The Nietzschean ideals of anti-egalitarianism, the Superman, and the will to power inspired them to act, and millions died because of it. They adored his ideas, and anointed him as the prophet of their ideology.
And most of it was due to misunderstandings and willful changes.
Nietzsche’s philosophy is purposefully difficult to read. His criticisms of the “Slave Morality” he credits the Jewish people with inventing can seem like an anti-Semitic rant from time to time. When in reality, he saw the Jews as a powerful people with a fine culture, his attacks are on their ideas: not on the people. His idea of the Superman was not a racial concept but rather a spiritual one.
He claimed that the Germans were great because of the “Polish blood in their veins”, and saw German nationalism as a dangerous joke. He ended relationships over his disapproval of anti-Semitism, including ones with his sister and the composer Richard Wagner. After he went mad, he wrote letters urging the great powers of Europe to attack Germany before it was too late."
“What does not kill you will make you stronger.”
Hmmm? I have a way to answer yes to this because I have long learned that no one is as powerful as a sick person unless it is a dead person. If only granny could see you now, she would die again. Sick people have the ability to get people to jump through hoops for them and one way to get sick and stay sick is to never recover from what might have killed you. Just hang on to that and remind everyone how sick you are and you can skate through life like a Jewish Mother.
On the other hand… Being able to recover from what did not kill you, developing an understanding of it, and being able to successfully process all that has happened, so that you can move on with your life can certainly make you stronger and more willing and able to either cope with or avoid similar situations.
I think, that which does not kill you, has the potential to make you stronger. Everything hinges on what you do with it.
I agree, I’d always thought that demonstrably wrong. A sever stroke may not kill you, but does it fuck leave you stronger.
I’d always assumed stronger wasn’t meant literally, but if it was, then yes it’s a particularly stupid claim
I actually answered that one above. No one is as powerful as a sick person. “It depends.”
I know exactly what you are saying; however, I have met a whole lot of “sick people” who literally wield their “illness’ like a sword. Being sick is a powerful way to get what you want out of life. (Being an alcoholic works as well. Alcoholics can be some of the most manipulative people on the planet. They lie to themselves and lie to others, all about how they want to get better, and then they do everything they can to just stay the way they are. Self Sabotage to stay sick and in control of the life they know and the people around them who care for them. It’s why one of the ways you can help an alcoholic is to 'Stop enabling/” Alcoholics attract enablers like shit attracts flies. They get people to take care of them by being “sick.”
YES. Alcoholism is often described by AA as a family problem.
Some one invented the concept of Codependency to specifically describe the kind of relationship alcoholics usually have. However, it seems it can exist in relationships in which neither is an addict.
Personally I aspire to the views of Marcus Aurelius…
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
although I fear I am more akin with Dennis Diderot …
“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”
I’ve always thought that science is built on facts, but does not make truth claims. This because there are no closed topics in science. EG Einstein did not show that Newton was wrong. He showed Newton is was merely incomplete.
In living my life, scientific theories are perfectly acceptable day-to-day truths. EG: That the earth is an oblate spheroid and orbits the sun. (fact) The theory of gravity (fact) Evolution (fact) Newton’s laws of motion (facts) the laws of thermodynamics (facts) If a man has his head chopped off, he will die (fact) take a goldfish out of its tank and place it on the table and it will die (fact) all human beings will die. (fact)
I’m not willing to argue everything anyone says it’s only an opinion because I think I just showed that claim is demonstrably untrue in any meaningful way.
Just did an online test. I came out with Martha Nussbaum. Had never head of her, so I looked her up…
I don’t know, sounds a bit New Age to me. In the 80’s we had an acronym for a certain kind of really wet bloke; S.N.A.G (Sensitive New Age Guy) It was used an insult, but if the bloke was really a S.N.A.G. he wouldn’t understand. Yeah, we blokes can be real bastards.
