/lit/ - Literature

>>21285964
>>21286019
>>21286049
>>21286053
Chiming in to say that yes, this book sucks. Nausea is one of the few novels I dropped halfway through with zero intention to pick it back up in the future. Though I dislike Sartre's philosophical writings, I actually liked The Wall and No Exit was decent.

Nausea sucks, don't doubt yourself. There are relatively few novels where the average /lit/ lurker would be hard filtered (as opposed to the soft filtering of not fully understanding/appreciating it).

I was educated by Catholic/Anglican analytic philosophers, so prejudice against the French was instilled in me quite rigorously. But then I read Derrida's essay, "Plato's Pharmacy," and realized what a deep reader of Plato he was. Half of what he said was stuff I had always believed (but couldn't admit among peers), and the other half was mind-blowing. Of course, he had some errors in his reasoning at critical junctures, but it was just an expansive and faithful treatment of Plato. He makes Gregory Vlastos look like a dunce (yes, the Vlastos who was too stupid to realize that Diotima's description of Eros was obviously also that of Socrates).

I felt like an ass for ever scorning him without reading him. Then I read Lacan's lectures on Plato's "Symposium." I had read the excerpt on the Mirror Stage that everyone reads (thinking Lacan was not worth considering), but he also proved to be a critical and expansive reader of Plato. From my understanding of Foucault, he was more about the Greeks (b/c gay) than either Derrida or Lacan. So, I look forward to reading him on Plato. I'm happy to admit that, despite the depth of my prejudice against the French both generally and in philosophy, those two have pissed away more insights than most Anglo-American classicists ever attain in their career.

Why did Plato choose to write in the form of dialogues instead of just getting to the fucking point?

None of you newfags appreciate classic memes

like so

It's pretty simple, you just need to bait people into making ethical propositions they cant back up.
Here's an example:
You're at a family dinner for Christmas or thanksgiving or whatever, and you've deliberately kept the salt near you so someone will ask you for it.
>Grandmacles: Anon, dear, could you please pass the salt?
>Anoncrates: Why should i pass the salt, gramma'?
>Grandmacles: Because it's the right thing to do, deary
>Anoncrates: But gramma', what is the right?
And just like that you've got em'!
After that you can use esoteric analogues about basting turkeys to explain that your grandma doesn't actually know what the right is, and she should think more about it before asking for the salt again.
your family will appreciate it!