Philosophy: who is the philosopher you agree with most, and why?

Question

nice one, Towanda. Thanks

Answer 1

My dad.

Got this great email today and I will pass the brunt of it on. . .

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point.
1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winner for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners .

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:
1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with .

Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.

Answer 2

I used to be a very convicted person. Especially on principle. As a younger youngster I was so disillusioned and would drop one hero justified by what ever I disagreed with. I did learn though that it would be hard to find some philosophy to live up to my perfectionist ideals and decided that a little of a lot made so much difference. Great that I could ditch labels and move on a little

Answer 3

To thine own self be true.

I agree Towanda did great. And in the end with all the people that you meet you still end up with your own brand and style of philosophy that is unique to you. Wear the garland well in the Corinth portals of life young grasshopper.

Answer 4

Aristotle -


Because he was the first to found the true principles of the nature of reality in general.

He established the ultimate foundations in *logic,* *epistemology,* *metaphysics,* and *ethics,* that allowed any legitamate progress in science and philosophy after that|


Of course he made vast mistakes in his actual scientific investigations, but that is almost irrelavent|

It would be *absolutely* impossible to know what Aristotle hypothesized on (and got wrong), without the actual scientific instruments to determine what is what in that domain (that were only available in the modern era)|

But his *methodology* of scientific investigation was right on|


And it is his methodology that legitamate scientists and philosophers have been using ever since|





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Answer 5

As far as agreement is concerned, it has to be Socrates !
He only asked, and helped us to discover the answers from our within ! His greatness was in asking the right questions in helpful sequences.
The greatest contribution was perhaps made by Gautama Buddha, who gave a sure way , perhaps for the first time in human history !

Answer 6

When I join Yahoo Answers ,,, i dont even have the slightest idea what philosophy means.... now, that i have answered and asked many questions,,,,, i come to the conclusion that the greatest philospher of all time will be OURSELVES,,,,, our true wisdom comes from our own experience, our own failure and our own lessons...


...

Answer 7

Buddha, the Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, when he said: "Everything is transient, nothing is attached".

