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Nietzsche, perhaps the most important and influential philosopher since Plato, remains one of the greatest thinkers when it comes to exploring the depths of the inner world through his aphorisms and nihilistic reexamination of all values. But art transcends philosophy (As Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche all agreed when they found Greek Tragedy to be the highest form of human achievement, and much of Greek Tragedy was based on Homer's great work.)

Then there are the many great poets – including the great French symbolists such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Valery – whose creation of internal mythologies (like Blake and Yeats) were self-conscious attempts to travel spiritually.

But the list is endless: Shakespeare's world, Conrad's, Goethe's and Stendhal's notebooks, the many great thinkers from the Middle and Far East, etc…

Thank the gods for great thinkers, writers and artists of all kinds, as they allow inner travel even when physical travel is not possible.

Baudelaire describes the correspondence between the internal and the external world so beautifully, as he describes the eternal voyage, among other concepts in his brilliant and influential poem:

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/103

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Men's rights NOW! (No really, I'm serious.)

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Isn't "hardcore feminism" kinda contradictory? It's kinda like "militant humaneness…" I know what you mean, but doesn't it start to cross the line into "masculine aggression?"

I was in a psych class of about 20 students. The only two guys were me and this other cat who wisely kept his mouth shut, and we took the "men are all violent rapists" crap all semester. One day, while talking about male aggression AGAIN, I raised my hand asked, "If men are naturally aggressive, does that mean women are naturally passive?" If looks could kill, my troubles would be over. Not too many got what I was trying to say, but I had a lot of fun getting the room in a tizzy. All the crap I got just proved my point, and it was worth it.

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Have only recently read about Xavier de Maistre's attitude towards travel – interesting stuff.

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Ah, yes! There should be. Here's a quick list of 5 female western philosophers, to compensate

1. Hypatia of Alexandria
2. Hannah Arendt
3. Ayn Rand
4. Simone de Beauvoir
5. Donna Haraway

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For what it's worth, I got into multiple smackdowns with the hardcore feminist crew in undergrad on the issue of inserting more female content into the philosophy curriculum. My basic position is that it wouldn't be fair to cut, say, Descartes, in favor of some female philosopher who didn't have anywhere near the impact he did. For one thing, I think it's disrespectful to the struggle to suggest retroactively that women mattered when, relatively speaking, we didn't.

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