sadplato

  German philosopher, existentialist, and a notoriously cryptic writer, whose texts are said to be "untranslatable", even in German!  Heidegger was always interested in technology at its simplest but in 1954 he published an essay to uncover what technology really is. This was almost a decade after World War II which had caused unprecedented havoc and wreckage, primarily due to technology (atomic bomb). This was also a time when innovation was growing at an immense speed, and this concerned Heidegger deeply. He set out his views in the essay, The Question Concerning Technology. The essence of technology is by no means anything technological. It's not just pushing forward innovation for efficiency, it is essentially human activity, an instrument, or a means to an end.  This instrumentality implies causality. You do this because you want to do that. This happens if you do that, and so on. He uses the Aristotelian theory that all physical objects have four causes, in order to...

"No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?" - Bertrand Russell Philosophy has been thoroughly obsessed with matter ever since its inception. It was Thales who thought matter is water, the first principle of all things. Anaximander thought it could not be any natural element, and thus called his matter apeiron; an indefinite substance from which everything is born. For Anaximenes it was air, for Pythagoras numbers, for Plato particulars, and so on. Even today, philosophically, "matter" is used to distinguish material objects of the universe from the spiritual. For Russell, philosophy has been far too occupied with repeated attempts to answer the same questions. He aims to clarify the most basic problems of philosophy, like the debates on existence and nature of matter.   In Chapter 1, Russell asked two questions: Is there any such...

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."- Bertrand Russell  Bertrand Russell is widely regarded as the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, which is no easy task for his lifetime also saw the likes of Wittgenstein, Sartre, Heidegger, Rawls, and more. More than providing a breakthrough perspective or a quantum leap in philosophy, he did what philosophers rarely ever do (with the exception of Voltaire). Russell systemized the entire Western philosophical tradition in his most influential text, "The History of Western Philosophy", and brought to the masses such knowledge which was previously confined to academia and elite inner circles. Quine famously remarked that it has been this contribution of Russell's (of providing intricate philosophical theories in layman language, from Thales to Dewey) which inspired his generation to take up this profession.  Russell...