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/lit/ - Literature

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3136844 No.3136844 [Reply] [Original]

Whats in your Opinion the most difficult to understand book author?
>Soren Kierkegaard

>> No.3136877

timecube guy

>> No.3136898

Joyce, because people have yet to fathom why he would waste so much time on a vapid piece of shit like Finnegans Wake

>> No.3136914

Hegel.

The discussion may now end.

>> No.3136945

>>3136898
I think you missed the beautiful characters, plot, style and language in FW. If you didn't miss it you wouldn't be calling it shit.

>> No.3136978

Francesco Colonna

>> No.3137042

shel silverstein

>> No.3137048

>>3136844
It is clearly Kierkegaard

>> No.3137053

>>3136914
Internet is over today, go home.

>> No.3137077

Iceberg Slim.

>> No.3137078

>>3137053
Hegel presents his ideas way too directly. It is Nietzsche.

>> No.3137137

>>3136844
You really find Kierkegaard that difficult to understand? May I ask if you read it in Danish or English? Personally I've read them in Danish, and most of the time it makes perfect sense, and is easily relatable to Danish society at the time - And his philosophies make quite a lot of sense.
Nietzsche on the other hand doesn't seem to share any of my philosophical views, and therefore I can't understand whatever it is he is trying to convey.

>> No.3137163

>>3137137
>>3137137
>If you think Nietzsche was hard then Kierkegaard will fuck you in the ass with a pineapple.

>> No.3137170

>>3137137
But more seriously, Nietzsche's ironic nihilism meets the needs of late capitalism perfectly as a replacement for the dangerous intimacy in Merleau-Ponty—Nietzsche is THE. PUREST. IDEOLOGY. of self-repression of the subjectivity.

In contrast Kierkegaard offers a long march out of abjection and into knowing action in the world. I talk to colleagues who are "liberal-democratic" bourgeois thinkers (though they themselves are proletarian) and their way out of the crisis of knowledge in late-capitalism is generally to stew. Some go for intersubjectivity or a bald ignoring of the problem of knowledge and action. But very few people are willing to engage in a Long March of Faith.

>> No.3137172
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3137172

>>3137137
I was at a seminar about Kierkegaard with Pia Sølftoft and I've read him a lot, saying he's easy to understand is nearly insulting him.

There have been different ways to interpret him and it shifted the last 20 years again.

I'd admit that Nietzsche says a lot of things that are not logical, but just because he's contradicting doesn't mean he's as difficult as Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, like Kant, wrote a lot of useless stuff just to show how well he could write. Let me get you the opening phrase from Sickness Unto Death, which i am reading just now.

>Mennesket er ånd. Men hvad er ånd. Ånd er selvet. Men hvad er selvet? Selvet er et forhold, der forholder sig til sig selv, eller er det i forholdet, at forholdet forholder sig til sig selv; selvet er ikke forholdet, men at forholdet forholder sig til sig selv.

You probably get what he's saying, but he's trying to wrap it up a lot, showing off his ability to juggle words.

Hegel, that's what's hard. I've never understood Hegel fully. Or i don't know if i have.

>> No.3137176

>>3137137
I read it in German
So it might be a bit more difficult to understand.
But you cant say it is easy.
The Case that i didn't read that many "heavy" literature because i'm only 16 might be a reason too

>> No.3137179

>>3137163
As previously stated - I found Kierkegaard understandable, not simple, but just understandable. He made sense and I worked quite a bit on some of his works. (Danish School system forces you too read it(thank god))

>> No.3137181
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3137181

>>3137163

>> No.3137216
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3137216

>Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is easier than say German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

>> No.3137230
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3137230

>>3137078

>> No.3137237

Hegel or Lacan

/thread

>> No.3137244
File: 18 KB, 261x400, Phenomenology-of-Spirit-9780198245971.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3137244

Hegel
Deleuze

I'd take both of them over having to read that again.

>> No.3137248

>>3137244
>Hegel
Heidegger, I mean.

>> No.3137261

>>3137172
I, for one, did not understand that phrase at all, but I haven't read a lot of Kierkegaard. It seems to me he's being purposefully abstruse or even entirely nonsensical in that opening phrase.

Also I wasn't forced to read Kierkegaard at all in school. Fuck.

>> No.3137276

Lacan, Hegel, probably.

>> No.3137278

>>3137276
>Lacan

Please, no frauds.

>> No.3137284

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3GQyArC6h8

deep shit, man

>> No.3137330

>>3137170
>crisis of knowledge

Can you elaborate on this, because the first link for "crisis of knowledge" on Google is someone talking about how we need God to solve the problems that positivism won't.

I'm not very literate, I guess, but I am probably one of those "problems" that need solved and I'd like a better idea of who's going to be trying to kill me.

>> No.3137344

>>3137330
Language has been demonstrated to most people's satisfaction to be arbitrary and thus be incapable of containing stable (ie: universal) meanings. So yeah, it is about "God" in a way, given that since Spinoza "God" has been a metaphor for actual knowledge.

The issue is, separate from the "empirical proof" problem, is that our language won't sustain meaning.

We do this tutorial about every three days on /lit/, can someone else do it?

>> No.3137349

>>3137172
I get you - you seem to miss the point I was making however. I wasn't saying it was easy, but rather, that it was easier and more relatable than Nietzsche, at least for me personally. Sorry if I was being incoherent.
Also ; Pia Søltoft probably isn't the most unbiased source for the evaluation of Kierkegaards complexety; she's been working her entire life with his works, and must hold him in very high regard. Very smart woman tho'
.

>> No.3137360

>>3137176
I am only a 'few'(I'll keep telling myself this until I'm 30) years older, but I've probably been exposed to a bit more 'heavy' and complex literature, but in all honesty you might never understand Kierkegaard or you might get him within hours - It seems to be very personal.
But no, it is definately not easy. - But keep reading his works; you will learn something about yourself and people around you.

>> No.3137369

>>3137344
I'd like you too keep doing it. But can't you have some sort of "before you join /lit/" courses online so we won't have to reread the questions about the crisis of knowledge a couple of times a week?
(Sorry if that seemed to lack humor, I'm not very witty after 12 o'clock)

>> No.3137390

>>3137369
Languages are arbitrary and contingent, and can't be moved between subjectivities (thinking people), right? When I say this, you understand it, but we can't root that understanding in language itself due to its contingency. Meaning seems to be mysteriously transmitted between people, but the thing that "transmits" meaning demonstrably _can't_.

This affects reading, writing, speaking, analysing society, etc.

Therefore there's a problem with moving meaning about, Kierkegaard solves the problem through the hermeneutic circle, which is a niftier way out to my mind than Camus, Nietzsche, etc.

>> No.3137426

>>3137390
I haven't thought about this for a long time now, but oh, how true it rings.
On a not too different note; I've often contemplated trying to analyse a text in my native language (Danish/Norwegian) using my Danish education, and afterwards reading an English, translated version of the same text, using the analytical methods I learned during my IB Diploma - I myself have no clue what results it would yield, so I believe it could be extremely interesting.

>> No.3137437

>>3137426
I'd suggest doing this with a short text. Obviously the English poetics won't replicate the Danish poetics. This is a major translation problem with important texts.

>> No.3137476

>>3137437
Yes, I will choose a rather brief text, as this is only an experiment for myself. But I wasn't considering doing it on poetics, but rather focus on the philosphers and how the interpretation of their texts are different in the different cultural contexts.
If I may ask, where are you from yourself? Denmark?

>> No.3137481

>>3137476
Australia.

"Poetics" refers to the language specific features of the text that evoke meaning or sentiment. So alliteration, rhyme, rhythm. Danish language != English. So a translation of a Danish work loses the poetry of the original, and takes on the poetry of the translator. Even for the poetry of a philosophical text.

>> No.3137494

Holy shit OP, how did you write that meme arrow without yellowtexting?

>> No.3137508

>>3137481
Ah, I do apologize. It seems that my education fails me from time to time. But I get your point, and that is actually the point of the experiment. To denote these differences and present them to whoever might find them interesting.

>> No.3137516

>>3137481
This if course raises the problem of me being able to "change" character when analysing it. Hmm - I seems I shall have to get someone to do the other part of the experiment.

>> No.3137524

>>3137508
>>3137516
You seem be able to read English strongly enough to be able to determine whether the English resembles the Danish in what it does to the reader at the level of the experience of the language itself. :)

>> No.3137539

>>3137494
>I dont know

>> No.3137555

>>3137524
Okay, so my education doesn't fail me completely. :-)
But to be fair; I believe that anyone who considers themselves fluent in both their native language and English will be able to see the difference if they have some concept of how to analyse the poetics of a work.(Did I use the word poetics in it's rightful manner this time?)

>> No.3137560

>>3137555
Yes! :). Don't worry about not knowing the word "poetics," it only emerges in the discussion of the aesthetics of literary texts. Lit crit jargon.

>> No.3137558

>>3137516
Wouldn't you just get stuck as the third (or fourth) party in a dialectic of subjective or contingent interpretations?

>> No.3137572

>>3137558
This is exactly why you need a robust theory of reading like Hermeneutics.

WELCOME MY SON TO THE MACHINE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB_2oIKUVks

>> No.3137595

>>3137572
I stupidly did history for my undergrad, so do you have somewhere to start with that?

>> No.3137604

>>3137595
Historiography is normally considered a strong theory of reading texts btw.

Try Hayden White for an example of a hermeneutic reading of cultural history.

>> No.3137616

>>3137558
Aye, I would - But to be fair, my personal involvement doesn't matter as much as me being able to observe the results. Call it a thirst for knowledge.

>> No.3137619

>>3137604
I don't understand the word 'historiography' as a theory. Could you expand on that?

>> No.3137636

>>3137619
In English (I'm saying this because this is a multilingual discussion), "History" are past events, "History" are the records of past events, "History" is the scholarly writing of past events, "Historiography" is the theory of the scholarly writing of past events.

