/lit/ - Literature

>>16798218
If you actually like philosophy they are all fun to read.

>>16465132
x=x

>>16447465
You can still find anons here to have good discussions with. You just need to fish them out and filter the pseuds. The best way to do this is by making the threads where it is impossible to engage without having read the book. You may not get many nibbles the first few times, but keep trying and soon you'll get a bite.

>>16348093
Only my effortposts count

For me, it's Chicago.

>>16304905
This will be a bit ramble-y but i like the context,
So, Aristotle begins his Metaphysics by asking us what the wise man knows. Aristotle says the wise man knows all things as far as possible, although he has not knowledge of them individually—he knows something true of everything, but not true of any one thing in particular; He who is more capable and exact of teaching the causes, is the wiser. He is more capable of teaching because he knows the causes of things more exactly; the wise man knows the highest of all forms of knowing: he knows the kind of knowledge that deals with the first principles—the foundation and causes of all things. And being the foundation of all things, the wise man knows what is most universal. But being this first knowledge, it is the most secure of all knowledge; it is that which can be known most certainly.
But how can we come to know this most difficult knowledge? How do we know the things which rely on nothing else? That which is true of all things but cannot be found in any in particular? If our best knowledge is that of first principles, then we need to uncover the most certain principle of all, something we have to know before we can know anything else. Something on which knowledge of everything else relies. That which you have to know before you can know anything else.
This seems to have only shifted our question. How do we know that which we must know in order to know in the first place? This cannot be demonstrated positively by deduction of induction, because, being only dependent on itself, it cannot be known by relation to anything else: there are no premises that can prove it because it is prior to all premises.
This supreme principle, Aristotle posits, is:
>That the same attribute cannot, at the same time, belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect.
I'm sure you recognise it: The principle of non-contradiction!

>>16283539
Welcome to the e/lit/e OP, it is our job to help guide newfriends to patrician erudition.