/lit/ - Literature

>if you have any somewhat accessable, counter-solipsistic pieces,
I would appreciate it.*

Wittgenstein's Mistress

>What, then, is depression? It is hysteria of the spirit. There comes a moment in a person’s life when immediacy is ripe, so to speak, and when the spirit requires a higher form, when it wants to lay hold of itself as spirit. As immediate spirit, a person is bound up with all the earthly life, and now spirit wants to gather itself together out of this dispersion, so to speak, and to transfigure itself in itself; the personality wants to become conscious in its eternal validity. If this does not happen, if the movement is halted, if it is repressed, then depression sets in.

>What intoxication is as beautiful as despair … It gives a slight flourish to the hat and to the whole body; it gives a proud, defiant look. The lips smile haughtily. It provides an indescribable lightness to life, a regal outlook on everything.

>When a person considers himself esthetically his soul is like soil out of which grow all sorts of herbs, all with equal claim to flourish; his self consists of this multiplicity, and he has no self that is higher than this.

>Every person, if he so wills, can become a paradigmatic human being, not by brushing of his accidental qualities, but by remaining in them and ennobling them. He ennobles them by choosing them.

>By now you have easily seen that in his life the ethical individual goes through stages we previously set forth as separate stages. He is going to develop in his life the personal, the civic, the religious virtues, and his life advances through his continually translating himself from one stage to another. As soon as a person thinks that one of these stages is adequate and that he dares to concentrate on it one-sidedly, he has not chosen himself ethically but has failed to see the significance of either isolation or continuity and above all has not grasped that the truth lies in the identity of the two. The person who has ethically chosen and found himself possess himself defined in his entire concretion. He then possesses himself as an individual who has these capacities, these passions, these inclinations, these habits, who is subject to these external influences, who is influenced in one direction thus and in another thus. Here he then possesses himself as a task in such a way that it is chiefly to order, shape, temper, inflame, control-in short, to produce an evenness in the soul, a harmony, which is the fruit of the personal virtues.

>The self that is the objective is not only a personal self but a social, a civic self. He then possesses himself as a task in an activity whereby he engages in the affairs of life as this specific personality. Here his task is not to form himself but to act, and yet he forms himself at the same time, because, as I noted above, the ethical individual lives in such a way that he is continually transferring himself from one stage to another.

Focus on the third quote especially. Stop thinking about yourself aesthetically i.e. stop focusing on things like your appearance, your virtues/vices, your talents, your station in life (whether you be poor or rich, unimportant or important, unqualified or qualified), your unhappiness/happiness, your unspirituality/spirituality, your shallowness/profundity, your stupidity/intelligence, etc. The problem with this is that you'll find things you like about your self and things you don't like about your self, things that comfort you and things that make you despair, things that motivate you and things that stifle you, etc. (because "nobody is perfect"), and so you'll be constantly tripping up over yourself, not knowing whether you have enough to make a start in life or whether you'll never amount to much and therefore aren't worth the effort. This kind of thinking coincides with solipsism, because it's focused so on your self, your "accidental qualities" (in the 4th quote), that your self soon becomes a mist that permeates everything and you can't tell vanity from reality, self from not-self.
Focus instead on the ethical, on the duties you have. Everybody has a self, and everybody has the same duty that comes with being a self - doing what is right. Do what is right. Don't do it for any other reason. If you haven't got a job, then go and get a job - because it's right for you to have a job. If it isn't right for you to have a job, then don't get a job or quit your job. Groom your self, eat healthily and exercise if these are the right things to do. If they aren't the right things to do, then don't do them. If you think this way - focusing on what is RIGHT to do instead of what is pleasing or comfortable, then you'll have the courage to make difficult decisions that may cause temporary discomforts. How do you know what is right to do? Look at yourself as a person in a play or story. Everybody knows that when a lover in a story betrays their beloved, that it is the "wrong thing to do". Everybody knows that when a warrior in a story sacrifices himself for the sake of his people, that it is the "right thing to do". So what are you in your story? If you are a son, then be a good son. If you are a citizen, then be a good citizen. If you are a friend, then be a good friend. If you are unsure how to be a good son, citizen, or friend, or whatever, then being a good son, citizen, or friend, or whatever, in that case means seeking out the knowledge of how to be such.

>>4247166
You have your duties, and these duties cannot be taken away from you because they are inherent to your self, they are not accidental qualities that your self "happens to have" (like your appearance, your intelligence, your social class), these are things that you have by simply being. In this sense everybody is equal, because everybody has the same duty to do what is right. Of course, each person will have particular and different things to do in order to achieve what is right, but everybody is equal in that they each have to fulfill that same thing. A King fulfills his Kingly duties, and a Peasant fulfills his Peasant duties --- in an aesthetic sense, the King is infinitely superior to the Peasant, but in an ethical sense they are both equal because they both fulfill their duty, and if the King does not fulfill his while the Peasant does, well then the King is ethically inferior to the Peasant (and you might say that when they both fail ethically that the King "has the greater sin", because his duties have a greater scope).

