/lit/ - Literature

Adler was a controversial figure in some circles that saw his Great Books of the Western World project as Eurocentric and racially exclusive. Asked in a 1990 interview why his Great Books of the Western World list did not include any black authors, he simply said, "They didn't write any good books."

>>3726371
>>3726386

>>>/pol/

>Socrates
>white
The majority of great literature was also written by monarchists, peasant

>>3726405
>Implying I'm not a monarchist.

>>3726392

The whole 'dead white men' thing is pretty relevant to America academia. It baffles me that people on /lit/ don't mind pointless 'rate my bookshelf' or 'recent purchases' threads, which are pretty much just a way to show off; yet get so butthurt about anything that discusses cultural or racial issues.

>>>/pol/

>>3726420
Personally I'd like a place to talk about books without trigger warnings, privilege checking, and worrying about offending people.

>>3726392
>>3726405
>>3726411
>>3726424

Please discuss these things in a civilised manner gentlemen.

>>3726425
>and worrying about offending people.

No such place exists.

What do you consider white? The Greeks and Romans considered many of their neighbors to be abnormally pale: whether Persian or German. We understand skin color through our social context, and most of us are descendants of a European tradition. Which means we are often descendants of the pale people the Romans et al. considered barbarians.

>>3726430
>obvious /pol/ bait OP
>your feeling are hurt lol!
No, but there is a whole board for insecure white boys to circlejerk, it's called >>>/pol/

Because books written by dead white males are difficult. A non-white person attempting to read this and getting stumped by the ideas or put off by the language will insist that it's only because, "he's white writing to other white people". They'd much rather read the simply written book by some random multi-culturalist too wrapped up in his own agenda to learn how to write well.

>>3726436
I don't worry about offending people here.

>>3726442
It's a valid point and your too obsessed with coming off as tolerant to even consider it. I can smell the white guilt from here.

Just going through the current threads on /lit/:

>An ex-pornstar's book
>Waifus
>Look at my thesis, look how clever I am!
>'blank page' troll thread
>troll thread
>Something about being a flanêur - essentially fruitless discussion
>Good thread
>Foucalt discussion
>Good thread
>A couple more pointless threads

Why won't you discuss things that have a serious impact on western culture /lit/? Please get off your high horse and stop pretending that /lit/ is a bastion on high-brow discussion.

>>3726371
Because the history you learned was written by white men. Also you don't know of any other cultures besides your own. There could just as easily exist trillions of better books in languages you don't understand because you're Amerikun and only read Murkin. Quick, name me 2 Chinese writers!

>>3726446
I can't tell what your trying to do with this post. Are you against this thread or in support it?

>>3726446
>Not understanding the post-meta/post-ironic nature of the the threads you have dismissed as "low brow."

Full pleb.

>>3726450

sun tzu
hideaki anno
toyota mitsubishi

>>3726438
It's not what I consider to be white, it's what the people talking about 'dead white men' do. I suppose for the sake of simplicity we can consider the people originating from the European peninsula to be 'white'.

>>3726440
That's my gut feeling too. I've read some of Chinua Achebe's work and I wasn't sitting there with a puzzled look on my face as I struggled to comprehend a black man's though patterns, it was a good read and that was that.

>>3726453

I'm the OP. I'm trying to point out that people on /lit/ immediately start screaming about /pol/ when I mention race, yet most of the other threads are awful anyway - whereas this one is an important and relevant topic.

>>3726465
Alright then.

>>3726450

Why are you making these assumptions? Why does the author's race matter? I don't purposely avoid African historians if I want to learn about history, there just doesn't seem to many of them.

>>3726445
>I can smell the white guilt from here.
Another one of those words invented by /pol/ mullets to justify their beliefs. Use more buzzwords and I'd take you seriously.

>>3726450
2? Really?
They just won the nobel price you know.

>>3726465
>- whereas this one is an important and relevant topic.
lel

>>>/pol/

>>3726438

it's almost like race by skin colour was invented by the civil right's movement and doesn't reflect humanity's long history where we determined race by rough area of origin (and then later state or country)

>>3726475
You have nothing to say. This is one of the hottest issues in academia across the Western world.

