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Brahmanyan said:
Dear Mrs. Visalakshi Ramani,

On this occasion of the anniversary of Tamil Brahmins Forum, I wish to acknowledge your achievements in the Forum as " stupendous". Look at your statistics as on today 7,747 posts
and 5,371 Blog entries. All this within 16 months of membership ! Some thing that any one will
be proud of. Your posts are highly informative covering wide range of subjects. You have always been shrewd enough not to engage yourself in controversial subjects.
Please continue your writings. I will certainly wait for your posts.
Wishing you all the best,
Warm regards,
Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.
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dear VJ!
let me also join with other members of this forum.to acknowledge your contributionand to appreciate your effort in posting many interesting topics without any controversy as said by Sri. Brahmanyan.let GOD give you a long healthy life.the statics given is really amazing.
guruvayurappan
 
Visalakshi Ramani said:
We wait for the rare visits of our children for years. Their actual visit will be very short and will appear like a dream after they go back.
So the anticipation brings more joy than their actual short visit!
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dear VJ!
the post is very meaningful and it has kindled my thoughts. you have pictured the scene which is happening in every body life.it is made my heart heavy as if my wards(who are in western countries )have made short visit and left.
with regards
guruvayurappan
 
I feel that the topic Epicurus will fit in better in Adam to Zeus thread.

So he will be featured on 12th January (a multiple of 3) :) in Adam to Zeus

thread! I will synchronise the posts in this thread also with that thread so

that it will be easier for me to remember the dates the posts are due!
 
EPICURUS.
images


Epicurus was born in February 341 B.C.

His parents were Neocles and Chaerestrate were both Athenian-born. His father a citizen, haemigrated to the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos - ten years before Epicurus was born.

As a boy, he studied philosophy for four years under Pamphilus who was a Platonist. At the age of 18, he went for his two-year term of military service to Athens.

After the death of Alexander the Great, the Athenian settlers on Samos were expelled to to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey. After the completion of his military service, Epicurus joined his family there.

Nausiphanes was the new teacher under whom Epicurus studied. In 311/310 BCE Epicurus taught in Mytilene but caused strife and was forced to leave. He then founded a school in lampsacus. He returned to Athens in 306 BCE.

There he founded The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned that served as the school's meeting place.

Even though many of his teachings were heavily influenced by earlier thinkers, he differed in a significant way with Democritus on determinism.
Epicurus would often deny this influence, denounce other philosophers as confused, and claim to be "self-taught".

Epicurus never married and had no known children. He suffered from and finally succumbed to kidney stones in 270 BCE at the age of 72.

But the cheerfulness of his mind, which came from the recollection of all his philosophical contemplation, counterbalanced all these afflictions.
 
As promised, here is the post on the life of Epicurus.

The future posts will be done on the dates which are multiples of 3

like 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 18th, 21 etc.
 
renuka said:
Dear Visa Ji,



No its not really controversy but Upholding Dharma!!
Click to expand...

yes 100% true .we have to speak out the truth whenever necessary even though it is not taken in its correct prospective.the same person who has criticized you will appreciate you as time(that will make to under stand reality) passes
guruvayurappan
 
The war between Dharma and Adharma is eternal.
So whether we want to enter in it or decide to stay away,
we are invaribly drawn into it. You are right dear renu :high5:
 
# 6. Existentialism.

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th and 20th century philosophers who (despite profound doctrinal differences) shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.

In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterised by what has been called "the existential attitude," or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd.

Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.

 Soren Kierkegaard - The early 19th century philosopher is widely regarded as the father of existentialism. He maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life a meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely. There were several existential obstacles and distractions including despair, anger, absurdity, alienation and boredom.

Subsequent existentialist philosophers retain the emphasis on the individual, but differ, in varying degrees, on how one achieves and what constitutes a fulfilling life, what obstacles must be overcome, and what external and internal factors are involved, including the potential consequences of the existence or non existence of God.

Existentialism became fashionable in the post world war years as a means to reassert the importance of human individuality and freedom.


 
Existentialism

Dear Mrs. Visalakshi Ramani,

I wish to add two important names of our time, to your good writeup on Existentialism, Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the French Existentialist Philosopher and Author who declined to accept French honour "Legion du honour" in 1945 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964 and the other is famous French Feminist Existentialist Philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) who was the Author of the famous book "The Second Sex", detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. Interestingly both "entered a life long relationship" and lived as couple without marriage.
First I came to know them as authors only from reading their books.

Warm Regards,
Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.
 
220px-Sartre_and_de_Beauvoir_at_Balzac_Memorial.jpg

Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Dear Mr. Brahmanyan,

Here are the two people whose names you have suggested.
Surely they will feature in Adam to Zeus thread in detail.
Thank you for suggesting their names.
with warm regards, :pray2:
Visalakshi Ramani.
 
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# 7. Humanism.
images


Humanistic orientation diagram.