>>4247166
Thanks, this is really interesting

>>4247171
>In this sense everybody is equal, because everybody has the same duty to do what is right. Of course, each person will have particular and different things to do in order to achieve what is right, but everybody is equal in that they each have to fulfill that same thing.

This is worded poorly.
Everybody has their particular duties, their particular obligations, but all of these duties and all of these obligations have their source in the single duty/obligation that everybody has by definition - the duty to do the right thing.

>>4247095
Céline, Schopenhauer, Cioran, them cunts. You push the bile into absurd proportions and keep pushing and wallowing and then it implodes and sets you free and you go for a Nietzschean jog at 4am.

>>4247209
You're set free or you jump off the golden gate.

>>4247259
Either way, problem fixed.

>>4247174
"You're not wrong, you're just an asshole"

>>4247372
Meant to reply to
>>4247348

>>4247372
Fuck off back to Reddit.

>>4247386
Make me

>>4247397
I don't care that much. Carry on being an oblivious retard who doesn't understand humour.

>>4247399
K

>>4247166
How would he respond to kantian ethics?

>>4247487
I should be clearer, how would he respond to Kant's idea that the right and wrong thing to do are based off of intentions as opposed to effect?

I usually just listen to Alan Watts lectures.

READING DOES NOT CURE DEPRESSION.

>>4247509
Except for when it does. This stuff's hit or miss and different things work for different people.

>>4247516

DEPRESSION IS CAUSED BY A NEUROCHEMICAL IMBALANCE; YOU WILL NOT REMEDY IT BY READING.

YOU ARE JUST "SAD".

>>4247516
>obviously has never been depressed

>>4247518
Then explain this, smarty-pants! I was a depression and I've read a three self-help book and it worked.

>neorochemical imbalance?
I think not. It's bed vibe mostily.

>>4247518
Different manners of thinking will cause a neurochemical imbalance. Some particularly sad event in one's life, for example, could cause a neurochemical imbalance that could be long-lasting or could be temporary.

>>4247549
Aw man aw man nigga I needs to get me them book

>>4247509
I've been clinically depressed and I think the right thinking can help you greatly in overcoming it.
It took me years of being depressed before I realized that I couldn't think my way out of it, and that I had to sort of accept it.
When I first went to the doctor for meds it was a huge relief after he prescribed me some, because I felt that I no longer needed to "fight", I only needed to put my trust in the meds that they would sort it out. This is psychologically similar to how Alcholics Anonymous talks about having to put your trust in a "Higher Power" in order to overcome alcoholism. Once you stop identifying with the clinical depression as something you have caused and see it as something outside of your power like a regular injury, the burden becomes much lighter.
That said, there is a kind of despair that is solved through conscious thought and deliberate actions, and that kind of despair is NOT clinical depression but it is related to it in a way. When people who have never had clinical depression ignorantly imply that you just have to change your self / "lifestyle" they are mistaken, but in a sense they are right in that there is a more universal despair (which is exacerbated by clinical depression) that is solved through changing your self / "lifestyle".

>>424751
A big part of perpetuating those imbalances is stopping negative thought loops. Why do you think the depressed benefit from therapists?

>>4247554
You need to learn Indonesian first, then these books:
Apa kau serius
Mengapa Anda menerjemahkan ini
Depresi sesuatu kandang

>>4247559
I will concede that it can help, but it certainly can't be seen as a 'cure'. The problem with any self help book is that there is nobody there to enforce your behavior. If you want to read a book and feel good and still let depression control your life, you aren't going anywhere. A better plan is to get a support group or a good therapist or something. Really it helps quite a bit to have infrastructure. When my friend was depressed and I was helping her, I made sure to give her what she needed, and not what she wanted. She may have wanted to lie around and slack off, but I made her work and she has thanked me for it. I was a source of order for her. A self help book can't do that.

>>4247095
cioran

>>4247496
His ethics are Platonic as far as I can tell (he doesn't rigorously define his ethical thought). There is according to him, as there is according to Plato, a Universal (what Plato would call a "Form") of "The Good" which is the ultimate ethical category. In that sense it's not a consequentialist ethics or an intentioned based ethics, but it may be related to both consequences and intentions. For example, a person whose actions have x consequences are ethical (good) actions if those consequences are aligned with the Universal Good, i.e. if someone gives wealth to the poor and the consequences are that the poor man can live a life more acquainted with the Good, then that action may be said to be Good. But, say, if the man gave the money in order to proud of himself or to "show off" and then the action may be said to be bad or evil, because he does not have in mind the Good when he acts, he has some other Form in mind (like pride, or popularity, etc.). In this sense, intentions are also related to the Good. There can be Good actions as well as Good intentions, both can be in relation to the Ideal, the Form, the Universal which is "The Good".
He wrote a book called "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing", which implies that man achieves the Good through his will, but he, in the book, implies that the Good is not in the will but is a transcendent ideal/form/universal that the will aims to realize.

