Today is Sunday May 10, 2009
Good Morning Friends,
Happy Mother's Day
The snap above is White Rock in the morning. I took this while at work last Friday.
The pic below is downtown Vancouver on Friday as well. There were four cruise ships in town apparently, and this is one of them. I suppose they are all on their way up to Alaska. So. I guess Karen up in Alaska might have a chance to check this boat out as well when it finally docks there.
Off to the left is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) again. I am still reading about Arthur and trying to get hold of his main ideas. You can read about him in other parts of my blog as well. We have many similarities me and Arthur do. Not just his bachelorhood, but his relationship with women is also interesting as well. He was really hard on women, but there is more to him than that so I will not hold this aspect of his character against him. His big thing was something called the World as Will and Representation or Idea. Simply put, the will is evident in all things, such as the world and the universe, and even man, since he is made up of the same things as found in the universe. The will is just that thing which is unknowable and unexplainable, but it does exist. This is the so-called ' thing-in-itself ' and is something that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) talked about as well. And, this thing represents itself in all of the objects that we can see around us; everything is the manifestation of this will. That is the simplicity of the thing and that is what I have learned so far. Schopenhauer, like other German philosophers was also an idealist; everything that man experiences is idea, but for him this idea is part and parcel of the will; it is its manifestation. Life, in this respect may be considered as a dream or a shared illusion.
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Schopenhauer was also an atheist like me, so that is something else in common that we have. And, he thinks the world is a completely irrational place and that man's only purpose in life is to survive; man is never satisfied and life is filled with pain and with wishes that are never completely satisfied; man is constantly striving for more and basically is never satisfied because of the demands of his will.
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Schopenhauer was also very interested in the idea of love. And, that makes him special as well since most philosophers do not spend too much time on this topic. So, once again we have something in common. Love is one of my areas of interest as well. I think love is a very big deal since most of us strive for this thing and it is part of all of our lives. Man needs and seeks out love; it is part of his nature in my opinion. I think Schopenhaer's failed love life forms part of his philosophy and that is why he wrote the things that he did about women.
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Finally, Schopenhauer was interested in music and its effects on man. Music is one of those aesthetic, or intrinsic value things and gets to the root of the problem of understanding man's will; music is another one of those things which relates to idea. Remember, there is the will and there is the idea, which is the manifestation of the will. The important thing to note about Schopenhauer is that he thinks that Will and Idea are actually the same thing, occuring simulataneously, such as like two sides of coin. His views are different from those of someone like René Descartes (1596-1650) and his ideas about dualism, for example; that one is affecting or having an influence upon the other. I think music is important though because it affects the ego and it makes us feel good when we listen to it. In my opinion music is a very important feature of the human animal; it soothes him and that is a very good thing. Here is what I think the importance of music is: I think music is that thing which man uses to express idea and is an emotional response to the demands of the will. It may also be an attempt by man to understand will as well, or maybe even to appease it. One final point about Schopenhauer. He thought that the emotions should be controlled. In this respect his views are similar to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza(1632 – 1677) who thought that man's emotions and desires can be controlled by simply understanding them and their origins. Spinoza is another philosopher that I have mentioned in my blog; he was also a bachelor. So, you can see why I am interested in these bachelor philosophers - they have a lot to contribute to our understanding of philosophy.
