A very simple question: Who are your philosophers? Who are men/women of intellect with a strong philosophy that you enjoy? Perhaps you find yourself
enjoying their books, their articles still found online, or just reading about them in general? Who are these people and why are they ‘your
philosophers’? They can be famous men like Plato and Saint Thomas Aquinas or perhaps a little known writer that you take time to read his
insight.
My philosophers are
Edmund Burke,
G.K.
Chesterton,
C.S. Lewis,
T.S. Eliot,
Paul Gottfried,
Thomas
Fleming, and
Joseph de Maistre.
You can also provide some quotes of theirs if you would like, it always makes them more interesting and provides us with a little knowledge of them
without spending hours reading pages of information.
“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without
tuition or restraint.” –
Burke
“It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise
location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.” –
Chesterton
“O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.” –
Eliot
“You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like
microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his
glimpse of God will be blurred — like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been
looking at God through a dirty lens.” –
Lewis
“Among the most dangerous of our theoretical illusions are the political fantasies that can be summed up in words like democracy; equality, and
natural rights; the principle of one man, one vote and the American tradition of self-government. No one who lives in the world with his eyes open can
actually believe in any of this.” – Fleming
Now the most controversial philosopher whom I often read and do enjoy, although find points of large disagreement with, is Count Joseph de Maistre. I
would bet that 85%+ of people could not read his works entirely without being consumed with some negative emotion of him to their very core. But he is
not for the ordinary person, if you can stomach his work, well that is great, if you enjoy his work then you are one of a few.
“Thus, from the maggot up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living things is unceasingly fulfilled. The entire earth,
perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be immolated without end, without restraint, without
respite, until the consummation of the world...." –
de Maistre