/lit/ - Literature

Browse more gook, we have a Buddhism thread once a day.

Not to mention Start with the Chinese

>>6514403
>Eurocentric

>>6514403
>I never see anything about Eastern philosophy on here
There are two pathetically pro Tibetan buddhist threads a day.

There's at least one Daoist / Cha'an thread a week.

People love the shit out of gay jap fascist novelists. And recent nip nip write writers.

>>6514403
>wahh the relevant people get all the attention
That's you

>>6514429
Not at all. I never even offered an opinion in that post -- I was merely posing a question. Keep posturing, though.

Has anyone noticed how much more shit /lit/ gets when the ameritards are posting.

Burgerland /lit/
>Hey guise i never read a book in my life is there anything easy to make me feel sophisticated?
>can someone explain the entire western cannon to me in under 5 sentences?

Euro /lit/ (best /lit/)
>What are your thoughts on Foucault's analogy of the Panopticon as power in it's ideal form?
>when Jung proposed that Hegel's philosophy was an invasion by the unconscious, was he high?
and other sophisticated questions

also I am a Merican.

>>6514454
This isn't true at all. /lit/ is usually better after Euro hours. During the day it's filled with inane comments that look like they were written by a 13 year old.

>>6514454
>Complains about shitposting
>Adds nothing of value

>>6514403
What about all of the Marxist discussion?

>>6514454
>What are your thoughts on Foucault's analogy of the Panopticon as power in it's ideal form?
Thanks for demonstrating how big of a basic bitch you are, pleb.

>>6514454

>the Panopticon as power in it's ideal form?

Where does he talk about this?

Because most people are from the west.

>>6514403
Well that would be because Eastern philosophy is incredibly sterile and can't even shake a metaphorical fist at the depth of Western philosophy. I guess when all of your "philosophy" is just inane aphorisms used to prop up whatever spiritual cult is popular with the rulers at the time it's a little hard to compare with the staggering weight of the West. It's always funny to me when I meet people with legitimate interest in Eastern philosophy, because they fall into the category of either unbearably pretentious undergrad or stoner who thinks buying tie-dye shirts and getting to high to move is tantamount to being a devout Buddhist.

>>6514475
No they're not.

>>6514487
isn't 4chan blocked in china and russia though?

Most philosophy threads here are shit. Why do you want a bunch of teenagers to shit up Eastern philosophy as-well?

>>6514487
Do you think most people on /lit/ are from Asia?

>all these entry readers not reading outside the west

>>6514410
>>6514414

>implying Europe is the hub of knowledge

>>6514465
>>6514460
>>6514458
buttmad americucks

>>6514468
pic related

>>6514507
That's because they're entry.

>>6514507
Where's your chin?

>>6514501
No, but that is a different issue.

>>6514508
So is the internet a Panopticon?

>>6514523
>>6514403
>why is /lit/ eurocentric

>>6514516

Post your face.

>>6514527
Yes now it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29

>>6514501

most of /lit/ are from the west, but most of /a/ are as well, and they're not as eurocentric

>>6514407
you should start with the Egyptians.

Even Plato and Aristotle knew this.

>>6514531
The proper context:
>>6514487
>>6514475

>>6514550
>>6514539
Alright, I admit, I fell for the bait.

>>6514507
oh look, an orientalist

>>6514562

>reading outside of Europe is "orientalist"

To be fair, for a majority of Europe's "lifetime" it's been stealing from everything with an Easterly direction.

>>6514562
i prefer the term anime expert, thank you.

>>6514538
Woah, it's like wherever I go I'm one computer away from the government mannn.

>>6514563
>there are actually people who believe this
I seriously hope you've got some facts to back this up, friend

>>6514599
Who invented gunpowder and paper?

>>6514613
Who invented systematic logic and rhetoric?

>>6514599

The Greek societies were totally reliant culturally on the Near East and Egypt. Without the Near East and the Orientalizing Period much of what made Greece Greece would be stuck artistically and culturally with what it had throughout the Neolithic.

It need not be said what European Civilization would be without the Greeks. Aside from this, trade between Europe and Asia, especially in the British Empire, emphasized the erotic/exotic/and oriental to the point of fetishization.

Europe as we know it might have been similar to Native American cultures had it not been for cross-culture influences.

>>6514403

> Posts on an English speaking board
> Complains about "eurocentricism"

>>6514624

Excellent rebuttal.

>>6514617
That'd be the indians.

>>6514403
this is 4chan
you want 2chan

>>6514619

Regardless, we innovated on what we took, it is not as if we took from other cultures without altering things at all. The innovations of Platonic and Aristotelean Philosophy are genuinely Greek ( though also anti-Greek in that they started to foreshadow the Faustian culture that would come to be in the Middles Ages, and were rather subversive in allot of ways). At the very least formal logic is ours, it's true that India had systems of logic, but that is their logic, it is distinct from what Aristotle discovered. Baroque music is ours, representative democracy is ours ( unfortunately), Gothic Architecture is ours, ect. All cultures borrow from each other, when you can point to something that we adopted without altering or failed to make something new out of then you can call it "stealing".