From what little I’ve gleaned, I like her. What did you think was New Age about her? Just a vibe? This quote didn’t sound very New Age to me:
I am not a pacifist - I think that violence and self-defence are often morally justified. Martha Nussbaum
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/martha-nussbaum-quotes
If only all the early Christians had gotten behind that “turn the other cheek” B.S. maybe they’d have died out. There I go with wishful thinking again. Of course, who knows what would have taken it’s place. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
Yes. This is a codependent relationship with a victim and a rescuer. No alcoholism required. That was my point and Alcoholism was just another example that is very common.
I have two personal friends, one my closest, who are functioning alcoholics. I worry that my own drinking continues to enable theirs. Though I’m only regularly in contact with one now.
When I confronted him with that suggestion, he said nothing I could do would change how much he drinks.
One day, I’ll have to look his daughter and wife in the eye, and I hope I can believe they don’t blame me, as he’s not going to live into old age.
My parents ran a pub, I’ve seen it too many times to not know how it ends.
In the 18 months since my wife left and Covid has me locked down on my own, I’ve not drunk any more than before, but I’ve not has a day without a drink since march last year. I took a week off it, just at the start, and just after my wife left a year before, just to be sure I could, and this is not a rationalisation, but I could’ve gone longer if I’d wanted or needed to.
And yes, I know how that sounds to someone who has battled addiction and alcoholism. My apologies for the arrogance. If I’m wrong, I promise I’ll come here and admit it, and ask for advise.
I live in a country where a drinking culture is endemic, and grew up in an era where it wasn’t even questioned.
My dad was a functioning alcoholic, but he could stop for months if he thought he needed to, which he did on advice of doctor to recover from liver op to remove a tumour.
My mother of course drinks as well, but nothing like my dad used to, and she tells me things now about his behaviour that saddens me.
Evolved apes, and never forget it…
Anyway I’m feeling up beat tonight, so that’s enough of that…
I dispute “The mind sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend”.
I will offer just one example to prove that statement incorrect.
In 1998 two teams set out to measure the rate of the expansion of this known universe. The results were a shock, that this known universe was continuing to accelerate in it’s expansion. They were not looking for that result, they did not expect this conclusion.
Despite their original goal, this contradictory result was retested, all calculations repeated, and they accepted the conclusion.
As I understand it, at some stage in life, I’m not sure exactly when, we lose the ability to accept new concepts.
After this occurs, when confronted with a new concept, we have three choices: We simply accept the concept as it is, reject it outright or modify it to fit existing concepts.
I don’t remember when or where I learned that ,so it may be taken as anecdotal. Can’t claim this is a universal principle, but I think it’s probably right for a great many people.
I don’t know boomer… seems to me that the same old tired concepts just get reworked, twisted in a slightly different way, and then presented as if they are something new. When you actually examine them, you find some idiot behind it all trying to be a pop psychology guru, a new age sage, a profit of the new era, of some such nonsense. Have you really seen anything NEW?
Although I don’t remember exactly when I heard that claim, it was between 1970 and 1973.
Recently? Of course not. Read a lot of self help books in the1970’s and 1908’s, including:
“You Are Not The Target” by Vera Huxley (Aldous’ Wife) Not a theoretical book, it’s full of Gestalt exercises. (they work too) My Favourite is called “Dance naked with the music”
The biggest influence on me was Transactional Analysis, starting with “I’m OK, You’re OK” " by Thomas Anthony Harris. Also spend 6 months in a TA group and the next decade reading the TA journal. That worked too.
Rational Emotive Therapy was very popular in the 80’s. Seems to have transmogrified into Cognitive Therapy (?)
Reality Therapy by William Glasser . Said to do well in an institutional setting, such as say the army or prison.
In the late 1980’s I also did some Radix (Neo Reichian psychology) It’s nowhere as loopy as Reich’s stuff on “the Orgone theory of energy”
So , no haven’t come across anything new for the last 30 odd years.
As a reply to Nogba’s quoting Henri-Louis Bergson: “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend”. If being unprepared to comprehend means my mind was set and thus unwilling to comprehend, that wasn’t the case. If not being prepared to comprehend meant I lacked the foundational knowledge to understand, then I agree. It was like talking calculus to a toddler. I lack the foundation of knowledge it would take to understand what Kant was getting at. On the other hand, I agree that the eye is easily fooled, there are magicians who make good livings exploiting this,
