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On not being a Philosopher
Unknown Binding
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About the author
Robert Lynd
86 books18 followersRobert Wilson Lynd was an Irish writer, an urbane literary essayist and strong Irish nationalist.
He was born in Belfast and educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution, studying at Queen's University. His background was Protestant, his father being a Presbyterian Church Moderator.
He began as a journalist on The Northern Whig in Belfast. He became a fluent Irish speaker, and Gaelic League member. As a Sinn Féin activist, he used the name Robiard Ó Flionn/Roibeard ua Flionn.
He wrote for The Republic in its early days. He spoke at the funeral in 1916 of Irish Republican and Marxist James Connolly, whose works Labour in Ireland, Labour in Irish History and The Re-Conquest of Ireland he subsequently edited. He was also a loyal friend of Roger Casement.
He moved to London in 1901, via Manchester, sharing accommodation with his friend the artist Paul Henry. Firstly he wrote drama criticism, for "Today", edited by Jerome K. Jerome. He also wrote for the "Daily News" (later the News Chronicle), being its literary editor 1912 to 1947.
Lynd married the writer Sylvia Dryhurst, whom he met at Gaelic League meetings in London, in 1909. Their daughters Máire and Sigle became close friends of Isaiah Berlin. Sigle's son, born in 1941, is the artist Tim Wheeler.
The Lynds settled in Hampstead, in Keats Grove near the John Keats house, where they were well known as literary hosts, in the group including J.B. Priestley. They were on good terms also with Hugh Walpole; Priestley, Walpole and Sylvia Lynd were founding committee members of the Book Society. Irish guests included James Joyce and James Stephens. On one occasion reported by Victor Gollancz, Joyce intoned Anna Livia Plurabelle to his own piano accompaniment.
Lynd used the pseudonym Y.Y. ("Ys," or "wise, you see") in writing for the New Statesman. According to C. H. Rolph's Kingsley (1973), Lynd's weekly essay, which ran from 1913 to 1945, was 'irreplaceable.' In 1941, editor Kingsley Martin decided to alternate it with pieces by James Bridie on Ireland, but the experiment was not at all a success. Lynd died in 1949 and is buried in Belfast City Cemetery.
He was born in Belfast and educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution, studying at Queen's University. His background was Protestant, his father being a Presbyterian Church Moderator.
He began as a journalist on The Northern Whig in Belfast. He became a fluent Irish speaker, and Gaelic League member. As a Sinn Féin activist, he used the name Robiard Ó Flionn/Roibeard ua Flionn.
He wrote for The Republic in its early days. He spoke at the funeral in 1916 of Irish Republican and Marxist James Connolly, whose works Labour in Ireland, Labour in Irish History and The Re-Conquest of Ireland he subsequently edited. He was also a loyal friend of Roger Casement.
He moved to London in 1901, via Manchester, sharing accommodation with his friend the artist Paul Henry. Firstly he wrote drama criticism, for "Today", edited by Jerome K. Jerome. He also wrote for the "Daily News" (later the News Chronicle), being its literary editor 1912 to 1947.
Lynd married the writer Sylvia Dryhurst, whom he met at Gaelic League meetings in London, in 1909. Their daughters Máire and Sigle became close friends of Isaiah Berlin. Sigle's son, born in 1941, is the artist Tim Wheeler.
The Lynds settled in Hampstead, in Keats Grove near the John Keats house, where they were well known as literary hosts, in the group including J.B. Priestley. They were on good terms also with Hugh Walpole; Priestley, Walpole and Sylvia Lynd were founding committee members of the Book Society. Irish guests included James Joyce and James Stephens. On one occasion reported by Victor Gollancz, Joyce intoned Anna Livia Plurabelle to his own piano accompaniment.
Lynd used the pseudonym Y.Y. ("Ys," or "wise, you see") in writing for the New Statesman. According to C. H. Rolph's Kingsley (1973), Lynd's weekly essay, which ran from 1913 to 1945, was 'irreplaceable.' In 1941, editor Kingsley Martin decided to alternate it with pieces by James Bridie on Ireland, but the experiment was not at all a success. Lynd died in 1949 and is buried in Belfast City Cemetery.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 16, 2017
I couldn't find it in Goodreads, so I had to add it myself. This short essay creates a huge distinction between reality and philosophy. The author criticizes the renowned philosopher Epictetus and tries to put his thoughts into reality which he finds confusing. Because sometimes philosophy doesn't relate to real life problems as such.
And same are my thoughts, I try to be cool all the time and I always try to use my philosophical thoughts which I OBVIOUSLY LEARN FROM THE BOOKS, to ease my mind. But sometimes , the problems are just illogical and the teachings are not that feasible to put it right away in the real life situation. I don't know if I am making my point clear but this will give you clearer view.
From the essay itself ,
"Epictetus at least holds up an ideal of imperturbability . 'Stop admiring your clothes'he bids us,'and you are not angry at the man who steals them.'And he goes on persuasively concerning the thief :'He does not know wherein the true good of man consists,but fancies it consists in having good clothes,the very same fancy that you also entertain.Shall he not come, then, and carry off'?
