Who is your favorite Philosopher?
@I_am_thomas21 (26)
Philippines
April 8, 2007 1:31am CST
My favorite philosopher is thomas hobbes. He posited that Man in his own nature is untrustworthy to his fellow men. Why? Because he arrived in a conclusion that we all have interests and the urge to like something meaning one of the nature of man is to go with what is good. Good is defined according to how you perceive it. Majority of people love the same good. Let's say for example, one man is into something valuable and another man also love the same thing as the other man loves. The problem here is that that valuable thing is only good for one man. The result, both man fight for that valuable thing just to attain it. Now logically according to thomas hobbes, man is at war to every men. That is the reason why he made a book called Leviathan. This contains ideas on how to prevent this notion: "life is brutish, nasty.." and he also want to raise the issue about the real nature of man. He decided that man are not political animal. Meaning we don't do things for the betterment of our fellow men but we do things that interests and benefits primarily ourselves. I'm not making a stand on thomas hobbes' views but I just want to show you how prolific his mind and how he influenced our modern day. Many of our laws or rules in our country's constitutions (whatever country are you from) are derived from his book Leviathan
1 response
@open4you (54)
• Romania
15 Apr 07
My favorite philosopher is Jean Paul Sartre. The central theme of his philosophy is the concept of liberty and human existence.Sartre believes that "man is.. what he is doing with himself "(sartre is french and is quite difficulte to translate his sayings..cause i'm not a native english speaker) "and he is condamned to be free all his existence and through this he is responsable for the tings he does". Sartre's philosophy starts from the premise that"existence precedes essence", he believes that one day man happned, arrived on this scene, or in his words, man was one day, "dehissed from the hole" and after this anomalous event his life took meaning. In his conceptin life could have no meaning unless we gave meaning to it. Haw could life have any meaning if we do not give any meaning to it.For some lifehas no meaning and they committ horible atrocities in strict accordance with their beliefs. For others life has too much meaning and they spend their lives trying to reassure themselves that they have grasped this meaning. Because man is condamned to be free all his existence he has three choices to do according to sartre: he can choose the good, or the evil, but there is the third choice_ he can choose none of the first- "i choose not to choose".
sartre says also that"i am not what i am -i am what i am not" What is meant by this is that we can never truly be what we wish to be. there are too much to say about him ... he is a great philosopher
