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Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts

2011-10-10

The Incoherence of the Incoherence

"Ghazali, who was born in the middle of the eleventh century, is one of the most remarkable and at the same time most enigmatic figures in Islam. Like St. Augustine, with whom he is often compared, he has told us in his autobiography how he had to pass through a period of despair and scepticism until God, not through demonstration but by the light of His grace, had given him peace and certitude. This divine light, says Ghazali, is the basis of most of our knowledge and, he adds, profoundly, one cannot find proofs for the premisses of knowledge; the premisses are there and one looks for the reasons, but they cannot be found. Certitude is reached, he says, not through scholastic reasoning, not through philosophy, but through mystical illumination and the mystical way of life. Still Ghazali is not only a mystic, he is a great dogmatist and moralist. He is regarded as Islam’s greatest theologian and, through some of his books, as a defender of Orthodoxy. It is generally believed that the Tahafut, the book in which he criticizes Philosophy, was written in the period of his doubts. The book, however, is a Defence of Faith, and though it is more negative than positive, for it aims to destroy and not to construct, it is based on the theories of his immediate predecessors, many of whose arguments he reproduces. "


http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ir/tt/tt-all.htm

2009-10-29

Ubuntu (philosophy)

"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)

2007-04-12

The Fundamental Question

The existing of the world-whole is not a mystery, but a miracle, and a causeless and purposeless occurrence. The world-whole exists even though it could not exist, and it exists without its existence being caused or having a purpose. There is nothing here to wonder about, only to marvel at and despair over.

http://www.hedweb.com/witherall/existence.htm

The Zero Ontology - David Pearce on Why Anything Exists

... the real, "substantial" world (the world of physical things) is ultimately indistinguishable from the void ...

http://www.hedweb.com/witherall/zero.htm

Why does anything exist?

"God made everything out of nothing.
But the nothingness shows through."
Paul Valéry

http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm