/lit/ - Literature

>>16634458
And here's the link if you feel like working through a horrible translation:

http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagdest.htm

>>16634458
Very based quote. Also, it's good to see you again Wagner-anon.

>>16634552
Good to see you too anon, I can't remember the last time we talked, but I do hope you're feeling better about the place of your morality(or was that longer ago than I thought?).

>>16634585
I appreciate that anon. Yes it's been a long time, as I'm unfortunately very busy and can't frequent /lit/ as often. I've given up on worrying about that issue, as I've come to the conclusion that so long as I'm able to impose morality on myself, personal inclinations hardly matter (though you could say I'm in a way repressing my instincts, and you would be right, but at the moment I have no other alternatives). How about you, anon? Last we talked I remember you said you were reading the Greeks (though I might be mistaken). What have you been reading lately?

>>16634626
Only infrequently going on /lit/ is almost certainly for the better anon, though I suppose it's not necessarily more enjoyable replacing it just with work if you're busy.

>I've given up on worrying about that issue, as I've come to the conclusion that so long as I'm able to impose morality on myself, personal inclinations hardly matter (though you could say I'm in a way repressing my instincts, and you would be right, but at the moment I have no other alternatives).
I don't want to drag out any questions, but you're saying that you're difficulty here is lying more in the questions of your own sin rather than a question as to the validity of your morality? I apologise as I can't remember that post too well, but I do remember the central theme of it.

>What have you been reading lately?
I've been reading quite slowly with a few books, but some that I've read recently/am reading are Tolstoy's A Confession(I found this very interesting, which I think can be separated into two parts insofar as they do not impede upon the other, Tolstoy's reasoning or proof for God, and the actual necessity and experience of Faith itself in the life of man. I don't want to write too much about it, so I'll just say that the experience of God in the life of man, which he leads directly to with the reasoning for God, he places against the utter meaningless of life as it stands logico-scientifically on its own, and I think is the same exact sense of the divine in which so many find in their old age of an absolute meaning be squared against what was priorly considered a meaninglessness-- It's a very typical and a nigh universal expression of faith but the terminology in which Tolstoy uses to explain it makes it very interesting, he also refers to many other thinkers such as Schopenhauer in it, though I think he was a bit disingenuous as to what they believed), Longinus On the Sublime, Aeschylus Oresteia, Hesiod's Theogony, Plato's Cratylus and flipping through some of Ezra Pound's early poems which I have unsuccessfully been able to crack as to their metre.

Anyhow, hope that wasn't too long of an explanation of what I've been reading, the Tolstoy work took up most of it, but I'm very glad I read it.

>>16634844
Those are very interesting books anon. I've been meaning to read the Russians but I'm still not done with the Germans. From what I've heard, though, Tolstoy seems to have been a master artist. I myself have been lately getting into analytic philosophy, though I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. At times they seem to tackle important questions of logic and metaphilosophy, other times they get stuck circling around absolute trivialities

>but you're saying that you're difficulty here is lying more in the questions of your own sin rather than a question as to the validity of your morality?
Valid question anon. The issue is, according the arguments of our philosopher (of which I am thoroughly convinced), morality is to be grounded on compassion. But what if one does not feel any such compassion to begin with? Schopenhauer might have answered it somewhere, but I don't remember any such answer. Occasionally though, masterworks of art such as Goethe's or Wagner's, or even religious scriptures, revive this sense of compassion in me, but it only takes a few close contacts with the reality of human nature for me to fall back down on my petty misanthropy. In this situation, while my intellect is convinced of morality and brings to my mind the correct moral choice, my instinct in contrast is very disinclined against it. For the most part though, my intellect prevails and I take the moral choice, but there the question arises that whether this morality has any worth if it's not based on true compassion.

>>16635021
Yeah haven't gotten into the Russians myself quite yet, that's still one of the first works I've read by them and it's the only non-fiction, but thinking about reading The Death of Ivan Ilych next. Only Russian fiction I've read is by Dosto.

