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Nietzche also died penniless and alone in an insane asylum. His philosophy is more of a cautionary tale than anything else.
by ramesh31 2y ago
Nietzche also died penniless and alone in an insane asylum. His philosophy is more of a cautionary tale than anything else.
- FredPret 2y agoBy that measure, perhaps no philosopher is worth listening to. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad idea, just that it would be an interesting... philosophy
- IncreasePosts 2y agoIf Socrates was so smart, why is he dead?
- david_shi 2y agoGreat question, instantly invalidates everything he ever said or did
- squircle 2y agoIf you ain't immortal, get outta here!
- flextheruler 2y agoIt’s funny you chose Socrates for this example because I believe he isn’t confirmed to have been a real person but rather a rhetorical character created by Plato. Might be getting this wrong or new evidence has come to light, but I remember reading that theory years ago.
- imchillyb 2y agoPlato recounts the moments of Socrates' death in Phaedo. I'd suggest giving that a read, and then ponder the consequence of angering the state. Your very existence may be questioned by future generations. Your motives relegated to insanity or a fiction by those who remain.
- malloryerik 2y agoMemories deceive; it happens to me and I'm guessing to everyone. Odd that Aristophanes would have written a comedy about this character whom Plato would only invent years later, and so also that Xenophon, a student of Socrates like Plato, also wrote about him. Indeed Socrates lived and breathed just like you and I do; he drank water and wine and took dumps in the morning, and especially asked questions. But your memory was correct in the sense that we can't know how similar Plato's Socrates as written in the dialogues was to the real man, and often in the middle and later works it becomes clear that Plato's Socrates has become almost entirely a mouthpiece for Plato's own ideas. In that sense, Plato's Socrates, especially after the early dialogues, was a indeed fictitious rendering of a real man. Most of the named characters in Plato were (largely fictitious?) renderings of real people. Personally, I like to remind myself of the fact -- kind of meditate on it to get it into me -- that the long gone people of distant eras were indeed just as real then as you and I are now. Of course we know this consciously but I find it's easy to neglect and stop feeling. Ancient Egyptians or Song Dynasty Chinese or even 5th and 4th century BCE Athenians become flat just-so stories, and when that happens I lose touch of the deep and pregnant mystery that lives in the gulf between historical record, popular imagination, and whatever it was that the people of the past actually experienced, however they actually thought and related. When I (authentically) reconnect with that mysterious reality it lights up a sense of awe in me, and reconditions and renews my relationship with the present, myself and others. I guess, as Plato said, philosophy begins in wonder.
- xNeil 2y agoFrom Theodore Alois Buckley's introduction to Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad: "When we have read Plato or Xenophon, we think we know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant."
- tithe 2y agoI'd say that this is a bad idea: one of the points of education is learning from other people's mistakes! (I'm not directing that statement at Nietzsche, but rather thinking of the wealth of practical advice from say, Epictetus.)
- squircle 2y agoYeah, like, don't hack quantum computers.
- squircle 2y agoListen but... make your own philosophy?
- IncreasePosts 2y agoIs the cautionary tale: make sure you're born after penicillin is invented?
- hurrdurr57 2y agoTesla also died penniless and alone. I guess the whole electricity thing wasn't a very good idea after all.