>>6514619
This reminds me. Do you have suggestions for a book that specifically deals with this? Greeks, even today, have seemed to me sort of alien in comparison to the rest of Europe. That whole region always seems to be off doing its own thing and more in line with Asia.

>my culture is more cultury than your culture
guise this fighting is pointless. ALL culture is infantile compared to the probably infinite scope of the universe in which it exists

>>6514670

Most books on general art history delve into the subject far greater than other works on influence.

As for books, in general you can find information about this subject more easily just via the internet. The Orientalizing Period of Greece is a critical subject on the matter and gives some insight into European customs that came from the Greeks that further originated in areas like Syria.

>>6514678

>>6514678
it's just a bunch of dust and clumps of dust and empty space.

nothing means anything relative to nothing.

nothing is the only "thing" (pardon my paradox) with intrinsic value

>>6514640
Whoa stop the shitposting for a second, are you serious? I wouldn't pin any honestly methodical logic or rhetoric until Aristotle (although you could argue the Sophists had a method for Rhetoric before hand, there just isn't the kind of account there is for Aristotle's theories on rhetoric.

Would appreciate some books or papers, I honestly don't know much about Eastern cultures, and I never really thought Eastern philosophy to have the logical rigor the West does.

>>6514629
Your lack of chin is actually more excellent

>>6514711
>I honestly don't know much about Eastern cultures, and I never really thought Eastern philosophy to have the logical rigor the West does.

Start with Buddhist philosophy of consciousness.

>>6514711
> I never really thought Eastern philosophy to have the logical rigor the West does.

Your eurocentrism is showing. If you look deep you will find logical rigor in philosophy of other cultures as well.

>>6514718

Post a picture of yourself.

>>6514731
Any books/papers/essays you could recommend on Eastern logic?

>>6514711

Honestly I used to be the opposite, I was all into Nagarjuna and Advaita Vedanta stuff and studied it in university, it is more rigorous than you would expect before you start studying it, but it really doesn't touch Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, Frege, ect in terms of rigor.

>>6514403
Because +90% of its posters are from Euro-Americunt civilization

>>6514863
The west is the best go team!

Who wants to read about tea ceremonies instead of surpassing the good bad dichotomy with Ulysses?

>>6515093
Actually that source says that Jewish people account for 20 percent of nobel prizes. Please disregard my post.

>>6514516
Hiding behind the cup, duh.

>>6515355

Hey bud. Let's see a picture of your face.

>>6514454
Is this pasta?

>>6515358
http://youtu.be/YgHNtzxO0y8

>>6515673
10/10, ty Tyrone.

There's no real reason to read philosophy or literature from outside of the west (assuming you include Russia as western).

Also, it doesn't matter at all if Grecian culture was influenced by the Orient. The Orient didn't produce Plato's works, and to say "but without it he couldn't have thought of it" is unfalsifiable (and I don't mean that in an Analytic sense).

>>6515792
Without homo erectus, people would have been stuck without fire.

Why are you not sucking homo eretus cock? The West would have been nothing without them.

>It's not just a reductio ad absurdum, I actually compare eastern "philosophy" to what I think homo erectus was capable of saying

>>6515810
I think there can be merit to some Indian/Chinese philosophy, but there's no actual NEED that these philosophies can fill. They're intellectual externalities.

>>6514724
Buddhist philosophy of consciousness is precisely one of the worst. Buddhism is general is trash in that regard.
If you want a logical thing, go for the Confucian sociology and legal theory.
You may also read Max Weber on the subject inhis two books about Indian and Chinese religions.

>>6514613
That's two ionventions, three if you count the compass. The Low Countries alone have been equally useful to the advancement of evolved races than all of Asia.

Also, Chinese "gunpowder" was perfectly useless and couldn't produce relevant firearms. Even the nationalist Chinese historians regard it as little more than fireworks. It was an explosive mixture such as there had been for a long time. Turned out it was the best suited for artillery afetrwards.

>>6514537
Ok

>>6515093
Just like you got the most medals per square meter because people get that shit just for participating, am I right? :^)

Because God chose Europe.

>Oriental philosophy
man is like water, made of liquid and ever changing.
>Western philosophy
¬(0 = x′)
x′ = y′ → x = y
¬(x = 0) → ∃y(x = y′)
x + 0 = x
x + y′ = (x + y)′
x × 0 = 0
x × y′ = (x × y) + x

Because Europe is better.

>>6514403
Why go with second-best?

>>6515848
it's funny that your oriental philosophy is written in based roman letters, while your western philosophy is written in spooky runes

>>6515874
By the way, why does oriental stuff have such awful prose? Vedas excepted, but here are not philosophy.
Sure there are unsufferable writers like Hegel, but there are also some next level esthetism in Leibniz, Kierkegaard, ...
I'm not an expert by any mean, by the Tao Te King and a selection of sutra read like self-help books.