>I myself have been lately getting into analytic philosophy, though I have to say I have mixed feelings about it.
I get the feeling I'll feel very similar about it. Which thinkers have you been reading? It seems like a very mixed bagged, thinkers like Wittgenstein seem like they have a lot of very important things to say, but others like Russel seem like they never did anything good outside of mathematics.


As for morality, I actually went through the exact same problems when I was thoroughly believing in a pure Schopenhauerian-Wagnerian moral philosophy, though I have now drifted away from so strict a philosophical basis of the nature of morality, I still retain the same morality of compassion. I remember Wagner treating morality, and really the Christian religion on a whole for him, as something beyond rational or irrational, but in his mind a religious conviction simply "there", and to follow it as an ideal to perfection. I'm pretty sure it was in Religion and Art, but that same mentality permeates through all of his Regeneration Writings. And from what personal records I've found about him and it, he felt completely like a slave before that image and character of Jesus. I'm not sure if this is something very unique to Wagner for Schopenhauerianism, or if Schopenhauer had similar feelings as you yourself weren't sure, but one would think Nietzsche called Schopenhauer a moraliser for a reason. This idea somewhat helped me when I was questioning morality. Morality, in a given moment, does not depend on compassion for its worth, but to truly understand the purpose of morality one must find compassion again, its origin, at least in part. In any event, Wagner knew morality was a revelation, and for that reason made it the central theme of his opera Parsifal. And it is also something interesting to focus on, the socialistic ideas in Parsifal, of a compassion and self-sacrifice for the communal, that morality obviously does not exist without other and that means the structures of other. It is evidently a different manifestation of morality for another individual, and then for your identity and group of beings.

But as for where I am now, I would say that I consider compassion chief expression of morality, but as morality itself being something more definitely defined under the various traditional conceptions of it, and more metaphysically prescient. Wagner himself considered that such morality which he stood transfigured before, perhaps was of metaphysical origin, "that this world was made for nothing other than salvation" or something like that, but bequeathed it as something ultimately unknowable.

>>16635260
>>16635260
What you described of the metaphysical ground's of Wagners morality seems very much like Schopenhauer's, especially that quote you shared. Compassion, according to him, arises when one finally realizes the true oneness underlying the world, that aside the One all else is a mere illusion. Writing this, I realize perhaps the reason why reading high-art and religious texts awaken compassion in me is that they remind me of this truth, whereas in real world one is apt to forget it. If that's the case, then I have been doing it backwards by forcing morality on myself. I should instead spend more time meditating on these metaphysical truths, and morality would follow on its own accord.


I followed the standard route of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and then I read some Ayer and Chomsky. I also didn't neglect their mathematical aspects, and have been following through a textbook that goes through all the mathematical and technical requirements of understanding Gödel's proofs. Frege was very interesting, as he seemed on the surface to be doing linguistic work, but in fact he was providing a theory of logical realism that bordered on platonism. According to him, logical truths and propositions, as well as constituents of propositions, exist in a separate, abstract realm of their own independent of minds and objects. Very similar to platonism if you ask me. I didn't find Russell that insightful though, on the contrary he was at times comical to read. He was just insisting that expressions containing "the" (i.e., definite descriptions) in fact have no meaning, but should be substituted whenever they are encountered with a logical formula. His exposition of his argument was also rather absurd, at times it even seemed like he was parodying himself. I found Wittgenstein extremely insightful but very difficult to read. From what I gathered, he seemed to have built an extremely rigorous logical model of the world (hence he claimed he had "solved philosophy"), but he did not justify nor argue for any of the premises of his system; he merely asserted them. Perhaps he thought that's what philosophers have been doing anyway: building models of world based on arbitrary premises. And if that is the case, infinitely many of these models could be built and nothing significant would happen, and therein would lie his grounds for quietism. Ayer was so ridiculous that I would not even comment. Chomsky's work though, delighted me very much. I understand he has some absurd political beliefs, but in his linguistic work he refuted behaviorists like Skinner so thoroughly and ruthlessly that it brings a smile on my face as a Jungian. Next in line are Carnap, Quine, and Kripke.