Humanism is an approach in philosophy, study or world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In other words it is an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.

Secular humanism is a secular ideology which espouses reason, ethics and justice. It specifically rejects the supernatural and religious dogma as a basis of morality and decision making.

Religious humanism is an integration of humanist ethical philosophy with religious rituals and beliefs that centre on human needs, interests, and abilities.

Religious and secular humanism arose from a trajectory extending from the Deism and anti clericalism of the Enlightenment.
 
# 8. Idealism:

A philosophy that matter is an illusion and that the only reality is that which exists mentally. Some of the proponents were the German philosopher Georg Hegel and the Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley.

Idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.

Religious and philosophical thought privileging the immaterial or supernatural over the material and natural is ubiquitous and ancient. However, the earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India and Greece.

The Hindu idealists in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality.

The 20th century British scientist Sir James Jeans wrote that "the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine"
 
# 9. Logical positivism:

Logical positivism is also severally known as logical empiricism, scientific philosophy and neo-positivism.

This is a philosophy that combines Empiricism
(the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge) with a version of Rationalism.

It incorporates mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions and may be considered as Analytic philosophy.

Logical positivism began from discussions of a group known as the First Vienna Circle, which gathered during the earliest years of the 20th century in Vienna.

After World War I, Schlick's Vienna Circle along with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin circle propagated the new doctrines more widely during the 1920s and early 1930s.

A 1929 pamphlet summarised the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. The doctrines opposed Metaphysics - not because it was wrong but as having no meaning!

All knowledge should be codified by a single standard language of science. Ordinary-language concepts were gradually to be replaced by more precise equivalents in that standard language.

During the early 1930s, the Vienna Circle dispersed, mainly because of political upheaval and the untimely deaths of Hahn and Schlick. The most prominent proponents of logical positivism emigrated to the United Kingdom and the United States, where they influenced American philosophy considerably.

Until the 1950s, logical positivism was the leading school in the philosophy of science. During this period, Carnap proposed a replacement for the earlier doctrines in his The Logical Syntax of Language.

This change of emphasis and the somewhat different opinions of Reichenbach and others resulted in a consensus that the English name for the shared doctrine, in its American exile from the late 1930s, should be "logical empiricism."

Contemporary status within philosophy

Most philosophers consider logical positivism to be, "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes." By the late 1970s, its ideas were so generally recognised to be seriously defective nearly all of it was false.

It retains an important place in the history as the antecedent of some of the philosophies which continue now!
 
# 10. MARXISM

Marxism is an economic and socio-political world-view. It is a method of socio-economic inquiry that centres upon a materialist interpretation of history,
a dialectical view of social change and an analysis of Capitalism.

Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th century by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism encompasses a revolutionary view of social change
that has influenced socialist political movements around the world.

 The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of material conditions, taking at its starting point the necessary economic activities required by human society to provide for its material needs.

The form of economic organisation is understood to be the basis from which the majority of other social phenomena — including social relations, political and legal systems, morality and ideology — arise or are greatly influenced.

These social relations form the superstructure for which the economic system forms the base. As technology improves, the existing forms of social organisation become inefficient and stifle further progress.

These inefficiencies manifest themselves as class struggles. This struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services.

Capitalism (according to Marxist theory) can no longer sustain the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing military aggression.

According to Marxism, Socialism is a historical necessity but not an inevitability. In a socialist society, private ownership would be superseded by co-operative ownership.

A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, but would instead base production and economic activity on the criteria of satisfying human needs.

Eventually, socialism would give way to a communist stage of history: a classless, stateless system based on common ownership and free-access, superabundance and maximum freedom for individuals to develop their own capacities and talents.

As a political movement, Marxism advocates the creation of such a society.
 
# 11. Pragmatism:

Charles Peirce is the American who first identified pragmatism. Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the 1870s in U.S.A. Its direction was determined by The metaphysical Club members.

The first use in print of the name pragmatism was in 1898 by James, who credited Peirce with coining the term during the early 1870s. James regarded Peirce's 1877–8 "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series as the foundation of pragmatism.

Peirce in turn wrote that Nicholas St. John Green had been instrumental by emphasising the importance of applying the definition of belief as "that upon which a man is prepared to act" by Alexander Bain.

Peirce wrote that "from this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism."

Inspiration for the various pragmatists included: Francis Bacon, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel and H. S. Mills

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centred on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice.Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after a revised pragmatism was used to criticise Logical positivism in the 1960s.

Another brand of pragmatism, neopragmatism gained influence in the late 20th-century.

Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition and "neo-classical" pragmatism. The word pragmatism derives from the Greek word pragma meaning "deed, act"
 
# 12. Predestination:

Predestination is the Divine foreordaining or foreknowledge of all that will happen; with regard to the salvation of some and not others. It has been particularly associated with the teachings of John Calvin.

Predestination may sometimes be used to refer to other, materialistic, spiritualist, non-theistic or polytheistic ideas of destiny, fate or doom.

