From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Tue Jul 09 2002 - 15:25:13 MDT
In a message dated 7/9/02 13:38:22, jonkc@att.net writes:
>According to this test I'm 100 % Sartre, 83% Nietzsche,
>57% Rand, 55% Kant, 41% Aquinas, 39% Plato and 29%
>Augustine. I'm not sure how much weight
>I should place on this thing, I certainly never realized I had that much
>in common with Sartre.
Existentialists hold that people choose their own values and that people
create their own meaning. They seem to conclude that there is no
real meaning and it's all pointless, leading to the general negative
opinion most people have of them. I never got that; to me it seems
liberating that I'm not a slave to something else's purposes. But the
idea that people create meaning is congenial to Extropian ideas and
I think that's why Sartre comes up high on many people's lists.
>It seems to make some sort of distinction between
>"strong" and "powerful" and between "humble" and "restrained"
>that I confess rather baffles me.
A lot of this looked like catchphrases to me. I assume many of the
philosophers spit out particular catchphrases and they're looking
for matches.
I didn't write down my list, but it was something like Mill, Hobbes,
Sartre, and Rand. After an initial shock at Hobbes, who I found
revolting in college, I noticed they're all philosophers whose premises
I tend to agree with but whose conclusions I disagree with. In
fairness, I probably disagree with those philosophers less than
any of the others, so the test was reasonably accurate for me.
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