/lit/ - Literature

>"Something is thought, therefore there is something that thinks": this is what Descartes' argument amounts to. But this is tantamount to considering our belief in the notion "substance" as an "a priori" truth:—that there must be something "that thinks" when we think, is merely a formulation of a grammatical custom which sets an agent to every action. In short, a metaphysico-logical postulate is already put forward here—and it is not merely an ascertainment of fact.... On Descartes' lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith. If the proposition be reduced to "Something is thought, therefore there are thoughts," the result is mere tautology; and precisely the one factor which is in question, the "reality of thought," is not touched upon,—so that, in this form, the apparitional character of thought cannot be denied. What Descartes wanted to prove was, that thought not only had apparent reality, but absolute reality.

In no other culture today can masculinity be properly observed than in videogame culture. The majority of gamers are not powerful examples of masculinity, that's not what I mean — what I mean is that it is the only realm of human endeavor left that has not been subverted by the rising effeminacy of humanity. By its nature, it can't be. The world of play is a realm entirely distinct, safe from those outside forces of the lumbering effete, which inevitably poisons things from the ground up. The world of play is a wholeness of itself, like outer space, which annihilates all things that enter it without the proper gear to do so, and even then, it is not altered by what enters into it, and those that enter into it have no choice but to respect its law and nature.

>From the fact that something ensues regularly and ensues calculably, it does not follow that it ensues necessarily. That a quantum of force determines and conducts itself in every particular case in one way and manner does not make it into an "unfree will." "Mechanical necessity" is not a fact: it is we who first interpreted it into events. We have interpreted the formulatable character of events as the consequence of a necessity that rules over events. [...] Necessity is not a fact but an interpretation.

"You are not free" determinists BTFO.

>It is only after the model of the subject that we have invented the reality of things and projected them into the medley of sensations. If we no longer believe in the effective subject, then belief also disappears in effect things, in reciprocation, cause and effect between those phenomena that we call things. There also disappears, of course, the world of effective atoms: the assumption of which always depended on the supposition that one needed subjects. At last, the "thing-in-itself" also disappears, because this is fundamentally the conception of a "subject-in-itself." But we have grasped that the subject is a fiction. The antithesis "thing-in-itself" and "appearance" is untenable; with that, however, the concept "appearance" also disappears.

>There has hitherto been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not become an apologia for knowledge; on this point at least each of them is an optimist, inasmuch as he believes that knowledge must be in the highest degree useful.

Platonists BTFO. Schopenhauer BTFO.