>>6515905
Wittgenstein's prose > obscurantist faggots

>why is this English speaking literature board so Eurocentric?

>>6515828
>Buddhist philosophy of consciousness is precisely one of the worst. Buddhism is general is trash in that regard.
wait why ?

>>6514403
Hey man, there;s a Murakami thread every few months.

>>6514403

Because eastern philosophy is on average shit.

Tao Te Ching is god-tier. Confucius was a fascist handmaiden like Heidegger. Hinduism is interesting for its polyglot pantheon, its integration of the web of life into everyday life, but seriously, karma and caste system? Fuck that. . . Kali Yuga booga boo.

>>6514403
It's not. It's US-centric. It's only EU-centric for philosophy because of there not being any US philosophy (lolrand)

And, western culture is objectively superior.

Also,
>reading translations

Speaking as an American and one of the only true patricians on this board, I can tell you right now that I have no interest whatsoever in Europe or its "philosophers". You see, ideas flourish best within American borders, where people aren't plagued by tradition and therefore have the freedom to explore all ideas, pioneering the way in many fields. It's no coincidence most scientific innovations take place in America. It's no coincidence Einstein and Nabokov moved here. If anything, I'd prefer to be called Americentric.

>>6515941
Because it doesn't fit into his preconceived ideas and in general has been explained outside the context of Western philosophy and its rules and standards.

>>6515963
He's shit.

>>6516032
so it is more about him than Buddhism

>>6516021

>>6515905
Most philosophical works in Sanskrit or Tibetan are versified to aid in memorization, that's why they also tend to be repetitive. Translators tend to focus more on fidelity to the original than aesthetic matters, and with Chinese texts, especially Daoist, the translator has to make a lot of interpretative choices.

Because most of the people who make threads are white. If chinks want Eastern threads, they can make them.

>>6514403
A better question would be 'why is lit so anglocentric'.

I seldom see threads that aren't about english works (except for some memebooks).

>>6517172
>attempting to understand being and find an authentic human spirit when you don't know jack shit about half of the world

good luck with that, if you're not too eurocentric to care about anything other than science

>>6517184

I am British my friend. I have a culture that is far in advance to most of the planet. I have read European authors, who are themselves far in advance of other philosophers, especially the Germans and French. Tell me, why should I care about Asians (aside from the Japanese)? They are inferior in every way, and have nothing to contribute or enlighten me with. Confusianism? Just traditionalism for chinks. Hinduism? Completely useless. Buddhism? Basically just egoism with a paint job. Your comments may have made snese 300 years ago when China was the most advanced society on the planet, but now? Lol no.

>>6514403
>not being eurocentric = reading East Asia

It's so transparent what is happening. Asia is a rising power in the world and (pretty recently) everyone else decided that Asians were smart and had "high" culture. It's not a coincidence that people now look to Asia for their cultural products and give them value (that they never seemed to have before).

You are not subverting American/Western hegemony. You are letting a new group into the fold, thereby giving it "non-Western" cred, thereby reinforcing it. In 20 years, Asian will be the new white, the old white will still be white, and black/brown will still be black/brown. Nothing is changing. You are not radical.

>>6514537
I'll post mine if you post yours
---- ;) ----

>>6517205
How is it our fault that people living below the Sahara have never produced an indigenous work of literature (let alone invented written language) ?

>>6517217
It isn't. I'd say you're better than OP because you don't claim/believe to be doing something you're not

>>6516007
transcendentalism?
i mean, that sorta died out, and the culture is nothing like it was then, or, if it is, it is but a shadow, but, it was there for a time.

>>6517231
I like commas too. But seriously America hasn't contributed anything to Philosophy or theory besides some analytics and pragmatism. Most of our philosophy is practical, empirical, scientific, and boring. Continentals are the exact opposite

>>6517205
>>6517221
That's so Zizekian

>>6517275
No it isn't. How?

>Why are europeans so eurocentric?

Stupidest thing I've heard all day

> not reading South-Africa

>>6517318
>South Africa
>most Western country in Africa
>white writer

Is this post ironic? I can't even tell anymore

>>6517341
>white writer
Wow, racist much?

>>6517341
The theme and the way it reads is different than normal ameriburger literature though.
This book gives more insight on white african culture and on the situation in SA. Really recommend it

>>6517365
>ameriburger
America is far more interesting than SA

>>6517612
Prove it bitch

I enjoy the people saying >West is objectively better,

for fuck's sake at least have pride and admit it's because we're on an Anglo/European based culture/board

>>6519509
Right. But it's also silly to criticize us for being eurocentric, you dig?

>>6514403
West is best, everything else is weeaboo shit and slavshit

>>6521252
Boo

>>6514507
you're the shittiest tripfag i have ever seen

filtered

>>6514403

>Eurocentric

I take that as a compliment. Everything outside of Europe (throwing in the US with eurobros here) and Russia is pleb tier.