/lit/ - Literature

mostly this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

>which book made you realize "Damn, I'm not as smart as I thought I was"?

http://www-elec.inaoep.mx/~jmram/Kreyzig-ECS-DIF1.pdf

Being and Time probably

>>6899856

>>6899856
Lacan. Specially the écrits and Seminars 23, 25 and 26.

>>6900020
s-sugoi..

>>6899856
Literally anything by Umberto Eco.

>doing research
>think i have an unbelievably precocious original idea in my field
>reading all this research that will be encompassed by it
>all these titanic books will merely be the cornerstones of my great magnum opus
>they don't even MENTION my idea
>they can't even conceive of an idea as great as mine
>read book #57
>it mentions your idea completely in passing as a retarded outmoded theory some retard had 500 years ago, which the entire field of current scholarship doesn't even bother repudiating because it's so 100% assured that the idea is dead and buried 600 miles underground
>you are a fucking retard

>>6900324
iktftbhb

>>6900324
What was your "original idea"?

>>6900324
my lost brother.

Gadamer does that with every new thing I read by him, but A Confederacy of Dunces made me feel okay with not pretending to be smarter than I am.

>>6899856
Simulacra and simulation. I couldn't make it two pages I'm without losing my train of thought. Granted that was in high school so I could probably do well enough now but I can't find my copy to read it again.

>>6900324
:/

>>6899856
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

the presocratics, aristotle

>>6900343
Yeah I read the first couple of pages and ended up deciding to read the Borges story he references instead.

>>6900324
mah nigga

>>6900067
lol

>>6900074

He was bullshitting. None of it actually makes sense.

>>6899856
Finnegans wake

>>6900759
Love our Lord, indeed!

I'm so glad to see the return of righteousness to /lit/. Go with God, Anon

Ulysses when I was about 15. Hegel's lectures on aesthetics, when I was 16.

>>6899856
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I've never had this reaction while reading a book. Intellectuals are both confident in their own intelligence and appreciative of intelligence in others. But we are not a weak, self-deprecating lot -- those are the British

>>6900821
more like 'thrust, poke zarathustranus' amirite?

my diary, tbh.

>>6899856

>anything by Aquinas

Walter Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis

>>6899856

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

>>6901250

Confirmed for pleb. Kant and Hegel are the definitive philosophers that make people more humble.

I don't even like the categorical imperative, but Kant is incredibly difficult.

>>6900806
And now that you're 17 how do you feel?

>>6901250
>being impressed by cute sterile abstractions

>>6901271

It was for different reasons than you'd assume. I'm a philosophy student at a highly analytic faculty, where philosophy is assumed to have begun essentially with Hume.

Reading Aquinas exploded, largely, my subconscious depreciation of pre-modern philosophy as vain banter.

>>6900824
Yeah but going into a book on quantum theory you'll think you're a lot more knowledgeable going in than coming out.

>>6900324
What book #57 tho?

>>6899856
Did anyone notice something? Now that we have a tattoo thread, all the other threads are of perceptibly higher quality

>>6900821
I'm reading through it right now, and although I don't find it that difficult to get through, I would be lost as fuck if I didn't have a base understanding of his principles. Most of his ideas are presented through parables in an attempt to emulate biblical rhetoric. Because of this you either pause and reflect often on each essay, or you inevitably disregard the nuances of the text. I mean, Nietzsche's famous 'Eternal Return' theory is presented by talking animal saying how they are destined to relive life (I'm not doing it much justice, but my point is it's hardly spelled out for you, and often takes to a side to the diatribe of Zarathustra.

>>6900827
yus.

>>6900324
>Think you have an original idea
>Read a book
>Already been said

When you live without hope, suicide--now; becomes your companion.

Foucault's Pendulum was unexpectedly dense.

>>6900020
it's really not that hard

>>6901631
Looks difficult to me.

Madhyamaka


When I first read it, now I know most of it

>always thought i had an average intellect
>realize i'm most likely below the average

Rimbaud, honestly.

Capital

>>6900082
>http://www-elec.inaoep.mx/~jmram/Kreyzig-ECS-DIF1.pdf
This. Tried to read "Fragmants" (short piece in Misreadings) on vacation. Never again.

>>6900067
You must be really stupid if the ramblings of uneducated desert nomad kikes made you feel stupid.

>>6901800
Whoops, didn't mean to add that link

>>6901786
Read more pussy

>>6901809
I try, but whenever I get the chance to spread the covers, it's like opening up a grilled cheese sandwich.

>>6901815
Damn guess you're condemned to the non-intellectual life. Not so bad actually.

The Name of the Rose, I felt like there was a lot of stuff I wasn't getting about the book.

>read about the Colatz series
>think about it for a day
>think I have some pretty good ideas about it
>read its wiki page next day
>"world famous mathematician claims 'mathematics not ready for this problem yet'"
Whelp I guess I'm not solving this shit then.

Even Einstein's stuff was inspired by people from other fields and real world experiments

Find me one book written in English by a native speaker which is impenetrable. We let translations and foreigners get away with it but not normal speakers.

>>6900082
Eco is a goddamn hack, quit memeing pls

>>6901802
calm down /pol/, we all know you haven't read it.

>>6900324
do not despair, anon

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

The other day I was feeling a little smug about enjoying so much Haydn

then later I realized somewhere along the line I had shifted to listening to Handel and never noticed that they were different people with different names

right there and then I had to admit to myself that I know nothing about music

same thing happened to me with Ice T and Ice Cube once

>>6901815
Damn, I've read it as a response to a "Read more pussy" taken literally

>>6900020
>ctrl+f: PID, nyquist, bode, lag, lead
>not one shows results

>>6899856
Reading Kant and Goethe in college, and reading Shakespeare with a teacher that was an allegory fanatic made me realize what a pleb I was

>>6902575
Thank you friend! But I did get his bad taste joke and I chose to ignore it :))

>>6900020
Are you an engineer or something?
I study physics and we used the same book but it wasn't that hard

>>6902342
calm down /lit/, we all know you haven't read it either.

>>6902575
How do you read pussy?

>>6902282
What are you talking about?

Pic related.

>>6903634
>everyone is as dumb as me
>>>/pol/

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"
- Ayn Rand

>>6904508
She would have been a good writer if not for her libertarian-conservative views.

>>6904841
Then she wouldn't be who she was.

>>6901788
I read and knew that I was smarter then that economic retard.

At the risk of sounding like an arse, its still not happened to me yet. I thought it would happen when I went to university, but I haven't met anyone or found a concept that I thought was so far beyond me. Maybe I'm just an egomaniac.

>>6904841
That's what makes her good. She is the total embodiment of capitalism.

I find it hilarious how many people say they hate her while still clinging to capitalism.

You have to respect someone who takes their ideology to the absolute end.

>>6899856

http://www.scribd.com/doc/250089179/The-Legacy-of-Totalitarianism-in-a-Tundra#scribd

anything by borges

The theses of my family.

>>6904859
And would have been a better person for it.

>>6905044
ewww gross dude dont forget to wash your hands

Any one in which the author makes use of mathematical notation outside of arithmetic and basic algebraic expressions.

>>6902367
But... they have such different sounds... like, completely different...

>>6904919
well meme'd

>>6900506
if you read that, then you're not smart enough to breathe on your own.