MAN COME, MAN GO * SKIN FLESH AND BONES FEATURING RANCHIE * OPAL 10 * UK
The most elementary of philosophies underpins this song, a philosophy that is encapsulated in the title Man Come, Man Go. That's it, your here then your gone! and while there is a little more to it than that it is none the less an inescapable truth. Here are some basic philosophies of thinkers : "Until Philosophers are kings...cities will never have rest from their troubles". Plato The Republic. "If it is in our power to act nobly, it is also in our power to do evil." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. "No pleasure is a bad thing in itself" Epicurus, Sovran Maxims. "Virtue is the foundation of friendship" Cicero, On Friendship and Old Age. And to the featured record; " . . .We live but for a moment.", Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. "Fortune favours the fool." Erasumus, In Praise of Folly. "Men ought either to be well treated or crushed". Machiavelli, The Prince. "If a man . . . be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties" Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. "I think therefore I am" Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. And here's another that chimes with our song; " . . .the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" Blaise Pascal, Thoughts. "There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope" Spinoza, Ethics. "I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts" John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding. "Essence IS perception" George Berkelly, Principles of Human Knowledge. "Man was born free, and everywhere he is in irons". Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract. "It is not from the benevolence of the . . .baker that we expect our dinner, but from the regard to their own interest" Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. "Reason is the pupil of itself alone. It is the oldest of the sciences" Immanuel Kant, Critiques of Pure & Practical Reason. And from a man who, amongst other things, designed prisons! "Mankind is governed by pain and pleasure" Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation. "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil" Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man. "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves". Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the rights of Woman. "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas". Marx and Engels, The German Ideology. "It is never too late to give up our prejudices . . ". Henry D Thoreau, Walden. "If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience". William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. " . . .we men . . find reality generally quite unsatisfactory". Sigmund Freud. "The world is the totality of facts, not things". Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. "Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification". Karl Popper. "Advertisement contains the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper". Thomas Jefferson. "The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit". Charles S. Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear. "Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact". Charles T. Spalding. "Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation". Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle. "It takes courage to do what you want. Other people have a lot of plans for you. Nobody wants you to do what you want to do." Joseph Campbell. "Art is not what is not art". Ad Reinhardt. "When fish swim they prefer to do it in water". Johnny Spencer.