/lit/ - Literature

>>4282734
>>4282711
fufufu~

I've got a book report coming up, and I need an aptly controversial or at least interesting piece of American literature - it must come from a list of provided authors, so I may not get my first choices, but anyone have any top picks?

I'm looking for something gritty, dark, depressing maybe - or something very political or intelligent. Just something gripping that I will actually learn from.

>>2075074
You're responding to that post as if it was promoting believing without evidence, when actually it was pointing out that assertions something doesn't exist due to lack of evidence willl often be wrong. It's a fine distinction.

'>Hey Romans, America doesn't exist.

>Also, they had no hard evidence to prove that the continent existed, so that would have been a pretty hard one for Cicero as well.'

So what you are saying is that even though they didn't have evidence that the continent existed, it still did? In that case you have just agreed, the absence of evidence was not evidence of absence.

>Unfairness is perpetuated by poets.
>GTFO mah Republic, bitch.

>>1459169
Maybe you could fool someone with that shit 2000 years ago brah

Aristoxenus (Elementa harmonica II 30-31)
>As Aristotle was wont to narrate, this was what happened to the majority of the people who heard Plato's lecture On the Good. Each came expecting to learn something about the things which are generally considered good for men, such as wealth, good health, physical strength, and altogether a kind of wonderful happiness. But when the mathematical demonstrations came, including numbers, geometrical figures and astronomy, and finally the statement Good is One seemed to them, I imagine, utterly unexpected and strange.

Themistius (Oratio 21, 245 c-d)
>People came flocking from all around and assembled together - not only the townspeople from above but also workers from the fields and vineyards and from the silver-works - and when he presented his treatise On the Good, the huge crowd became dazed and streamed away from the place until finally the audience was reduced to Plato's trusted followers only.

>hear someone make an argument about one not being "cut in two" so there's no need to find another half
>respond by bringing up Aristophanes's speech in Symposium and Ancient Greek concepts of love
>get called pretentious
>other person implies existentialism
>my face

Anyone else have stories of arguments that induce misanthropy?

>I've long been of the opinion that Plato's character, Socrates, was intended to be understood as a tragi-comic villain. He was a sophist who could make the most absurd notion seem wise, and make an evil, totalitarian slave-state sound like paradise.

> “May I ask you a question?”
> “Yes.”
> “It’s a philosophical question. Is that ok?”
> “Sure.”
> “There’s a boy I fancy. Should I text him or e-mail him?”

>Plato's literary output is vast, very likely spanning close to fifty years, and over the years there have been numerous attempts to place the dialogues into a chronological sequence. Many of these efforts are motivated by the hope that success in determining such a sequence will provide an objective basis for conjectures about the development of Plato's philosophical views over the course of his literary lifetime.

How does this make you feel?