>>16635689
>Compassion, according to him, arises when one finally realizes the true oneness underlying the world, that aside the One all else is a mere illusion. Writing this, I realize perhaps the reason why reading high-art and religious texts awaken compassion in me is that they remind me of this truth, whereas in real world one is apt to forget it. If that's the case, then I have been doing it backwards by forcing morality on myself. I should instead spend more time meditating on these metaphysical truths, and morality would follow on its own accord.
I very much agree with this, apart from what I am going to proceed to ask, these metaphysical sentiments are almost undoubted to me. But what I do wonder, is if on the fact alone of the Oneness of the world, an active morality like under Christianity can follow. Would you mind extrapolating that? Or am I being too broad? Or is it altogether something related to the traditional conception of Faith, which goes right through any pragmatism like utilitarianism where the believer holds utmost Love as his goal and needs not always exact definition? My current understanding of it is just very vague.

>According to him, logical truths and propositions, as well as constituents of propositions, exist in a separate, abstract realm of their own independent of minds and objects. Very similar to platonism if you ask me.
But without Platonism, what exactly can that realm be defined as?

>he seemed to have built an extremely rigorous logical model of the world (hence he claimed he had "solved philosophy"), but he did not justify nor argue for any of the premises of his system; he merely asserted them.
How difficult is it to make out what those premises were? Is it just kinda like a pointless endeavour but you can still take a lot of very useful isolated ideas from his system? Thinking about it, I've never heard anyone having a major reply to Wittgenstein's system, but that's likely just me knowing so little about Analytics.

I really need to get onto the chunk of 20th century philosophy some time, but I'm at the complete other spectrum with the Greeks.

>>16635774
>Would you mind extrapolating that? Or am I being too broad? Or is it altogether something related to the traditional conception of Faith, which goes right through any pragmatism like utilitarianism where the believer holds utmost Love as his goal and needs not always exact definition? My current understanding of it is just very vague.
While I am not an expert on Christianity, it seems to me Christianity, like any other religion, possesses a dogmatic aspect as well as a truly metaphysical aspect. I believe Wagner even touched on it in his Religion and Art when he was saying that religion without art becomes artificial. Accordingly, the dogmatic aspect demands faith, but the truly metaphysical need not do so, because one who is metaphysically adept already knows the truth, he has no need for faith (reminds me of Jung's famous quote, "I do not believe in God, I *know* God.") Accordingly, the dogmatic aspect demands adherence to commandments, while the truly metaphysical aspect need not do so, because compassion already flows from that knowledge. What is required in that case is to cultivate compassion even further.

>But without Platonism, what exactly can that realm be defined as?
Hahaha, that's the subtlety. He is *supposedly* not doing any metaphysical work and is only interested in logic and language, so he doesn't elaborate on that but expects you to just accept his assumptions. His work would have been much more valuable if he'd just dropped the facade and do proper philosophy.

>How difficult is it to make out what those premises were?
Very easy, because he singles every one of them out. The structure of the work is an unusual one. The work is composed of 7 main propositions, and each proposition is built from some several sub-propositions. He doesn't write the usual philosophy prose, but separate simple one or several line propositions like this, and this is what makes it so hard to decipher. It almost feels like reading computer code, if you have done any programming.
>Is it just kinda like a pointless endeavour but you can still take a lot of very useful isolated ideas from his system?
This is what analytics have been doing anyway. They basically ignored the big-picture aspect that I described, and similar to their usual fashion they got stuck with trivial aspects. They somehow got the idea that Wittgenstein was doing linguistic analysis, though I don't how or from where.
>Thinking about it, I've never heard anyone having a major reply to Wittgenstein's system, but that's likely just me knowing so little about Analytics.
This is largely true. They did criticize some of his individual arguments, and many also just mention his name as lip-service, but as far as I'm aware there is no proper response to him.

