Philosophers
Slavoj Žižek (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovene philosopher and cultural critic. He is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and a professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at theEuropean Graduate School. In July 2013, he was appointed as an Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea. He writes widely on a diverse range of topics, including political theory, film theory, cultural studies, theology and psychoanalysis. Žižek achieved international recognition as a social theorist after the 1989 publication of his first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, which disputed a Marxist interpretation of ideology as false consciousness and argued for ideology as an unconscious fantasy that structures reality. Politically, Žižek advocates communism as the only alternative to the contemporary institutional arrangements. Although he considers himself a political radical and critic of neoliberalism, his political thought represents only one of two trajectories of a progressive alternative—either a return to the program of socialism, which Žižek advocates, or the proposal of an alternative vision of social arrangements, which is taken up by some of his contemporaries. His unorthodox style, frequent newspaper op-eds, and popular academic books have gained Žižek a wide following and international influence. He has been labelled by some the "Elvis of cultural theory" and Foreign Policy listed him on its 2012 list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, calling him "a celebrity philosopher." Žižek's work was chronicled in a 2005 documentary film entitled Zizek!. A scholarly journal, the International Journal of Žižek Studies, was also founded to engage his work.
- Text from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_Žižek
- Image from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2012/jan/06/slavoj-zizek-jokes
- Text from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_Žižek
- Image from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2012/jan/06/slavoj-zizek-jokes
Deceased Philosophers
Ivan Illich, (4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and "maverick social critic" of the institutions of contemporary Western culture and their effects on the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development.
- Text from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
- Image from: www.babelio.com
- Also see: http://ivan-illich.org/
- Text from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
- Image from: www.babelio.com
- Also see: http://ivan-illich.org/
Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies. Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He also explored human consciousness, in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962). Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and many of his recorded talks and lectures are available on the Internet. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity.
- Text and Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
- Official Site: http://alanwatts.com/
- Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o
- Text and Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
- Official Site: http://alanwatts.com/
- Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o