Answer 8

Mediation techniques can greatly help to cure anxieties, depressions, & other unwanted mental/emotional states, and generates within a person a very positive optimistic viewpoint of oneself, and of life. "Buddhist 'Philosophy' and Buddhist psychology" offers more than a method of investigation. Its core techniques of meditation, mindfulness and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners, whose material comforts have not wiped out rampant emotional distress. To most people Buddhism is an ancient Asian religion, although a very special one. It has no god, it has no central creed or dogma and its primary goal is the expansion of consciousness, or awareness. But to the 14th Dalai Lama, it's a highly refined tradition, perfected over the course of 2,500 years, of analyzing and investigating the inner world of the mind in order to transform mental states and promote happiness. "Whether you are a believer or not in the faith," the 14th Dalai Lama recently told a conference of Buddhists and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can use its time-honored techniques to voluntarily control your emotional state. Yes, the 14th Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of over 580 million buddhists worldwide. Yes, he is also the head of the Tibetan government in exile. But in the spirit of Buddhism the Dalai Lama has an inquiring mind and wishes to expand human knowledge to improve lives. At its core, Buddhism is a system of inquiry into the nature of what is. He believes that psychology and neuroscience have gone as far as they can go in understanding the mind and brain by measuring external reality. Now that inner reality--the nature of consciousness--is the pressing subject du jour, the sciences need to borrow from the knowledge base that Buddhism has long cultivated. A comprehensive science of the mind requires a science of consciousness. Buddhism offers what MIT geneticist Eric Lander, Ph.D., called a "highly refined technology" of introspective practices that provide systematic access to subjective experience. Yet Buddhist psychology offers more than a method of investigation. Its core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners, whose material comforts have not wiped out rampant emotional distress. Over the past 25 years, starting with his own personal interest, the 14th Dalai Lama has set up discussions with Western scientists in an effort to further knowledge about the emotions. The recent meeting, held at MIT, was actually the eleventh in a series of annual conversations sponsored by the Colorado-based Mind & Life Institute. But it was the first one that was open to other participants. The Buddhist view of how the mind works is somewhat different from the traditional Western view. Western psychology holds to the belief that things like attention and emotion are fixed and immutable. Buddhism sees the components of the mind more as skills that can be trained. This view has increasing support from modern neuroscience, which is daily providing new evidence of the brain's capacity for change and growth! “Buddhism uses intelligence to control the emotions. Through meditative practices, such as mindfulness of breathing, loving-kindness meditation, and insight meditation, awareness can be trained and focused on the contents of the mind to observe ongoing experience. Such techniques are of a fast growing interest to Western psychiatrists, psychologists, and cognitive behavioral therapists, who increasingly see depression as a disorder of emotional mismanagement. In this view, attention is hijacked by negative events and then sets off a kind of chain reaction of negative feeling, thinking and behavior that has its own rapidity and inevitability. Techniques of awareness permit the cultivation of self-control. They allow people to break the negative emotional chain reaction and head off the hopelessness and despair it leads to. By focusing attention, it is possible to monitor your environment, recognize a negative stimulus and act on it the instant it registers on awareness. While attention as traditional psychologists know it can be an exhausting mental activity, as Buddhists practice it it actually becomes a relaxing and effortless enterprise. One way of meditation is to use breathing techniques in which you focus on the breathing and let any negative stimulus just go by--instead of bringing it into your working memory, where you are likely to sit and ruminate about it and thus amplify its negativity. It's a way of unlearning the self-defeating ways you somehow acquired of responding catastrophically to negative experiences. Evidence increasingly suggests that meditation techniques are highly effective at helping people recover from of depression and especially very useful in preventing recurrences. Medication may be needed during the depths of an acute episode to jump-start brain systems, but at best "antidepressants are a halfway house," says Dr. Alan Wallace PhD. When you have identified your major problem through meditation, whatever the problem is that is bothering you terribly, you should then sit there, relax, and call up this emotion in your meditation. Whether it is anger, jealousy, pride, envy, greed, loneliness, depression, anxiety, summon it here. Look at the essence of this emotion that makes you suffer so much. The mind is the root of all our experiences, for others and for us. If we perceive the world in an unclear way, confusion and suffering will surely arise! It is like someone with defective vision seeing the world as being upside down, or a fearful person finding everything frightening. We may be largely unaware of our ignorance and wrong views, yet present the mind it can be compared to a wild tiger, rampaging through our daily lives. Motivated by desire, hatred and bewilderment this untamed mind blindly pursues what it wants and lashes out at all that stands in its way, with little or no understanding of the way things really are. Mindfulness meditation helps us see things, people, situations, clearly – as they really are. The wildness we have to deal with is not simply that of anger and rage; it is much more fundamental than that. The tendency to be driven by ignorance, anger, hatred, and greed enslaves us, allowing confusion and negative emotions to predominate. Thus the mind becomes wild and uncontrollable and our freedom is effectively destroyed. Normally we are so blind that we are unaware of how wild our minds really are. When things go wrong we tend to blame other people and circumstances, rather than look inside ourselves for the causes of the suffering. But if we are ever to find true peace or happiness it is that wildness within which must be faced and dealt with. Only then can we learn to use our energy in a more positive and balanced way, so that we stop causing harm to ourselves and to others. The meditative techniques of Mindfulness of Breathing, Insight Meditation and Loving-kindness Meditation greatly aids us in curing depression, anxieties, anger, rage, hatred, greed, and creates Optimism within.
Excellent Beginner’s Books to read and practice are: (1) “The Beginner’s Guide To Insight Meditation” {This is a most Excellent book to get started with, providing a very Positive, Optimistic View) By: Arinna Weisman & Jean Smith. (2) “Open Heart, Clear Mind” By: Thubten Chodron (Her teacher was the 14th Dalai Lama). (3) “Working With Anger” {& other difficult emotions). By: Thubten Chodron. (4) “The Heart of Forgiveness” {A practical path to healing ourselves) By: Madeline Ko-I Bastis. And also (5) “Transforming The Mind” By: The 14th Dalai Lama.

It would definately have to be
"Siddhartha Gautama" and also
the 14th Dalai Lama.

Source: A Psychologist with Master's Degree.