Does any philosopher (or writer or poet) truly inspire you?

Question

I mean, when you read it you think this is just unbelievable genius. This sometimes happens when I read Nietzsche or Emerson or poetry by D.H. Lawrence or Lord Byron or writings by George Bernard Shaw or Herman Hessee. I ask this because I am writing a philosophy book, which is mostly finished, but when is philosphy ever finished? Could you give me some examples. Just no Kant please. And as a lifetime philosophy junky, please Dear God, no religeon.

Answer 1

Maya Angelou. She is profound yet down to earth. Very inspiring.

Answer 2

Absolutely. Love Shaw, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Rabindranath Tagore, Einstein, Gibran, Langston Hughes, Henry Vaughan, Shakespeare, Capote, Whitman, Richard Wright, John Muir, William Blake, Emerson, Maya Angelou, Rupert Brooke, Madeleine L'Engle, Yeats, cummings, I could go ON AND ON. Most recently I was inspired by a quote I read by the writer (and Nobel laureate) Pearl S Buck, that I can identify with totally:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

Answer 3

Dorothy Day, The Sacredness of Life

Albert Einstein, Strange Is Our Situation Here upon Earth

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters from Prison

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address

Answer 4

well, this woman isnt a philosopher but she did inspire me.

Ann Petry in her book The Street. its about this black single mother in the mid 1900's who is trying to raise her son and provide a better life for the two of them. it was absolutely fantastic because it does such a good job of showing what its like to be poor and how twenty different interlocking things can come together in a web... that people never see or understand. it was a great book.

i think through reading it i have become a more compassionate person. especially more compassionate to black people, especialy black women.

now, even though as a philosopher you have heard so many religions that you just dont believe anything...

havnt you ever read proverbs or ecclesiastes? written by Solomon. those are inspiring books. Solomon inspired many more intelligent people than even Plato. so maybe you shoudlnt rule him out.

Answer 5

Foucault
The Frankfurt School
Deleuze and Guattari
Quine
Putnam
Derrida

and many more, really get me excited still.

Holderlin is on of the best poets-- I'll try to understand him again.
Wallace Stevens "Palm at the End of the Mind"-- is really godly.
who else? Tales of Hoffman, Goethe, Proust, Baudelaire
yeah-- Voltaire. Shakespeare. Henry James.

Roland Barthes, Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Lyotard
are more than amusing.

Borges I want to take seriously.

Nietzsche is great, his prose is unsurpassed. I want nothing more than to run across the tightrope over the chasm and throw him into the abyss.. haha.

I'm trying to like the logical guys more: like Tarski, Carnap, Godel, Frege, Wittgenstein, Russel.. but it bores the **** out of me.

Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty I could study all my life.
Hegel is a black box, only 1 person will read him with me.

Answer 6

Marcus Arelius, Tom Paine, Nietzsche, Satre, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Toynbee. I also like An intimate History of Humanity by Zeldin and a History of Western thought by Tarnas.

Answer 7

I'm going to bring faith into this anyway; the Apostle Paul is truly an inspiring writer who wrote of his trips to Greece to help win Greeks for Christ.

Another writer I like is C.S. Lewis, the guy who authored the "Chronicles of Narnia" series.

To make this post not seem so "religious" to you, I do like Victorian authors such as Jane Austen. Her books inspired me to consider writing a book based in 19th century England (well, late 19th century). Likewise, L.M. Montgomery is another favorite and inspiration (she wrote the "Anne of Green Gables" series).

And what's wrong with Immanuel Kant? And what's wrong with combining faith with philosophy?

Answer 8

My friends and family individuals, they inspired multiple of my personality personalities that it is ridiculous and are very supportive. desires inspired a good handful of options, they gave me the most imaginative unique thoughts that for sure purely got here from my head. activities inspire alot of issues and different books or thoughts made me favor to jot down. My very proper writing replaced into inspired purely by my own mind's eye and backbone, and it particular would not get a lot extra ideal than that.

Answer 9

The Irish poet WB Yeats - in particular 'The Second Coming'

also the poem 'Ullysses' by Alfred lord Tennyson

Answer 10

Emily Dickinson