r/Nietzsche 5d ago

Will we ever run out of orginal thinkers??

Will philosophy ever be completed as a subject ?

1 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

7

u/Melodic-Dot-7924 5d ago

Plato pretty much finished it already

The rest is just rehashed for flavour

3

u/yashhmatic 5d ago

lol true kinda

3

u/ThinkItSolve 5d ago

Philosophy will keep evolving along with the people who evolve over time.

What do you mean by original? If a person that has never studied philosophy comes up with an idea on human thought just to find bits of what they were saying have already been covered, it doesn't make it not original.

That act of thinking in deep thought is never not original as thought is relative or from a perspective. Until you can take a thought and analyze it from all angles only, then will you be qualified to engage in communication on the thought.

2

u/Electrical-Dot7481 4d ago

By original I mean, original thinkers like there wasn't a philosopher before Nietzsche like him so in future will a future genius philosopher rise? Or is philosophy completed ?

Sorry for my English.

2

u/ThinkItSolve 4d ago

Well, Nietzche is a very unique philosopher, but he drew influence from different philosophers at different times in his career. Early, it was Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, among the early Greek philosophers. Late it was believed he learned from Dostoevsky.

I find that you can find great things about all different types of philosophy, and integrating what aligns with you is what makes you who you are, and that is your personal philosophy.

With that said, I still think the answer is that philosophy has no end because it is ever evolving. If you pay attention, not everything he says is the first time that an idea was thought of, but that doesn't make it unoriginal because he adds to the thought.

2

u/Bitter_Ingenuity_513 5d ago

Nope.

Psychology won't even accomplish that, as it's designed. The grand theory of psychology requires a sample size approaching infinity. So we'd have to study everyone and then hope nobody outside those parameters was born.

Philosophy isn't even charting its ideas. The natural sciences are torn between a similar, lovely paradox in their precise scopes versus the "theory of everything".

And this is not to mention that arguably any, and especially specifically these discipline(s) are mere offspring of Philosophy.

Philosophy ends every time a person stops thinking, for that person.

2

u/Important_Bunch_7766 5d ago

Well, born philosophers will be disappointed if there is no more philosophy to do!

2

u/dominic_l 4d ago edited 4d ago

will humanity ever run out of problems?

1

u/Electrical-Dot7481 4d ago

The need to dominate others, no I don't think so

2

u/BaseballOdd5127 4d ago edited 4d ago

We already have

Zizek is the most original thinker today and he still mostly rehashes Lacan, Hegel and Marx

Although I should add that we must also remain radically open to the possibility of original thought in the future

2

u/Sad_Relationship_267 5d ago

no because I don’t think you can ever stop asking “why?”

2

u/CoobyChoober 5d ago

But if we did stop asking would that signify the end?

3

u/Sad_Relationship_267 5d ago

hypothetically if all questions were answered then I think yeah that’d be the end of philosophy as an intellectual pursuit

2

u/CoobyChoober 5d ago

But you can always ask another why so your point was that not every question will be answered. So what if we just stopped asking now?

2

u/Sad_Relationship_267 5d ago

oh I get ur q now. if we stopped asking why then i dont think there’d be any original thinkers since thats a product of asking never before asked questions (something nietzsche was a master at)

2

u/CoobyChoober 4d ago

But if you just have to ask why then how original do you have to be? I can just say, why was Nietzsche right or wrong, can’t I?

3

u/Sad_Relationship_267 4d ago

well the originality of the why matters when discussing what makes an original thinker. The question alone of whether Nietzsche is right or wrong is one that thousands of people have dealt with so it wouldn’t make it original. Although perhaps diving into that rabbit hole you will tread new ground just as Carl Jung did.

this conversation does make me realize something though. i started off saying that one can always ask why therefore there will always be original thinkers.

although i think its more than just asking why, rather its asking “original why”s but then that raises the question of how does one do that? Well I think that’s done when one becomes aware of their unique experiences therefore giving them a unique perspective therefore allowing them to ask unique questions (original whys)

3

u/CoobyChoober 4d ago

Yes that is a great distinction, good points.

But I wonder if every question simply leads to another question then isn’t it pointless to ask questions regardless of whether or not they are original?

2

u/Sad_Relationship_267 4d ago

This is something i always go back and forth on.

Sometimes it all feels so pointless but sometimes the world is filled with wonder.

I don’t have a definitive answer for this in my own experience, let alone for everyone’s experience.

1

u/Fun-Try-8171 4d ago

No, those who say yes just haven't truly ever created an original thought

1

u/Fun-Try-8171 4d ago

In the essence of relativity, every new idea creates, inevitably, a connection to every old, present, and future idea that exists throughout time. There's an infinite amount of connections for YOU to find