Philosopher's Island
From Wikination
| “ | When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them. | ” |
| —Confucius | ||
Philosopher's Island is one of the seven islands of the State of Seven and the Central Nation Archipelago. It's named after the philosophers who stayed here often.
Contents |
[edit] Overview of notable philosophers
This section contains mostly side information on related subjects.
[edit] Plato
Plato (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, wide, broad-browed (424/423 BC – 348/347 BC), was a classical Greek philosopher. Together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the philosophical foundations of Western culture.
"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real.
The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights.
[edit] Confucius
The name Confucius is the latinezed version of his original (Chinese) name: K'ong-foe-tzi meaning Master K'ong.
Adept Kung asked: Is there any one word that could guide a person throughout life? The Master replied: How about shu: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself? (Analects XV.24, tr. David Hinton)
According to tradition, Confucius was born on September 28, 551 BC. Early accounts say that he was born into a noble family that had fallen on hard times and had become quite poor. His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity.
Analects of Confucius, are a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius and his disciples, as well as the discussions they held. The Chinese title literally means discussion over [Confucius'] words.
In the Analects, Confucius presents himself as a transmitter who invented nothing. He put the greatest emphasis on the importance of study.
One of the deepest teachings of Confucius may have been the superiority of personal exemplification over explicit rules of behavior. Because his moral teachings emphasise self-cultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rules, Confucius's ethics may be considered a type of virtue ethics. His teachings rarely rely on reasoned argument, and ethical ideals and methods are conveyed more indirectly, through allusions, innuendo, and even tautology. This is why his teachings need to be examined and put into proper context in order to be understood.
A good example is found in this famous anecdote:
When the stables were burnt down, on returning from court, Confucius said, Was anyone hurt? He did not ask about the horses.
The anecdote is not long, but it is of paramount importance. In his time horses were perhaps 10 times more expensive than stablemen. The passage conveys the lesson that by not asking about the horses, Confucius demonstrated that a sage values human beings over property; readers of this lesson are led to reflect on whether their response would follow Confucius's, and to pursue ethical self-improvement if it would not. Confucius, an exemplar of human excellence, serves as the ultimate model, rather than a deity or a universally true set of abstract principles. For these reasons, according to many Eastern and Western commentators, Confucius's teaching may be considered a Chinese example of humanism.
[edit] Socrates
Socrates (Greek: Σωκράτης c. 470 BC–399 BC), of the deme Alopece of Athens, was a Classical Greek philosopher. He is best known for the creation of Socratic irony and the Socratic Method, or elenchus. Specifically, Socrates is renowned for developing the practice of a philosophical type of pedagogy, in which the teacher asks questions of the student to elicit the best answer, and fundamental insight, on the part of the student.
Socrates seems to have often said that his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. Socrates may have believed that wrongdoing was a consequence of ignorance, that those who did wrong knew no better. The one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have knowledge of was "the art of love" which he connected with the concept of "the love of wisdom", i.e., philosophy. He never actually claimed to be wise, only to understand the path that a lover of wisdom must take in pursuing it. It is debatable whether Socrates believed that humans (as opposed to gods like Apollo) could actually become wise.
Socrates believed that the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth.
[edit] Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Christian Church dogma and the French institutions of his day.
The name Voltaire, which he adopted in 1718 not only as a pen name but also in daily use, is an anagram of the Latinised spelling of his surname Arouet and the letters of the sobriquet le jeune ("the younger"): AROVET Le Ieune. The name also echoes in reversed order the syllables of a familial château in the Poitou region: Airvault. The adoption of this name after his incarceration at the Bastille is seen by many to mark a formal separation on the part of Voltaire from his family and his past.
[edit] Descartes
René Descartes (French IPA: [ʁə'ne de'kaʁt]) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy" and the "Father of Modern Mathematics", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a reaction to his writings, which have been closely studied from his time down to the present day.
Descartes suggested that the body works like a machine, that it has the material properties of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics. The mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics. Descartes argued that only humans have minds, and that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional.
