Wednesday 9 March 2011

Great Philosophy

Great philosophy is transcendental in the way that it is timeless, universal and requires little context. One can peer into the depths of a philosophy and know it speaks of truth without the cumbersome and lengthy explanations that science has to go through just to get close. Our automatic connection to great philosophy is instantaneous and revelatory because the unifying theme is humanity.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Refreshing, especially after I hearing Steven Hawking claiming that "philosophy is dead."

Jose said...

Haha yes I'd forgot about Hawking's recent assertion in his new book.

The statement is self-defeating because "philosophy is dead" is in itself a philosophical statement.

Anyway, since the beginning of man's ability to philosophize, thinkers have been trying to kill philosophy over and over again to no avail. I am reminded of Hegel's belief that philosophy ended with him. Years on, thinking has continued to thrive.

Jose said...

Two very good rejoinders can be accessed here:

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/drangiehobbs/entry/is_philosophy_dead/

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2010/09/07/hawking-keeps-hacking-philosophy-is-dead/

Tayler Moosa said...

Hm.... it seems that, while this true to a certain extent, one would not get the concrete understanding if the author was not contextualized.

Jose said...

That's true too, although I'm wondering if you've come across ideas that were so profound contextualizing wasn't necessary? That would be the kind of effect I'm thinking of.