/lit/ - Literature

i see lots of plato and aristotle at thrift stores, guess i should toss my copies too

not meaning to hijack your thread but it seems like you know what you are talking about. do you have any book recommendations for someone looking to get into philosophy? i tried reading plato the republic but im a brainlet. any other recommendations that will slowly lube my brain up?

>>13122562
if you are in earnest then i only have one recommendation for you. it is not a book but rather a condition of mind which you are to work towards. to put it simply, you must learn to become absolutely sincere in your approach to life. that means that whenever you face your fellow man, or pick up a book, or set to learn a new subject, you must show it the highest degree of respect you can muster.

imagine you are a student of a teacher you greatly admire, not only for his knowledge but for his moral character and equanimity--how would it benefit you to approach this person disingenuously? it would not. a bad student is constantly making fun, being crude, and generally dismissing the earnestness of the teacher, who cannot teach a pupil who does not take him seriously.

i say this because, there is no greater tool in the acquisition of knowledge than an attentive and sincere mind--a mind which desires above to learn, to obediently follow the one who will guide it out of darkness and fear. adopt this mindset, look at life as something to take serious, not as a joke or a misfortune, but as a grave responsibility, even if you have only a inkling of a thought as to what shape and direction your life is supposed to take. listen with an eager heart; do not vainly laugh and gossip with the others, but search for that part of you which genuinely longs for the good, and bravely set out to find it.

there is much to be learned even from the supposedly lowest persons of society, and if there really is nothing you can learn from them, respecting them nonetheless will at least not propagate the foolishness and ignorance they exhibit.

even this OP is a triviality and it's humor produced nothing important. but if my reply gives you some spirit then it is not for nothing. a steadfast and courageous heart is infinitely more wise than the most agile mind. good will to all mankind and faith in that good.

>>13122905
i didn't expect such a sincere response but understanding what you have written, i should expect no less. i have had a hard time recently respecting others based on social status or color because of a sort of stockholm syndrome i have been accustomed to. i miss the days of approaching everyone with child like curiousity and the belief that you can learn something from any fellow man. unfortunately I have recently been conditioned to believe the world is inherently negative because of experiences from my past. to reinforce this i've sought books on nihilism or human nature to justify my shitty attitude. sincerity is often mistaken for weakness when you do not respect yourself which is what i need to work on before reforming. i appreciate the time you took to offer your wisdom and have saved it for future reference.

>>13122162
it's popular and many people use the thrift store to donate books? most people aren't obsessed with philosophy like you anon!

>>13122905
Beautiful. I don't mean to brag but most of the time I am thinking like this. Since I was a child people praised my parents for how I was educated, reading your post made me realize that this approach to life helped me to learn more about things and helped me to learn with everyone too. Being poor as fuck in a third world country is such a feat that people always noticed. Chicks dig it too

>>13122162
I honestly do think that christians should read Nietzsche. Not that I'm a huge fan of his, but if you end up reading too much Christian Mysticism you might get so deep into the humility and charity thing you end up becoming a literal cuck.

>>13122162
As Kaufman says in the intro to his translation of Nietzsche’s collected works, “N is one of the few philosophers since Plato whom large numbers of intelligent people read for pleasure.”
There’s a number of reasons for this, as well as reasons for why he is more popular now than ever before.

1) His style is fun, energetic, polemical and exceedingly readable. For the casual reader, this is important. Hegel and Kant are hard af for the uninitiated to get anything out of. N meanwhile writes self-contained paragraphs that don’t require you to understand a complex “system”, writes poetically, and write sharp and memorable aphorisms. Obviously the argument that very few of these casual readers actually understand Nietzsche is a fair one, and is almost certainly correct. If you don’t understand Plato, Descartes, Kant, or the basics of Christian theology, how could you possibly deeply understand Nietzsche? However, he also has lots of views that can be taken as general “philosophy of life” ideas, as opposed to pieces of an erudite system, and these are doubtless attractive for non-specialist readers who want to dip their toes into philosophy.

2) He was the grandfather of postmodernism, dealt head on with the nihilism thoughtful and intelligent moderns grapple with everyday, and introduced power dynamics and deep physiological concerns into his analyses of society, history and philosophy.

a) His name this has stock with all of the cool 20th century thinkers and writers budding intellectuals hear about: Heidegger, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Joyce, Beckett, Stevens, Zizek, etc etc etc. Many roads lead back to Nietzsche, so his name casts a wide net.

b) Kierkegaard is too Christian and Hegelian for 21 cent thinkers thinking through nihilism; Heidegger is too difficult; and Sartre is shit. Nietzsche makes the reader feel strong and empowered to cultivate nobility in himself without relying on a deity or church—an artist tyrant of his own life—and also has enough of an ironic, edgy cynicism and polemical attitude to feel like a contemporary of us in our disillusioned age.

c) perhaps in large part because of Nietzsche (and Marx and Freud), we live in an age obsessed with reducing cultural phenomena down to theunderlying psychological/evolutionary/instinctual “drives” that gave rise to them, and looking at cultural systems in terms of the hidden power dynamics operative beneath them. This is the intellectual ether in which we live. What for us are presuppositions were for Nietzsche hard-won insights. But it’s what makes him accessible and familiar to us, in a way that he wasn’t accessible and familiar to his contemporaries. We have already been conditioned to analyze ourselves and society in this way, so Nietzsche seems to be speaking directly to our inherited mode of interpretation.

His books are in the bins simply because more people buy them than buy Kant

Other philosophers aren't even sold a first time

>>13122562
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/mobilebasic?pli=1

>>13122562
You should start with secondary literature. These guys are best understood in the context of their place and time. There are exceptions, like Marc Aurel.

>>13122162
ignore all the pseud answers. there's lots of binned nietzsche floating in the bowl because he's freshman-tier. bought by kids who have not figured out that nietzsche is a tard or that philosophy is not for them.

Not exactly on topic but wherever i look around the new-age'y section of our local book store's im always surprised to see Thomas Aquinas or St Augustine standing shoulder to shoulder among things like: The Phenomenology of Rosicrucian Thought Vol 8 of 15.

Always makes a little sad.

>>13125319
be glad he's on a shelf at least. shorter summa is good stuff. people are stubborn in their ignorance, and those who crack the book may find their way yet.

The syphiliyic madman is entry level pseud garbage who appeals to NPCs that prefer reading flowery prose instead of earnestly searching for truth

>>13124253
What did he mean by this!