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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2158683 [Reply] [Original]

what do you guys think of Ralph Waldo Emerson?

Nice, or self-indulgent/self-affirmation bullshit?

>> No.2158698
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>> No.2158702

very quotable and beautiful prose, but he was far, far too deistic and individualistic for my own liking

>> No.2158703

i would prefer not to

>> No.2158751

>>2158702
I agree with you completely. What have you read that you enjoy?

>> No.2158776

>>2158683
Great writer and philosopher, though you have to realize the writing comes first. I get more inspiration, understanding from reading Emerson than I do from standard philosophy. But I dislike philosophy and love fiction etc. So take it as it is. I just read "Representative Men" -- amazing how he can write about people in completely different ways in the same chapter. Napoleon is both amazing and horrifying at the same time. This sent me to Montaigne who is Emerson's superior I guess, but not so far beyond him.

>> No.2158781

If Ralph Waldo Emerson is "self-affirmation" bullshit, what would that make Nietzsche and Existentialism?

>> No.2158813

>>2158751
wittgenstein
foucault
edward said
malcolm x (some great videos from him on youtube)

deep down i am a logical positivist, this is a major turn off for people who are nationalistic or "spiritual" and all that jazz but i just can't trump reason, logic and the scientific method. if you're still looking for prose and poetry in philosophy, i've enjoyed much from baudrillard and aime cesaire

the latest publication from baudrillard (agony of power) is very poetic and i have yet to work out some of the ideas fully, but its very striking in its language. the thing to understand about baudrillard though is he doesn't work in pure metaphysics nor pure history or logic. his focus is on symbolism which is something of an intersection of both, and i think his attention on symbolism is warranted: we know that symbolic events have more currency in the world than "real" ones.

>> No.2158876

>>2158813

Meh @ Said and Foucault.

>> No.2158927

from Seff Reliance

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. ...to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. "