Your Philosopher of Choice is ...

[Harp]

NIETZSCHE IS PEACHY. Except for that VERY last sentence, which for years I have considered the most adolescent, romantic, irrational, melodramatic silliness ever written.

Melville thought this abysmal.

 

[Diamondback]

NIETZSCHE IS PEACHY. Except for that VERY last sentence, which for years I have considered the most adolescent, romantic, irrational, melodramatic silliness ever written.

Really? With my business, it always struck me as a caution to pay careful heed to. (OTOH, my intended career is hunting down and neutralizing "monsters"...)

 

[Dr Doran]

Harp: that's pretty punny.

DB: well, I suppose for professional assassins a la James Bond or the young Asian guy who almost kills Ralphie Siforetto in Florida on that elevator in the Sopranos, that last maxim is a good one to keep in mind. For the deluded high school misanthropes who are the largest purchasing demographic of Nietzsche in the States, it's just kind of ....

 

[Diamondback]

Doran, I was thinking that it's good advice for would-be cops or soldiers to keep in mind. Since crime and war have ways of bringing out the worst in people...

 

[Dr Doran]

Doran, I was thinking that it's good advice for would-be cops or soldiers to keep in mind. Since crime and war have ways of bringing out the worst in people...

That's fair.

 

[Harp]

Harp: that's pretty punny.

It's in the whale's tale.

 

[Dr Doran]

(OTOH, my intended career is hunting down and neutralizing "monsters"...)

That sounds very interesting. Criminal science?
Sometimes I think if I could relive my career I'd keep Ancient History as a hobby along with vintage, and I would have become a police detective or FBI.

 

[Diamondback]

Doran, actually the goal is (if I can disconnect the massive "aftermarket radiator core") to get into ROTC when I go back to college and try to pursue a career as an Army officer. "Hunt down" in this context starting small for "War on Terror" duty, then going up to military-size monsters if I can get to the theater-commander level.

On the side, I also tutor in personal-defense, so it's helped my students a lot to be able to work with someone who can "think like the bad guys" while still being committed to a defensive orientation.

 

[Dr Doran]

Doran, actually the goal is (if I can disconnect the massive "aftermarket radiator core") to get into ROTC when I go back to college and try to pursue a career as an Army officer. "Hunt down" in this context starting small for "War on Terror" duty, then going up to military-size monsters if I can get to the theater-commander level.

On the side, I also tutor in personal-defense, so it's helped my students a lot to be able to work with someone who can "think like the bad guys" while still being committed to a defensive orientation.

That is very interesting. I like your approach.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Some of my favorite philosophers are not philosophers, but I like what they say and the way they say it:

Buddha
Plato
Hildegarde of Bingen
Ghandi
Dali Lama
Teilhard de Chardin
Mark Twain
Simone de Beauvois
Edward Abbey
Peter Matthieson
Thomas Merton

I am probably missing some...
karol

 

[LadyStardust]

Originally Posted by Dixon Cannon
AYN RAND 1905-1982


-dixon cannon

Amen. She changed my life.

Agreed sincerely. I'm still a relative novice to the concept, but it strikes such a powerful chord with me, everything else pales in comparison.

 

[Diamondback]

@Doran: Well, sir, I've always believed that "with power comes responsibility", and with my particular aptitudes in certain fields, the best way to avoid being tempted to abuse those capabilities is to place myself between those who do and those they would harm. (Kind of an "if I don't actively reject evil, I might end up tacitly accepting it" sort of thing.)

Couple that to my protective instincts, and it's a one-two punch that leads me to believe those instincts are pretty much my "reason for being."

@Everyone: Rand's on my to-do list at some point, also.

 

[Dr Doran]

Plato not a philosopher? But I thought all Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. (Who said that? I forgot.)

 

[Dr Doran]

@Doran: Well, sir, I've always believed that "with power comes responsibility", and with my particular aptitudes in certain fields, the best way to avoid being tempted to abuse those capabilities is to place myself between those who do and those they would harm. (Kind of an "if I don't actively reject evil, I might end up tacitly accepting it" sort of thing.)

Sounds good to me.

 

[Harp]

Garry Wills does a good overview in his "Why I Am A Catholic".

Wills is Catholic?

 

[Dr Doran]

Wills is Catholic?

Fervent Catholic; disliked JP II; writes prolifically in New York Review of Books and everywhere else. He criticized Larry Summers a few issues ago, defending the firing which put him on my s-list. That is where I draw the line.

 

[Dr Doran]

Least Favorite Philosophers: The Frankfurt School

I have come to the conclusion (well, I came to it a few years ago) that I need to truly understand the Frankfurt School. Why? Because many of the things that I dislike the most in postmodernism and in various intellectual currents today seem to descend directly from that school. And my background knowledge of that movement is insufficient. At my university is a professor, Martin Jay, who teaches "European Intellectual History." He wrote the book Force Fields, a miscellany, and many other works. He is an expert on the Frankfurt School but too much in favor of it, I fear, to provide a good criticism of it. The only interesting critique I have found of it comes from Kevin MacDonald, a sociobiologist out of Cal State Long Beach. I am fond of sociobiology -- this makes me alone in the humanities, which opposes the approach altogether.

 

[Samsa]

Fervent Catholic; disliked JP II; writes prolifically in New York Review of Books and everywhere else. He criticized Larry Summers a few issues ago, defending the firing which put him on my s-list. That is where I draw the line.

Harp's question was not really a question; he is well read enough to know that Wills is a pseudo-Catholic.

 

[Dr Doran]

Harp's question was not really a question; he is well read enough to know that Wills is a pseudo-Catholic.

Oh.
Wills considers himself a true Catholic and believes JP II had no right to discipline him ...

 

[Harp]

Pax Vobiscum, babycakes.
Actually, I was just tryin to scare Carebear outta that igloo, since the lad's gone quiet of late.