what do you think is the most important and life changing philosophy theory out there?

Answer 1

Existentialism!!!

Have you noticed that the most common questino here in Yahoo Answers involve different versions of "What am I here for?"

Answer 2

IN "THEORY" I doubt there are any, at least in the sense that they remain "valid" or followed.

What I most like about philosophy beyond my degree, is that it's a lot like a meal.

It's considered, even designed into a recipie, cooked (often at a simmer) and at some point, served. It may be ingested? It may be accepted, or rejected, as digestable or unpalatable? It may, and usually is, altered cyclically, and the original 'Philosopher" may either be respected, but found to be inaccurate, or totally discredited and shunned, never to serve an edible meal again.

Steven Wolf

Answer 3

I would suggest Gilles Deleuze's work. His most accessible work is called "Spinoza: Practical Philosophy."

Through his work which weaves together Bergson, Hume, Spinoza, and Nietsche, I've come to understand, among other things, the extent to which we create each other, for better and for worse, over time and in the moment.

It transcends the clumsy dialectic of Hegel, with its emphasis on opposition, to include symbiosis and other forms of positive interaction, placing a premium on passion and desire. Deleuze's work with Guattari is very important in this regard. The most accesible of these is probably "Anti-Oedipus."

Answer 4

By far the answer to your question is religion, aka spiritual philosophy. If you make religion an exception to your question, then the answer by far is that philosophy which is anti-religious, most notobly that of Pierre Bayle who wrote that there are natural laws that drive natural events (such as comets) and God has nothing to do with it. Man is good because of man's law (that will strip him of his freedom), not God's law.

Answer 5

Holistic Instrumentalism.

Answer 6

the Aesthetics Theory

Answer 7

Each and every person has their own, and each and every one is equally important and life-changing.

Answer 8

the one contained in The Dhammapada

Answer 9

And can not think of a philosophy alone doing what they all do together in their dialectic. Perhaps the zenith or highest development is in Hegel, but Hegels impact was actualized through Karl Marx, though not in its wholeness. Wholeness for the individual is uncertain as contingent conditions differentiate for each individual.

The Judgment is negative, the Will is positive.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/sl_ii.htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/li_terms.htm

'In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. '

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm

"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand
it." (Einstein.)

'The Phenomenology of Mind

C: Free Concrete Mind: (BB) Spirit

B: The Spirit in Self-Estrangement

III. Absolute Freedom & Terror (1)

Φ 582. CONSCIOUSNESS has found its notion in the principle of utility. But that notion is partly an object still, partly, for that very reason, still a purpose, of which consciousness does not yet find itself to be immediately possessed. Utility is still a predicate of the object, not a subject, not its immediate and sole actuality. It is the same thing that appeared before when we found that self-existence (being-for-self) had not yet shown itself to be the substance of the remaining moments, a process by which the useful would be directly nothing else than the self of consciousness and this latter thereby in its possession.

This revocation of the form of objectivity which characterizes the useful has, however, already taken effect implicitly, and as the outcome of this immanent internal revolution there comes to light the actual revolution of concrete actuality, the new mode of conscious life-absolute freedom.'

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phc2b3.htm

'Φ 589. Just as the individual self-consciousness does not find itself in this universal work of absolute freedom qua existing substance, as little does it find itself in the deeds proper, and specific individual acts of will, performed by this substance. For the universal to pass into a deed, it must gather itself into the single unity of individuality, and put an individual consciousness in the forefront; for universal will is an actual concrete will only in a self that is single and one. Thereby, however, all other individuals are excluded from the entirety of this deed, and have only a restricted share in it, so that the deed would not be a deed of real universal self-consciousness.

Universal freedom can thus produce neither a positive achievement nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the rage and fury of destruction.'


'Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy

Section Two: Period of the Thinking Understanding

Chapter I. — The Metaphysics of the Understanding

A 2. SPINOZA
The philosophy of Descartes underwent a great variety of unspeculative developments, but in Benedict Spinoza a direct successor to this philosopher may be found, and one who carried on the Cartesian principle to its furthest logical conclusions. For him soul and body, thought and Being, cease to have separate independent existence. The dualism of the Cartesian system Spinoza, as a Jew, altogether set aside. For the profound unity of his philosophy as it found expression in Europe, his manifestation of Spirit as the identity of the finite and the infinite in God, instead of God's appearing related to these as a Third — all this is an echo from Eastern lands. The Oriental theory of absolute identity was brought by Spinoza much more directly into line, firstly with the current of European thought, and then with the European and Cartesian philosophy, in which it soon found a place.'

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpspinoz.htm



'In the history of philosophy we meet with Substance as the principle of Spinoza’s system. On the import and value of this much-praised and no-less decried philosophy there has been great misunderstanding and a deal of talking since the days of Spinoza. The atheism, and as a further charge, the pantheism of the system has formed the commonest ground of accusation. These cries arise because of Spinoza’s conception of God as substance, and substance only. What we are to think of this charge follows, in the first instance, from the place which substance takes in the system of the logical idea. Though an essential stage in the evolution of the idea, substance is not the same with absolute idea, but the idea under the still limited form of necessity.
®

It is true that God is necessity, or, as we may also put it, that he is the absolute Thing: he is however no less the absolute Person. That he is the absolute Person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached: and on that side it falls short of the true notion of God which forms the content of religious consciousness in Christianity. Spinoza was by descent a Jew; and it is upon the whole the Oriental way of seeing things, according to which the nature of the finite world seems frail and transient, that has found its intellectual expression in his system. This Oriental view of the unity of substance certainly gives the basis for all real further development. Still it is not the final idea. It is marked by the absence of the principle of the Western world, the principle of individuality, which first appeared under a philosophic shape, contemporaneously with Spinoza, in the Monadology of Leibnitz.

From this point we glance back to the alleged atheism of Spinoza. The charge will be seen to be unfounded if we remember that his system, instead of denying God, rather recognises that he alone really is. '

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slactual.htm#SL151n

Answer 10

I think it is the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.