/lit/ - Literature

>>16339501
Parzival.

>>16319873
>It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they had? Was it Heathenism,—plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognized element therein Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; Time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad one;—doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the man or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual;—their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. In these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known well, all is known.

>>16299673
Yeah it's one of the great medieval poems. But it's a real pleb-filter.

>>16300384
>>16301430
Holy based.

Hegel is a billion times better than Marx, and the latter has created nothing good but a critique of capitalism, and even in that was quite full of mistakes. Anything that Marx said, similar men of his time, Hegel, Feuerbach, Wagner, said better.

>"Property" has acquired an almost greater sacredness in our social conscience than religion: for offence against the latter there is lenience, for damage to the former no forgiveness. Since Property is deemed the base of all stability, the more's the pity that not all are owners, that in fact the greater proportion of Society comes disinherited into the world. Society is manifestly thus reduced by its own principle to such a perilous inquietude, that it is compelled to reckon all its laws for an impossible adjustment of this conflict; and protection of property—for which in its widest international sense the weaponed host is specially maintained—can truly mean no else than a defence of the possessors against the non-possessors. Many as are the earnest and sagacious brains that have applied themselves to this problem, its solution, such as that at last suggested of an equal division of all possessions, has not as yet been found amenable; and it seems as if the State's disposal of the apparently so simple idea [268] of Property had driven a beam into the body of mankind that dooms it to a lingering death of agony.
>Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet shews at last the goblin's game of paper money. The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book, might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller. By the advocates of our Progressive Civilisation this rulership is indeed regarded as a spiritual, nay, a moral power; for vanished Faith is now replaced by "Credit," that fiction of our mutual honesty kept upright by the most elaborate safeguards against loss and trickery. What comes to pass beneath the benedictions of this Credit we now are witnessing, and seem inclined to lay all blame upon the Jews.

"But where the danger is, also grows the saving power."
~ Hölderlin

"Shaping—re-shaping—
The eternal spirit's eternal pastime."
~ Goethe

Don't worry /lit/, we only grow closer to better /lit/. Where green pastures of book topics will grow anew.

>>16180521
I don't want to be rude here, but you are bragging about speculating your way into poverty. This isn't aimed at you either, because it is simply a mark of the current law of wealth which turns even the most materially wealthy to impoverishment. Imagine being the most wealthy man on earth and having even less power than any random man on the street; getting cucked and losing 50 billion dollars to a whore. What is wealth in this case? There are many who sense this, a deep spiritual impoverishment, one which even has destroyed mundane pleasures and the possibility of hedonism. This is why one must ask, What is Wealth?

"Round us the town is at rest; the street, in pale lamplight, grows quiet
And, their torches ablaze, coaches rush through and away.
People go home to rest, replete with the day and its pleasures,
There to weigh up in their heads, pensive, the gain and the loss,
finding the balance good; stripped bare now of grapes and of flowers,
As of their hand-made goods, quiet the market stalls lie."

This is a perfect image of wealth. One must be at peace with time, the city must have its laws which pass along with the hours, and the market must be able to sleep. Otherwise it is a symptom of mere survival, of being on the verge of starvation. Where the market does not sleep there are only a few potential causes, for example: siege warfare, starvation, loss of law and order, or crisis. The market only rises to prominence in reaction to the increased force of greater laws - again, Plato's theory of economy rings true.

What happens when the market sleeps is a giving oneself over to time, to the night, as Holderlin suggests. It is also the law of contemplation, one begins to see the whole of the work projects, what the entire city inherits and what one has contributed to.

>>16035265
"The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics" is better.

>>15769996
William Blake
Ted Kaczynski

>>15545426
>it has a better screen for text
Why not just get a blue light filter and read on your phone?
>extremely long battery life
I mean, whatever else you're reading on is probably going to last for ages considering all you do is read books on it.
>no stupid notifications and/or distractions
If you were truly annoyed by notifications, put it in airplane mode.

Alright boys, I wanna start writing with no ambitions other than it seems fun for something personal.
How can I learn to write? Are there some essays I can look at while I practice short story writing? How did you guys start off when learning how to write?

>>15142836
aye

What is your perfect book (that does not exist yet) about?
What would it be about, what would you get out of it?

>>14939847
Don't worry OP, what really matters is your mind/soul. You would be hard-pressed to find a philosopher that disagrees with that.

>>14921055
Mathew, Greek philosophy, Augustine, Thomas a Kempis, Aquinas, Pascal, T.S. Elliot, Wagner essays, etc.

>>14861229
I went through the Gnostic phase too but you have to realise, the idea that the natural world is a disgusting abomination, while the civilised world with smog, factory farming, wage slavery, pandemics and nukes is somehow beautiful and "progress" towards anything, is utterly delusional and fucking retarded. Granted it took me a few years to resolve this but you'll get there. One day, you will wake up and realise, Gnosticism and anti-nature are on the side of all the things you hate. Good luck friend.

>>14855196
Watch this webm, see the wonderful landscape, the imposing mountains, feel the warm sun on your face. Imagine all the wonderful creatures which call it home. Do you see it? Or do you see ideas, emotions, memories? You do not see things then? Your crude chemicals are nowhere to be found. The world is alive, animated - spirited. It is spirit. All of it.

We each perceive a world, each one of us a different one. We are at the center of it, we decide what's real and what isn't. What we see, depends only on us. Chemicals are just another thing made up by humans, we can never prove that they are the true reality, science never says that something is true.

Good book, though the author over-emphasizes the importance of his concept in the real world. Might is right only considers hard power but forgets about soft power, as well as human tendency towards peace rather than conflict, if such choice may be present.
Not only that but the author applies animalistic, natural principles into the human context while dismissing the other side of the coin being spiritualism and how even great leaders and warriors of the ancient times embraced it. Many used as a tool for controlling the masses, true, but the author is being a bit too absolutist with his claims in regards to the matter.
This book would be perfect in a post-apocalyptic scenario, beyond that it's principles, though brutally honest, wouldn't always be applicable.