>>4247583
Interesting. I like the idea of good and bad being a mixture of ultimate truth and intention much better than one or the other.

>>4247552

THAT IS ACCURATE.

>>4247518
>>4247543
I'm not of the "lel just get over it" school, I'm saying that books can be a deciding factor in turning your perspective around much like a shrink would. If you consider therapy legitimate you'd have to do the same for the influence a book can have. Also, saying that neurochemical matters can't be influenced by outside phenomena is silly. If you'd rule out the benefit of reading when it comes to depression then your definition of depression would have to be "a feeling like shit that can only be remedied by psychiatric medication", but depression usually implies a broader spectrum than that.

War and Peace

Not kidding, I plowed through it when I was in a real self-loathing stupor in my life and the experience really turned my life around.

>>4247583
I think your interpretive approach to Kierkegaard is a bit straightforward. Judge Vilhelm is not a stand-in for his views, and Purity of Heart Kierkegaard identified as being Greek/Socratic rather than Christian. Purity of Heart is much closer to being attributable (and SK did reject Kant's view of the will because he didn't think the will could be a standard for itself, an external standard was required).

Frankly, >>4247559
Is closer to SK's actual approach to these issues. The 'ethical'/Platonic approach is limited because it doesn't allow for us to disentangle from our despair. It's only through a passive submission to Grace and the capacity to admit that our ability to be Good isn't a task we are sufficient to, that despair can be escaped.

>>4247518

Thoughts are information on your brain, everything you think, say, or do, is just chemicals in your brain, dood. Ever heard of the subconcious? Do you actually think it's another brain or just the remnants of information that was once processed and stored?

>>4247843
>Thoughts are information on your brain

NO; THOUGHTS ARE INFORMATION IN MY MIND.

>everything you think, say, or do, is just chemicals in your brain

NOT JUST CHEMICALS; ELECTRICAL IMPULSES ALSO; AND SINCE I AM ECTOMORPH, MOSTLY ELECTRICAL IMPULSES.

>Ever heard of the subconcious?

HOW DOES THAT RELATE TO DEPRESSION?

>Do you actually think it's another brain or just the remnants of information that was once processed and stored?

WHY THE NONSEQUITEUR?

THERE IS NO "POINT" IN YOUR POST.

i don't read when i'm depressed.

>>4248016
that's like not eating when you're hungry, or not having sex when horny.

fuck is wrong with you.

>>4248034
Maybe he has actual depression.

>>4247862
>NO; THOUGHTS ARE INFORMATION IN MY MIND.

What is that "mind" you speak of? Your brain is what makes your mind possible.

>NOT JUST CHEMICALS; ELECTRICAL IMPULSES ALSO; AND SINCE I AM ECTOMORPH, MOSTLY ELECTRICAL IMPULSES.

Yeah, all of that shit is stored on the gray stuff below your eyes.

>HOW DOES THAT RELATE TO DEPRESSION?

Really? So, you think the superficial consciousness is only relevant to chemical flaws on an organ?

>WHY THE NONSEQUITEUR?

What? Why not addressing the question I made in the first place?

>THERE IS NO "POINT" IN YOUR POST.

I'm not sure what you are implying by adding the quotation marks, but my point is this: I think it is possible to influence the way your brain produces its chemicals by knowing how it works, things you read, see, and think, affect in one way or another the big picture that is the individual. Another way of putting it is this; I successfully quit smoking by investigating how it works, found about dopamine etc. and simply reeplaced it with something else (that also produces dopamine, in this case, I just started working out, my "mind" (or subconscious) did the rest, replacing one dopamine source with anotherone, changing from one nasty habit into a good one, just by knowing how it works and trusting that everything will fall in its right place back there (the part of your mind that "we" can't control). So yeah, it is possible to, so to speak, plant a small idea on yer brain and wait patiently to develop somewhere on your brain. And I'm only saying that is is POSSIBLE, not that it works every time with every book.

>>4248057

You are retarded

>>4248034
When you're actually depressed (not "boohoo I feel sad") you don't feel like doing anything.

>>4248075
sometimes I really feel like doing things when depressed, everything just seems like a massive feat to accomplish and with no reward.

Bump

>>4248037
I laughed