The Ultimate Warrior, Professional Wrestler & Philosopher, Created a Glossary of World Philosophies

If you run a web site long enough, you end up cov­er­ing top­ics you nev­er thought you’d touch. Like pro­fes­sion­al wrestling. Come to think of it, we did show you once before Andy Warhol mak­ing an unex­pect­ed appear­ance on a 1985 World Wide Wrestling Fed­er­a­tion broad­cast. But today the sub­ject isn’t an artist with a pen­chant for wrestling. It’s a wrestler him­self. More specif­i­cal­ly its The Ulti­mate War­rior (born James Hell­wig) who had a pen­chant for phi­los­o­phy.

A star dur­ing the 1990s in the WWF,  The Ulti­mate War­rior died of heart dis­ease last week at the age of 54. After his retire­ment from wrestling, he became a moti­va­tion­al speak­er and life coach. And, as Dead­spin notes, he main­tained a curi­ous web site that fea­tured a glos­sary of world philoso­phies.

If you want seri­ous def­i­n­i­tions of phi­los­o­phy, I’d sug­gest you vis­it The Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy. For some­thing more abbre­vi­at­ed and kooky, you can’t go wrong with The Ulti­mate War­riors’ dic­tio­nary. Let me give you a few quick exam­ples:

Exis­ten­tial­ism
This is a real nasty phi­los­o­phy that asserts man has free will, but exists in an unknow­able, malev­o­lent uni­verse with no knowl­edge of what is right or wrong. The catch is that the indi­vid­ual is respon­si­ble (moral­ly account­able) for all his actions, but has no way of know­ing what actions are cor­rect. The effects on a per­son are dev­as­tat­ing. (See also Skep­ti­cism.)

Kan­tian­ism
This is the exact oppo­site of Objec­tivism. It’s [sic] epis­te­mol­o­gy is faith-eat­en and mys­tic-appeas­ing. It’s [sic] meta­physics is sub­jec­tive, it’s [sic] ethics are altru­is­tic and it’s [sic] pol­i­tics are col­lec­tivis­tic. Kant cre­at­ed the exact oppo­site of what con­sti­tutes a phi­los­o­phy based on rea­son. His “argu­ment” con­sists of equiv­o­ca­tions, elab­o­rate straw-men (the entire Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son for exam­ple), etc. He was quite an evil per­son.

Paci­fism
This asserts a moral absolute (with­out any con­text) that it is wrong to use force. Instead of rec­og­niz­ing the need for self-defense, the paci­fist equates all force with evil, equiv­o­cat­ing. A paci­fist soci­ety would per­ish absolute­ly when the first gang came along.

Tran­scen­den­tal­ism
This is the belief that intu­ition is supe­ri­or to sense-per­cep­tion and rea­son, and is filled with mys­tic gooble-dee-gook. Its epis­te­mol­o­gy is exclu­sive­ly sub­jec­tive. I think this is only pop­u­lar because it has an inter­est­ing sound­ing name. (See also Mys­ti­cism, Sub­jec­tivism, Zen.)

If you’re won­der­ing what phi­los­o­phy The War­rior sym­pa­thized with, it seems you need to look no fur­ther than Ayn Rand’s Objec­tivism (sur­prise, sur­prise), which he defined as fol­lows: “In essence, a con­cept where man is a hero­ic being, and his life is an end in itself, with his own hap­pi­ness as the moral pur­pose of his life, with pro­duc­tive achieve­ment as his noblest activ­i­ty, and rea­son as his only absolute.”

For more def­i­n­i­tions, you can dive into the glos­sary right here. This curi­ous item comes to us via Leit­er Reports.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)