Yes, logically I suppose, it should, and yet I cannot feel so at the moment I which I find that a guest at a party has taken my new hat, and left his old one in its place.It gives me no comfort to say to myself,'He does not know wherein the true good of man consists,but fancies it consists in having my hat.' Nor should I dream of attempting to console a guest at a party in my own house with such philosophy in similar circumstances.It is very irritating".
Okay, this just cracked up but also gave me a deeper point of view towards philosophy .
And same are my thoughts, I try to be cool all the time and I always try to use my philosophical thoughts which I OBVIOUSLY LEARN FROM THE BOOKS, to ease my mind. But sometimes , the problems are just illogical and the teachings are not that feasible to put it right away in the real life situation. I don't know if I am making my point clear but this will give you clearer view.
From the essay itself ,
"Epictetus at least holds up an ideal of imperturbability . 'Stop admiring your clothes'he bids us,'and you are not angry at the man who steals them.'And he goes on persuasively concerning the thief :'He does not know wherein the true good of man consists,but fancies it consists in having good clothes,the very same fancy that you also entertain.Shall he not come, then, and carry off'?
Yes, logically I suppose, it should, and yet I cannot feel so at the moment I which I find that a guest at a party has taken my new hat, and left his old one in its place.It gives me no comfort to say to myself,'He does not know wherein the true good of man consists,but fancies it consists in having my hat.' Nor should I dream of attempting to console a guest at a party in my own house with such philosophy in similar circumstances.It is very irritating".
Okay, this just cracked up but also gave me a deeper point of view towards philosophy .
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August 6, 2024အက်ဆေးအတိုလေးသာဖြစ်တယ်။
လက်တွေ့သက်ရှင်နေထိုင်နေရတာနဲ့ စာအုပ်ထဲက၊သီအိုရီထဲက အတွေးမတူတာကို ဖော်ပြထားတယ်။
ဥပမာ-ဘာသာရေးစာအုပ်ဖတ်ပီး ဒေါသသည် မီးဖြစ်သည်ဆိုပါစို့။ကျွန်တော်တို့လည်း ဖတ်ပီး အမလေး မှန်လိုက်တာပါပေါ့။
ဒါပေမယ့် ဗိုက်ဆာလို့ စားသောက်ဆိုင်ဝင်တဲ့အခါ စားပွဲထိုးလေးက ခေါ်မကြားအော်မကြား။နာရီဝက်လောက် အော်ခေါ်ပီး ရောက်လာပြန်တော့ တလွဲတွေလုပ်၊ပီးတော့ ပြန်ပျောက်သွား။မှာထားတာရောက်လာဖို့ ၁နာရီလောက်စောင့်ရ၊လာချပေးတော့ မှာထားတာမဟုတ်ပြန်။ပြောတော့ မကြားဟန်ဆောင်စသဖြင့် ကြုံလာရရင် ဒေါသဟာ မီးဆိုသော်ငြား အနည်းနဲ့အများဒေါသထွက်မိမှာပဲမဟုတ်လား။တဏှာသည် မီးဆိုသော်လညိး အချောအလှလေးတွေတွေ့ရင် ကြည့်မိတတ်တာပဲ။
ပြင်ပပကာသနများသာဖြစ်သည်ဟူပီး အဝတ်အစားကို သတ်မှတ်ထားပေမယ့် ပွဲလမ်းသဘင်သွားတဲ့အခါ အဝတ်ကောင်းကောင်းလေးတွေ ဝတ်လာကြတာပဲ။
လက်တွေ့သက်ရှင်နေထိုင်နေရတာနဲ့ စာအုပ်ထဲက၊သီအိုရီထဲက အတွေးမတူတာကို ဖော်ပြထားတယ်။
ဥပမာ-ဘာသာရေးစာအုပ်ဖတ်ပီး ဒေါသသည် မီးဖြစ်သည်ဆိုပါစို့။ကျွန်တော်တို့လည်း ဖတ်ပီး အမလေး မှန်လိုက်တာပါပေါ့။
ဒါပေမယ့် ဗိုက်ဆာလို့ စားသောက်ဆိုင်ဝင်တဲ့အခါ စားပွဲထိုးလေးက ခေါ်မကြားအော်မကြား။နာရီဝက်လောက် အော်ခေါ်ပီး ရောက်လာပြန်တော့ တလွဲတွေလုပ်၊ပီးတော့ ပြန်ပျောက်သွား။မှာထားတာရောက်လာဖို့ ၁နာရီလောက်စောင့်ရ၊လာချပေးတော့ မှာထားတာမဟုတ်ပြန်။ပြောတော့ မကြားဟန်ဆောင်စသဖြင့် ကြုံလာရရင် ဒေါသဟာ မီးဆိုသော်ငြား အနည်းနဲ့အများဒေါသထွက်မိမှာပဲမဟုတ်လား။တဏှာသည် မီးဆိုသော်လညိး အချောအလှလေးတွေတွေ့ရင် ကြည့်မိတတ်တာပဲ။
ပြင်ပပကာသနများသာဖြစ်သည်ဟူပီး အဝတ်အစားကို သတ်မှတ်ထားပေမယ့် ပွဲလမ်းသဘင်သွားတဲ့အခါ အဝတ်ကောင်းကောင်းလေးတွေ ဝတ်လာကြတာပဲ။
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews