|
The Egg (2009 Short Story)
"The Egg" is a fictional short story by American writer Andy Weir, first published on his website Galactanet on August 15, 2009. It is Weir's most popular short story and has been translated into over 30 languages by readers. The story follows a nameless 48-year-old man who discovers the "meaning of life" after he dies. Summary The story is about the main character, who is referred to as "you" (in the second person), and the being, who is "me" (in the first person). You, a 48-year-old man who dies in a car crash, meet the being, the narrator, who says that you have been reincarnated many times before, and that you are next to be reincarnated as a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD. The being then explains that you are, in fact, constantly reincarnated across time, and that all human beings who have ever lived and will ever live are incarnations of you. You remark about being Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, and Jesus. The being adds that you were also once John Wilkes Booth, every ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is an affinity group for contributors with shared goals within the Wikimedia movement. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within Wikimedia project, sibling projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by ''Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amor Fati
is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. is often associated with what Friedrich Nietzsche called " eternal recurrence", the idea that everything recurs infinitely over an infinite period of time. From this he developed a desire to be willing to live exactly the same life over and over for all eternity ("...''long for nothing more fervently'' than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal"). Nietzsche The concept of has been linked to Epictetus. It has also been linked to the writings of Marcus Aurelius, who did not use those words (he wrote in Greek, not Latin). However, it found its most explicit expression in Nietzsche, who made love of fate central to his philosophy. In "Why I Am So Clever" ('' Ecce Homo'', section 10), he writes:My formula for greatness in a huma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master". Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, "Nature (Emerson), Nature". His speech "The American Scholar," given in 1837, was called America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Richardson, p. 263. Emerson wrote most of Essays (Emerson), his important essays as lectures and then revised them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Over-Soul
"The Over-Soul" is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson first published in 1841. With the human soul as its overriding subject, several general themes are treated: (1) the existence and nature of the human soul; (2) the relationship between the soul and the personal ego; (3) the relationship of one human soul to another; and (4) the relationship of the human soul to God. The influence of Eastern religions, including Vedanta, is plainly evident, but the essay also develops ideas long present in the Western philosophical canon (e.g., in the works of Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, Proclusall of whose writings Emerson read extensively throughout his career) and the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg.Harrison, John S. The Teachers of Emerson'. New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1910. With respect to the four themes listed above, the essay presents the following views: (1) the human soul is immortal, immensely vast, and beautiful; (2) the conscious ego is slight and limited in comparison to the soul d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle's religious, historical and political thought has long been the subject of debate. In the 19th century, he was "an enigma" according to Ian Campbell in the ''Dictionary of Literary Biography'', being "variously regarded as sage and impious, a moral leader, a moral desperado, a radical, a conservative, a Christian." Carlyle continues to perplex scholars in the 21st century, as Kenneth J. Fielding quipped in 2005: "A problem in writing about Carlyle and his beliefs is that people think that they know what they are." Carlyle identified two philosophical precepts. The first, "annihilation of self (''Selbsttödtung'')", is derived from Novalis. The second, "Renunciation (''Entsagen'')", is derived from Goethe. Through ''Selbsttödtung'' (annihilation of self), liberation from self-imposed material constraints, which arise from the misguided pursuit of unfulfilling happiness and result in atheism and egoism, is achieved. With this liberation and ''Entsagen'' (renunciation, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subjective Idealism
Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism or immaterialism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Subjective idealism rejects dualism, neutral monism, and materialism; it is the contrary of eliminative materialism, the doctrine that all or some classes of mental phenomena (such as emotions, beliefs, or desires) do not exist, but are sheer illusions. Overview Subjective idealism is a fusion of phenomenalism or empiricism, which confers special status upon the immediately perceived, with idealism, which confers special status upon the mental. Idealism denies the knowability or existence of the non-mental, while phenomenalism serves to restrict the mental to the empirical. Subjective idealism thus identifies its mental reality with the world of ordinary experience, and does not comment on whether this real ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panpsychism
In philosophy of mind, panpsychism () is the view that the mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe". It is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed in some form to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell. In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought, but it saw a decline in the mid-20th century with the rise of logical positivism. Recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness and developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum mechanics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21st century because it addresses the hard problem directly. Overview Etymology The term ''panpsychism'' comes from the Ancient Greek, Greek ''pan'' (wikt:π ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Individualism
Open individualism is a view within the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times; in the past, present and future. It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with "Empty individualism", which is the view that one's personal identity corresponds to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and "Closed individualism", the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time. History The term was coined by Croatian-American philosopher Daniel Kolak, though this view has been described at least since the time of the Upanishads, in the late Bronze Age; the phrase " Tat tvam asi" meaning "You are that" is an example. Others who have expressed similar views (in various forms) include the philosophers Averroes, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Arnold Zuboff, mystic Meher Baba, stand-up comedian Bil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Original Position
The original position is a hypothetical position from which members of society would consider which principles they would select for the basic structure of their society if they had no knowledge ahead of time regarding the position which they would end up occupying in that society. The idea of having no such knowledge, because everyone is behind a veil of ignorance, represents a thought experiment often associated with the work of the American philosopher John Rawls. In this "original position", their position behind the "veil of ignorance" prevents everyone from knowing their ethnicity, social status, gender, and (crucially in Rawls's formulation) their or anyone else's ideas of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants acting rationally to adopt an "initial agreement" on the principles impartially. In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role as the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nietzschean Affirmation
Nietzschean affirmation () is a concept that has been scholarly identified in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. An example used to describe the concept is a fragment in Nietzsche's ''The Will to Power'': Opposition to Schopenhauer Walter Kaufmann wrote that Nietzsche "celebrates the Greeks who, facing up to the terrors of nature and history, did not seek refuge in 'a Buddhistic negation of the will,' as Schopenhauer did, but instead created tragedies in which life is affirmed as beautiful in spite of everything." Schopenhauer’s negation of the will was a saying "no" to life and to the world, which he judged to be a scene of pain and evil. " rectly against Schopenhauer’s place as the ultimate nay-sayer to life, Nietzsche positioned himself as the ultimate yes-sayer...." Nietzsche's affirmation of life's pain and evil, in opposition to Schopenhauer, resulted from an overflow of life. Schopenhauer's advocacy of self-denial and negation of life was, according to Nietzsche, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphysical Solipsism
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human understanding. Some philosophers, including Aristotle, designate metaphysics as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. Metaphysics encompasses a wide range of general and abstract topics. It investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being. An influential division is between particulars and universals. Particulars are individual unique entities, like a specific apple. Universals are general features that different particulars have in common, like the color . Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore the concepts of space, time, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiranyagarbha
Hiranyagarbha (, , poetically translated as 'universal womb') is the source of the creation of the universe or the manifested cosmos in Vedic philosophy. It finds mention in one hymn of the Rigveda ( RV 10.121), known as the Hiraṇyagarbha Sūkta, suggesting a single creator deity (verse 8: ', Griffith: "He is the God of gods, and none beside him."), identified in the hymn as Prajāpati. The concept of the "golden womb" is first mentioned in the Vishvakarma Sūkta (RV 10.82.5,6) which picturized the "primeval womb" as being rested set upon the navel of Vishvakarman. This imagery was later transferred to Vishnu and Surya. The Upanishad calls it the Soul of the Universe or Brahman, and elaborates that Hiraṇyagarbha floated around in emptiness and the darkness of the non-existence for about a year, and then broke into two halves which formed the '' Svarga'' and the '' Pṛthvi''. In classical Purāṇic Hinduism, Hiraṇyagarbha is the term used in the Vedanta for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