>>3726465
I do think it's ironic that /lit/, while presenting itself as tolerant and opposed to /pol/ regarding issues of race and gender, refuses to broach the subject at all; to protect discourse on the subject they stifle it completely.

>>3726470
>/pol/ bait OP
>insecure white boys
>circlejerk

>criticizes me for using buzzwords

>>3726481
>>3726482
>>3726488
samefag
>>>/pol/

To be fair, there's not many great (credited) authors from not-white areas.

All the ones I can name are Chinese (Cao Xueqin, for example), and the others are Anonymous authors.

>>3726494
All you're doing is proving our point.

You're right OP
I don't say that all white people are automatically better authors, it's just that over the years all classic books have been written by white men. Maybe it's because we, in the western world focus much more on that but i don't really think that's the case.
Tell me one classic book written by people from africa. You can't. Just one piece of art that doesn't involve egypt. You can't. Maybe this is unfair and colonialism and shit but that's just the way it is.
I know there are many weeaboos on 4chan but just compare trafditional japanese art with european art from the same time.
Or chinese.
Or aboriginal.
You know why latin america has so many great authors? Colonialism.
America? Colonialism.
(Ok, i have to exclude australia, but fuck australia)

>>3726371
>>3726386
>>3726420
>>3726425
>>3726430
>>3726440
>>3726445
>>3726446
>>3726465
>>3726461
>>3726482
>>3726481
>>>/pol/

>>3726500
>our
You're alone faggot
>>>/pol/
>>>/b/

>>3726508
I'm not OP, actually. But whatever floats your boat.

>>3726481
>This is one of the hottest issues in academia across the Western world.

Then 'academia' is dead. What do they want us to do? Pretend things no one considers 'great' as significant as the rest?

>>3726513
>What do they want us to do? Pretend things no one considers 'great' as significant as the rest?
Yes.

>>3726502
You can't blame everything on colonialism unless you acknowledge that it's just a scapegoat for a lack of written books in the first place. If you could say "we have records of this book existing, but no sign of the actual book after whoever arrived," then you can say it might have been colonialism.

But despite China being sunk into centuries of war and book burning we still have they're four (or five) great works, and they're pretty much complete.

books are a pretty western thing, i don't know why people are so weird about it. no one talks about how shitty whites are for not being able to use knots to transmit messages or etc

>>3726469
>I don't purposely avoid African historians if I want to learn about history, there just doesn't seem to many of them.

THE historian was African. Not black, but still.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

>>3726521

But that's dishonest and deceitful.

Give credit where credit is due sure, but don't lie about it.

>>3726547

Thanks for that, but would you consider him to be more influential than Herodotus?

>>3726513
Basically they view "speaking from a different (read: minority) perspective" as something inherently valuable which increases the quality of a work. So a great work from a white male is on level with something mediocre written by a minority individual, due to the mediocre writer being a minority.

>2013
>thinking that any book had made any 'objectively' significant impact
lolplebes
you probably write essays about authorial intent too

>>3726540
Pretty much this. A lot other cultures relied on oral tradition, or didn't even have a written language.

It's pretty much a Eurasian tradition.

>>3726558
>A lot other cultures relied on oral tradition, or didn't even have a written language.

And as such we are superior to them.

>>3726558
Yeah europeans had oral tradition too but then they evolved

>>3726502
Both China and the Mideast were more advanced than Europe during much of the middle ages. The Arabs kept alive much of he Mediterranean intellectual tradition, and made advancements on it, and hence why we have things like algebra. Al-gebra.

The Mongols kicked everyone's ass, though, and hit the Muslim world especially hard. It's hard to compete with a people who have spent their entire life on horseback, shooting bows, herding games in group formations, and who had an odd knack for gathering intelligence. Add to that there engineering gains from wars with China, and they were a force to be reckoned with.

In any case, they decimated the Muslim world, and were undefeatable by Christians on top of it, thought we hardly got the worst of their appetite for conquest. So considering that alongside my comments about how neither the ancient Greeks nor Romans considered themselves especially white, it's only through our peculiar version of history that what we consider white men dominate.

