Jules
Rook
The trombone frightens me
Posts: 45
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Post by Jules on Apr 6, 2008 8:48:33 GMT -5
I'm not a philosopher but I am really interested in understanding what this meant to LC. Would it be possible to have a sort of basic idiot's guide for people like me who need an intro to the basics? Put simply, what was LC's position in 19th C philosophy? And what do terms like 'nominalism' mean???
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Post by ermete22 on Apr 6, 2008 10:28:48 GMT -5
A reasonably clear definition of nominalism (actually there is more than one ) you can find here: plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/For me at least, discussing about philosophy is always somehow embarrassing; I have never been able to understand exactly why. Anyhow there you will find at least one of the best discussions about this subject you can find on internet. Carroll was not officially a philosopher, for sure not a professional one; he was a mathematician and a logician under the name of Rev. Dodgson, and a writer under the name of Lewis Carroll; but many people believe, me as well, that he was also a very sharp philosopher with a strange attitude of talking implicitly about such a subject in his tales and books. So you must “extract” his philosophy out from this non-philosophical writings, which is sometime hard and ingenerates never-ending discussions. By so doing he avoided making use of that terribly boring language you find in many philosophical works. After me it was a smart idea and made impossible to write absurdities like “ what is real is rational”. Carlo
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Jules
Rook
The trombone frightens me
Posts: 45
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Post by Jules on Apr 8, 2008 4:07:15 GMT -5
Okay, thanks Carlo, I get that. So, could you guys make a stab at summarising what you think LC's philosophy was? In fairly simple language!
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Post by ermete22 on Apr 18, 2008 5:53:16 GMT -5
Hi bananabear, frankly I am too ignorant to answer your question; on top of that Carroll was the world champion of laconicism, particularly about religion, and so many persons have written on the subject without beeing able of grasping the reality; so the risk of writing another wrong interpretation can be afforded just by a foolish. What seems clear was that Carroll was a man who took seriously what seemed to him a correct argument, and plainly ignored the running commonsense. So, most probably his philosophical view was a perpetual on going work in progress. If you read Sylvie and Bruno you can get some ideas, particularly when he looks humoristic. I am really sorry not to be able to give you a better answer; take my ignorance very seriously. Carlo
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