Such beliefs or philosophical systems may hold that any outcome is finally determined by the complex interaction of multiple, impersonal, equal forces, rather than the issue of a Creator's conscious choice.

In a predestined universe the future is immutable and only God's ordained set of events can possibly occur; in a non-predestined universe, the future is mutable.

Predestination may also take on a very literal meaning: pre- (before) and destiny, in a straightforward way indicating that some events seem bound to happen. The term, however, is often used to describe relationships instead of all events in general.

Finally, antithetical to determinism of any kind are theories of the cosmos that assert that any outcome is ultimately unpredictable. The chaos theory, the ludibrium of luck and chance have deterministic implications, as a logical consequence of the idea of predictability.

But predestination usually refers to a specifically religious type of determinism, especially as found in various monotheistic systems where omniscience is attributed to God, including Christianity and Islam.

To put it in a nut shell, this is a doctrine which states that all the events in every one's life are predetermined by god. The free will is only an illusion. It was introduced by St. Augustine (354 to 430) to the early Christian church.
 
# 13. Rationalism.

Rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" (Lacey 286).

In more technical terms, it is a method "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive" (Bourke 263).

Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints. The moderate position states that "reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge". The extreme position states that reason is "the unique path to knowledge" (Audi 771).

Given a pre-modern understanding of reason, "rationalism" is identical to philosophy and the Socratic life of inquiry.

Rationalism should not be confused with Rationality nor with rationalisation.

Political rationalism

In political contexts, the term rationalism is used to define the political belief that is mid-way between realism and internationalism.

It is used to describe the political belief that the world political order is not as chaotic as suggested by realists. It maintains a certain degree of order where nations and states do not violate others' sovereignty unless absolutely necessary.

Rationalism is often seen as the mid-point between realism and internationalism. Whereas internationalism advocates a purely global and orderly approach to international affairs, and realism a purely individual and chaotic approach, rationalism appears to combine these two philosophies.
 
# 14. Scepticism:

Scepticism has many definitions. Generally it refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions / beliefs stated as facts. It doubts those claims which are taken for granted elsewhere.

The word may characterise a position on a single matter, as in the case of religious scepticism. This is "doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation).

Philosophical scepticism is an overall approach that requires all information to be well supported by evidence.Sceptics may even doubt the reliability of their own senses.

Classical philosophical scepticism derives from a school who "asserted nothing".

A scientific sceptic is one who questions beliefs on the basis of scientific understanding. Most scientists, test the reliability of such claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation using scientific methods.

As a result, many claims are considered "pseudo-science" if they are found to improperly apply or ignore the fundamental aspects of the scientific method.

Scientific scepticism does not address all religious beliefs. Most religious beliefs are beyond perceivable observation. They are outside the realm of systematic test-ability.
 
# 15. Stoicism:

Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded in the early 3rd century BC in Athens by Zeno of Citium.

The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgement, and that a person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions. He was named as a sage.

Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between human freedom and the cosmic determinism and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will that is in accordance with nature.

Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as 'a way of life". They thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but the way he behaved.

Seneca and Epictetus - the later Stoics- emphasised that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness," a sage was considered to be immune to misfortune.

This belief is very similar to the meaning of the phrase 'stoic calm'. But the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.

From its founding, Stoic doctrine was a popular and durable philosophy in greece and Roman empire, until the closing of all philosophy schools in 529 AD since their pagan characters were at odds with the Christian faith.

The word "stoic" commonly refers to someone indifferent to pain, pleasure, grief, or joy. The modern usage as "person who represses feelings or endures patiently" was first cited as a noun in 1579, and as an adjective in 1596.

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy's entry on Stoicism notes, "the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins."
 
Do you know about Google translate?

Here are a few translations of Tamil proverbs!

அகலக் கால் வைக்காதே ................................. Do not set foot width

ஆற்றில் போட்டாலும் அளந்து போடு ............... Put it in the river with tongue

ஆள் பாதி, ஆடை பாதி ..................................... Half man, half-clothed

பெண் என்றால் பேயும் இரங்கும் ............................. If the obituary peyum

Will anybody be able to get correct translation with this help? :noidea:
 
Most proverbs have hidden references / meanings and stories.:cool:

They can't be translated thus word by word that too wrongly. :nono:

No wonder some people who do not know Tamil and read the

posts translated by Google were always RAW and OFFENDING! :whip:

Raji Ram said:
Do you know about Google translate?

Here are a few translations of Tamil proverbs!

அகலக் கால் வைக்காதே ................................. Do not set foot width

ஆற்றில் போட்டாலும் அளந்து போடு ............... Put it in the river with tongue

ஆள் பாதி, ஆடை பாதி ..................................... Half man, half-clothed

பெண் என்றால் பேயும் இரங்கும் ............................. If the obituary peyum

Will anybody be able to get correct translation with this help? :noidea:
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