If you're really familiar with the Greeks, as an asides, you'd know they greatly admired the Egyptians. If you know the Latins, you'd know the Carthaginians gave them a run for their money. Granted, nationality doesn't reflect skin color to a great degree here, but such is the emptiness of such things.

If you reject Socrates on account of him being a European male you also reject almost every eastern and western philosophy and religion for the last few thousand years.

>>3726551
>Thanks for that, but would you consider him to be more influential than Herodotus?

I think their works are significant for different reasons. Herodotus was the first guy to "do" history as we understand it. Ibn Khaldun was more like Vico; he was primarily important as a social scientist and historiographer or 'philosopher of history' rather than as an actual historian.

>>3726601
Only the Western tradition, I'd think, and Socrates was an ugly motherfucker (by all accounts) in a society that considered Persians excessively pale, and thus effete. So while Socrates was probably white by our standards, he was almost certainly a proper in-between color by Greek standards at the time.

In any case, those looking to dismiss Socrates for being white, are exceptionally odd cases, who have very little influence beyond what their reactionary opponents lend them.

>>3726566
>privileging text before speech
nice try, Frenchfag

>>3726601
I completely agree with you, but it's not so much that people are just outright rejecting white men but putting them on equal footing with non-white man authors who aren't nearly as good as part of an agenda of liberal multiculturalism.

>>3726586
You missed the point, I want to see their literature, their art!
I don't care if they were good at fighting, this thread is not about political dominance, it's about artistic dominance

I mean, it's true. The reason we never liked blacks is because they don't write or do any cool intellectual stuff. They just don't "get" it.

>>3726624
Also, not only do they do this, but they call us racists just for acknowledging that they do this and asking them to provide us with texts of a similar quality or with a similar influence as white man texts. And when they can't provide us with these texts they just go ad hominem with words like racist and bigot and bring up things like slavery.

>>3726610
Can't believe the skin color of Socrates is discussed

>>3726644

Why?

>>3726644
If he's "white" then his work can be devalued. If he's non-white, then his work can be increased in value and used as a political tool against whites.

>>3726629
Algebra. I don't know Arabic, and am not from such places, so I can't give a full account of the Muslim golden age; but surely you know the Mediterranean is the cradle of civilization, and much of he Roman world was kept intact there.

Now in terms of dominance, the Christian world at the time was built from the remnants of a piece of the Roman empire after barbarians tore it apart.It's a damn miracle that Augustine proscribed monks to read, otherwise a ridiculous amount of texts would have been lost, which were not otherwise preserved by the Arabs.

You're understanding of history owes to a specific linguistic/cultural context. That you haven't been indoctrinated into the art and literature of other traditions means little.

>>3726405
The majority of great literature works were also written by people without access to healthcare, contraceptives, the internet, computers in general, television, etc.

Don't be a fucking retard.

>>3726371

*YAWN*

>>3726702
Shameful picture.

>>3726371
Maybe

Just maybe

/lit/ actually only cares about the quality of an author's writing, not where they come from or what they look like.

>>3726386
That guy's retarded but I'm still against all of these people trying to excise the canon without ever actually reading it.

>>3726766

You think Mortimer J Adler is retarded? Do you know who he is?

>>3726724
Are you American?

>>3726773
>Adler referred to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as the "ethics of common sense" and also as "the only moral philosophy that is sound, practical, and undogmatic".
full plen status

>>3726784
Is that the only country where the concept of "shame" still exists?

>>3726798
In Europe, nudity is a-okay

>>3726814
Shameful. Maybe the Muslims will fix that for you.

>>3726823
My jimmies remain unrustled

>>3726833
Give it a few decades.

>>3726798
Nope, but it's perhaps the only remaining Western country prude enough to associate nudity with shame.

>>3726724
>not appreciating the fine bushes on display

It's like you're some kind of person repulsed by the female sex.

I'm an American but I've had some European predilections ever since I went swimming in Berlin when I was 15.