>>16635774
>I'm at the complete other spectrum with the Greeks
The Greeks are more worthwhile anyway. I've been planning to go through the entire platonic corpus but I'm hoping to learn their language first.

bump

>>16635818
The dogmatic aspect most certainly exists, but I think the reality of some meaningful mystery in life, also explains the traditional conception of faith far better. But that itself is still very reductive. I definitely wouldn't strictly sort Faith historically into two categories of it meaning conviction in what one knows, or then meaning irrational dogmatism. We all know Kierkegaard focused on it quite a bit. And Carlyle doing existentialism before Kierkegaard, had a similar focus(most simply Kierkegaard's Leap of Faith is comparable to Carlyle's Everlasting Yea though there is a difference).

>Hahaha, that's the subtlety. He is *supposedly* not doing any metaphysical work and is only interested in logic and language, so he doesn't elaborate on that but expects you to just accept his assumptions. His work would have been much more valuable if he'd just dropped the facade and do proper philosophy.
I've heard a lot of people refer to him as one of the very greats, and this description you've given have certainly piqued my interest. But you say what he was doing could have been much more valuable if he dispensed with the facade (was that for himself or publicly?), do you think he could have had a kind of metaphysics closer to Plato or like really just in what direction would he have gone if he was more honest with what he was doing?

>book feels like computer code
Sounds very autistic, but in a good way? I have done no programming.

>They basically ignored the big-picture aspect that I described, and similar to their usual fashion they got stuck with trivial aspects.
I forget who said it, but there was a quote something like "continentals have questions without answers, and analytics have answers to useless questions". Being partly ironic.

>but as far as I'm aware there is no proper response to him.
I guess if he really does have an enormous value as many seem to think, that will be left to the next or whatever great age of thought to understand exactly.

>I've been planning to go through the entire platonic corpus but I'm hoping to learn their language first.
I've read almost all of Plato, and I also want to learn ancient Greek to reread him and others, but from what I can get out of it in English and I've heard most people or academics say about Plato translations, you can be fairly sure that you're getting Plato, if maybe with a little research for particularity's of a dialogue that there is confusion about or difficulty in translating, but if you have good footnotes it's usually mentioned in the dialogue itself. So by all means learn ancient Greek before reading most of Plato, but if it's ages off from now then I'd recommend reading Plato way before that and at your next ease. Because he's just so fantastic to read, I really don't think anybody else has been as enlightening to me. If you're being held back by that at all.

>>16635829
Also anon I've been wanting to ask for a while, do you know about Wagner's theories on melody?

>>16635829
Also anon I've been wanting to ask for a while, how familiar are you with Wagner's melos/melody? You know the endless melody thing.

>>16636156
>I've heard a lot of people refer to him as one of the very greats, and this description you've given have certainly piqued my interest. But you say what he was doing could have been much more valuable if he dispensed with the facade (was that for himself or publicly?), do you think he could have had a kind of metaphysics closer to Plato or like really just in what direction would he have gone if he was more honest with what he was doing?
I definitely do recommend reading Frege, so far he has been one of the better analytics. It just seems to me early analytics in general have had this anti-metaphysics mentality (mostly in response to unrigorous and overblown Hegelianism), while at the same time trying to, perhaps unintentionally, sneak in metaphysics in their theories (because metaphysics is simply unavoidable). Frege was a mathematician and a logician, who also dabbled in philosophy because a particular philosophical problem was important to his work on logic. So I don't know if he had even read Plato (though he seems to have read Kant). You could pretty much start reading him whenever you want, as his papers are short and don't need much background. You seem also interested in Wittgenstein, and he is a very good next step after Frege. Here is a link to his major paper (only 21 pages), and a set of notes I found online which were very helpful:
www [dot] scu.edu [dot] tw/philos/98class/Peng/05 [dot] pdf
faculty [dot] washington [dot] edu/smcohen/453/FregeDisplay [dot] pdf

>Sounds very autistic, but in a good way? I have done no programming.
Definitely autistic, but I won't make a value-judgement. It is very rigorous, at the expense of being less understandable.

