Karl Marx-thinker
Priscilla
Marx's intellectual output is difficult to categorize for whilst his
major work, Das Kapital, translated into English as Capital, is a work
of economics, he is more popularly recognised as a social scientist
and a political philosopher. As C.Wright Mills has explained: "as with
most complicated thinkers, there is no one Marx. The various
presentations of his work which we can construct from his books,
pamphlets, articles, letters written at different times in his own
development, depend upon our point of interest ...; every student must
earn his own Marx." So today, we have Marxist anthropology, Marxist
literary criticism, Marxist aesthetics, Marxist pedagogy, Marxist
cultural studies, Marxist sociology etc. His intellectual output
lasted from the early 1840s to the early l880s and over that long
period of 40 years produced a number of works that have enriched the
thinking of those who came after him.
Priscilla
pick one thing to focus on.
By posting somethings on "Karl Marx as a thinker" I was thinking of
his ideas and what he stood for. I agree with many of his ideas. The
idea of Marxism is great to me, not very realistic in the world we
live in, but great nonetheless. I'm not ok a "few" people in the world
having so much money they dont even know what to do with it while
there are so many people all over the world who dont even have access
to basic human rights like food and water. If communism could somehow
work that would not happen, but maybe something like it where the very
rich would gladly help the very poor.... We know very well what ends
up happening in a communist society and it's not pretty. Power and
greed exist, therefore communist ideas cannot succeed. Personally I do
not mind paying taxes to help less the suffering of poor people with
education, food, housing or even possibly healthcare. These are just
some of my thoughts on Marx's thoughts. I completely respect and
understand anyone who disagrees. I guess tomorrow I could talk about
how Marx ideas are good or bad...or something like it. Maybe we could
break this down into his life, his thoughts on religion, his thoughts
on education, people he was influenced by, people he influenced, major
events influenced by his thoughts and what life was/is like in
communist societies.
Arya, Tenzin
This is Tenzin. I am sure its way too early to be emailing each other on
Nietzche..but this is a little bit of info I got online for Friedrich
Nietzsche in words. Basically he was a sad man..had a sad life...even
thought successful not quite recognized. Seems bitter with life and
everything around it..no wonder he comes up with this God is dead
theory.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He is famous for having invented the phrase "God is dead." Nietzsche was
attempting to say that God was an object and human faith was dead. He
may also have been describing Europe in the 19th century where people
were starting to loose faith in god. He believed that nothing more than
nature exists and that human beings were just advanced animals so
basically he had no faith in god.
As far as his life, It was right from the early days was quite
depressing. His father had died of some kind of brain disease while he
was just four years of age. When he enrolled in the University of
Leipzip, he was influenced by the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose
atheistic viewpoints seem to have inspired Nietzsche's trek away from
his religious roots, even though in the beginning Nietzsche was strongly
religious as his father and both grandfathers were Lutheran ministers.
It was around 1989 when he had started to write criticisms of
Christianity. He did not believe in Christianity. He only had respect
for Jesus whom he went on to describe as someone who had showed mankind
how to live. And that only Christ was a true Christian. He reasoned
that Christian values were simply a way to make the individual feel
comfortable with what they had, almost in way corrupted the person's
moral character. He thought that "people always talked of their 'faith'
but acted according to their instincts."
And with God dead, no one had anyone to blame for .He saw love as "the
greatest danger" and morality as mankind's worst weakness.He said that
this universe was a place where human beings could choose to do whatever
they liked in their life and thus produce his or her own perspective on
reality
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