

What Is a Philosopher? - grellas
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/what-is-a-philosopher/?hp

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mburney
A quote from Leo Strauss that I think best describes philosophy: "Men are
constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of
competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to
mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on
the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle,
if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm."

~~~
gnosis
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not
worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will
believe it." -- Bertrand Russell

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_delirium
What I find more interesting than this piece itself is the fact that it
appears to be the first in a newly-launched NYT philosophy blog:
[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/introducing-...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/introducing-
the-stone/)

Not sure what I think about the idea of an NYT philosophy blog. Maybe a good
idea? And why now? We'll see, I suppose.

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known
"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad
one, you'll become a philosopher." --Socrates

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DuncanIdaho
I love this remark... Since it is so true - as far as I have observed, what
gets people into philosophy is (usually) a misfortune in relationship or some
other traumatic experience.

Maybe that's why more men are into philosophy. Because male angst is so
different from female - an insecure male is much less likely to get a sexual
partner than insecure female.

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_delirium
I think that's probably true of a bunch of "thinking about
existence/meaning/etc." occupations. My sense is that biographies in line with
those of Van Gogh, Goya, Kafka, Vonnegut, etc. are quite overrepresented among
both novelists and painters, for example.

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sketerpot
In general, if you're not sure if someone is a philosopher or not, just add a
prefix to "philosopher". If you call someone, for example, an "urban
philosopher", nobody really knows what that means, and therefore they're going
to have a hard time arguing against it. And the rest of us can get along in
peace without being drawn into another semantic debate.

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Jd
There is a good book on the concept of Leisure by Josef Pieper called Leisure:
The Basis of Culture

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_delirium
I like Bertrand Russell's essay on the subject, also:
<http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>

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Jd
Excellent. Will read.

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zeynel1
Is there a philosophical reason why he is asking "what" instead of "who" is a
philosopher?

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khafra
Probably more of a practical reason. If you saw a headline reading "Who is a
philosopher" you might mentally answer "Plato, Heidegger, and Bostrom;" and
not read the article.

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zeynel1
So he means "what does the word philosopher mean"

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mkramlich
A philosopher is whatever you define it to be.

A scientist is, well, you'd have to come up with a theory, then a testable
hypothesis, etc.

But for a philosopher, yeah, just go ahead and make something up. :)

