Philosophical Saints

Forget the conventional university or college program in philosophy. There are only a few worth what you pay for them. Besides, even those programs assume that there is a profession in philosophy awaiting you, or that philosophy will train you to compete for the best(-paying) jobs. Just look at the literature justifying majoring in philosophy.

Most programs of study in philosophy are among the freest investigations in every college, but equally true, most of them are bound within bureaucratic structures and procedures, denying to them the uselessness that makes them go best. Corvid being free of bureaucracy, it is the best place to study philosophy. Finishing this course of study will mean nothing to employers, and that is its greatest benefit. It is neither constrained by bureaucracy nor predetermined by usefulness.

The best philosophers to begin one's study with are those who have glimpsed and experienced ways of seeing the world whole. Theirs is a vision of divinity; the something-else-there. Their methods vary from the observational and taxonomic to the witty and mindful. In every case is a distinct voice, standing out from the murmur of history.

Most are Optimists about ideas: for them another reality is always lurking in and around and behind things. It is the presence of this other reality that makes love of the divine possible. These believers in the eternity of ideas (also maybe in the universality) are more saintly, more mystical, and live more according to love. They take no issue with theology, finding it to be of use alongside science and philosophy.

These philosophers have about them a kind of mystical glow. They are called mystics by some. They are usually elevated above the mundane concerns of the dusty world. On the question of the one and the many, they say, "Yes, both, neither, No." They are decidedly unpragmatic (sorry, William, John, and Charles), being of no use to bureaucratic, governed life, and in many ways withdrawn. But their lives and thoughts are critical of this world for all that and useful as a model of how to live along one's own track. In fact in varying ways, they are put to use by people with conflicting philosophies.

Our fifteen philosophical saints include

• Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu), the 3rd c. BC Daoist
• Nagarjuna, a most refined thinker of emptiness, South Indian, 2nd, c. AD
• Plotinus, an expander on the ideas of Plato and a mystic
• Sankara, the Hindu philospher of the One-All
• Rumi, the Sufi poet and mystic
• Meister Eckhart, the heterodox Christian mystic and preacher
• Benedict Spinoza; a 17th c. Dutch Jew, who wrote bravely in the face of a ban by his community
• G.W.F. Hegel, the 19th century German academic, telling a form of universal history
• Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th century German natural philosopher
• Soren Kierkegaard, also 19th century, but Danish and not academic (but like Spinoza turned from the academic track intentionally)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, also 19th c., first an academic, second a free spirit
• R. Waldo Emerson, also 19th century (what was it about the 19th century?)
• Henry D. Thoreau, Emerson's friend and a man with a vision of Natura that we should know about
• Henri Bergson, French, for whom life was the most basic phenomenon.
• Alfred North Whitehead, early 20th c, Anglo-American, process process everywhere

There is no single sequence or set of courses required for completion of the Philosophical Saints program. Over a handful of years, you need take 6 courses. You are welcome to repeat courses if you find yourself drawn into deeper study of one or another figure. It is also possible to conduct a free-style independent study of someone not on the list.