>I've read almost all of Plato, and I also want to learn ancient Greek to reread him and others, but from what I can get out of it in English and I've heard most people or academics say about Plato translations, you can be fairly sure that you're getting Plato
I'd agree, I've read some of the dialogues already and definitely gained a lot from them, and in terms of pure content philosophy usually isn't very dependent on language. But still, I think something is to be gained by reading texts in their original form. Hopefully I'll start learning Greek in a few months, so it shouldn't be that long away.

>>16636176
I'm very uninformed when it comes to music theory, but looking it up now and reading about it, I did notice something of the sort unique to Wagner.

>>16636156
Also, since you are knowledgeable on Plato, what do you think about the aspect of Schopenhauer's project which was to unite Kant and Plato? As you probably know he believed they were very complementary and incorporated them both in a synthesized fashion in his own system. I also read one anon saying that Schopenhauer uses Plato's theory of form in a way that avoids the third-man argument.

>>16636267
>Here is a link to his major paper (only 21 pages), and a set of notes I found online which were very helpful:
>www [dot] scu.edu [dot] tw/philos/98class/Peng/05 [dot] pdf
>faculty [dot] washington [dot] edu/smcohen/453/FregeDisplay [dot] pdf
I'll definitely check those out anon, thanks bunches this is very much appreciated.

>>16636283
I also lack a lot of basic knowledge on music theory, but I've learnt a lot by just looking into some of the greats like Wagner(there's a website dedicated to Tchaikovsky which records all of his documented thoughts about others, including other composers, which was very useful). Insofar as the endless part of his melody is concerned, I think it was very well put by Nietzsche that Wagner was above all a miniaturist, even something so basic in this distinct melodic character as the imperceptibility so often of the progression of notes, Wagner would not be able to achieve if he was not such a miniaturist. But these lead me onto my primary point, the massive potential in which this use of melody opens up is evident by Wagner's precision (he did after call music a bearing, feminine, art) in his music, and though "endless desire" would not be an accurate description(as I think Wagner rejected the term "endless melody" also, being a crude phrase), it is something akin to that in how it can completely consume the focus of the individual, with Tristan und Isolde's famous musical suspension of a consummation merely accentuating that continually leading on character of his music. But above all the mistake shouldn't be made that it loses as much structural complexity and ability to be analysed by restlessness. Anyhow I forgot where I was going with this, but it should be noted that this unique character of his music is likely very important in what attracts the mentally insane to or sometimes makes insane with his music. I think Nietzsche also talked about neurotic Wagnerians or something like that. But I hope this was helpful somehow, I just found it interesting to understand some of Wagner's musical techniques while listening.

>>16636311
I think it is very interesting, and though yes he has successfully united them, from what I know about what he did with Plato he is more taking a lot of very important ideas and sentiments from Plato, but it doesn't seem like it would be enough to call Schopenhauer a Platonist. But I could be dangerously wrong about how much Schopenhauer talked about Plato, his placing of Forms in the Will was genius, but it does kinda turn Plato on his head. As for the third-man argument I'm not sure how Schopenhauer entirely got over it, but if I remember correctly(and I'm still kinda confused about this because I always thought Plato got over a lot of the third man argument in the Parmenides but then I hear a lot of anons talk about it as something that eternally haunted Plato so I'll have to look over the dialogue again) Plato did by introducing the Instance in his Parmenides.

>>16636311
But the Instance wasn't a concept that was really understood until much later, just take that the Neoplatonists completely misunderstood it.