So interpreting a primary source is conducting the discipline of history. Historiography is the study of, or constituent behaviours required, to correctly interpret texts.

Marxist historiographies claim that texts represent records of actual social reality, but uncovering the social reality in the text means reading with an awareness of the existence of ways of being that aren't necessarily recorded in the texts.

>> No.3137641

>>3137619
Scratch that, I think I get what you mean. I'm overthinking this - it's not my field - you're talking about a theory of reading understood as exactly that.

>> No.3137663

>>3137604
>>3137636
And this is, without a doubt, an important field! I myself spend a lot of time on history and literature and how it relates. I won't go into detail as I haven't worked on it recently enough to say anything intelligent, but yet, it is interesting and I find it very important to apply the historical context to the work in question.

>> No.3137669

>>3137663
Honestly, I was coming at it from the other direction, pointing out that historical texts have literary qualities that must also be countenanced in the historical analysis of such texts.

There's poetry in a good minute book.

>> No.3137708

>>3137669
Hmm - Now I must disagree, because I myself must separate the historical texts from the literary works, otherwise it simply doesn't fit into my historical investigation, and whatever conclusion I bring up is rubbish. But I can see how you might find the texts to possess some literary qualities, but I just have to ignore these in the name of science!
> (Over-exaggerating so it sounds more important)

>> No.3137718

>>3137636
What I meant was that I don't understand the word 'historiography' as relating to 'a theory'. I understand the term as referring to either past work within the field of history or to different methodologies within the field - not, in itself a theory.
This was what confused me when you wrote >>3137604

I think I misapprehended you much earlier, when you started talking about theories of reading. I understand your point that the historical approach enables you to do a reading that isn't just what I described when I first jumped into the discussion here: >>3137558

I'm trying to sort myself out.

>> No.3137724

>>3137718
Yeah. Historians tend to look at post-modernism's agony with the contingency of texts and go, "All our texts are contingent, and we've been doing fine for years."

>> No.3137736
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3137736

Leibniz, so far anyway he's difficult

Monad's everywhere and nowhere dood

>> No.3137744

>>3137736
Sorry, no longer relevant. ;-) Apparently we have been capable of completely derailing the thread.

>> No.3137749

>>3137708
So you're ignoring most historical texts from the pre-Hellenic period? I find that, the further I trace the practice of writing History back, the more it comes to resemble Myth and to be told in a suitably poetic fashion. The exception to this is, of course, financial documents. Even at the dawn of written language, man had a propensity for being quite exact about worth and wealth.

>> No.3137751

Homi Bhabha. He makes Derrida look positively readable.

>> No.3137761

>>3137744
ahhh, i see now that i scroll up and look @.@ sheesh

>> No.3137762

>>3137749
It doesn't matter whether the poetry is good or not, it is still in the text. Financial documents can have pure poetic moments—they're shit poems—but poetry is still there.

>> No.3137777

>>3137724
Quite, though more traditional historians - in my experience - still lose their shit when confronted with the difficulty of accessing direct truth in history, as if the field lives and dies by that and nothing less.

>> No.3137789

>>3137777
>7777

>> No.3137794

>Theodor W. Adorno

>> No.3137799

>>3137777
Nice quads.

Yeah, some historians can't handle it. I've not seen this, but we don't often talk about it, because the contingencies don't affect normal readings within a disciplinary methodology. Historiography itself protects us from this shit, we read according to agreed rules.

>> No.3137800

>>3137749
>"So you're ignoring [...] poetic fashion"
Ahh, once again I fail to explain myself and my background properly. Yes, I do disregard historical texts from the pre-Hellenic period. Hell, I even disregard a lot of Hellenic period texts, simply because the history I've studied has been exclusively 19th and 20th century history.
Most pre-Hellenic historical texts are in my head myths anyways - far to imprecise to be applicable sources if they aren't related to physical proof ; But that is a whole different matter that is dicussed between historians.
> "Even at the dawn of written language, man had a propensity for being quite exact about worth and wealth."
Hilarious!

>> No.3137834

JK Rowling

>> No.3137842

Op is going to bed now
I love this Thread and stuff but i want to read it till it gets 404'd
I would love you if someone who follows it will send me the Thread in some hours to this Email:
4chanLitThread@gmail.com
P.s
>>3137834
faggot

>> No.3137864
File: 490 KB, 449x401, Girls.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3137864

>>3137842
>he thinks a thread on /lit/ will 404 overnight

>> No.3137865

>>3137799
At my university they made a big stink when faced with the suggestion that the historian cannot (due to the nature of language) access the past through the sources. They stressed the importance of History as a Social Science rather than 'just' literature.
The one lecture we had on it was downright pitiful, and didn't answer as much as attempt to brush away the problem.

>> No.3137868

>>3137864
touché

>> No.3137874

>>3137865
If they believed they were directly accessing the past then they were underread in historiography to begin with. The documentary records of the past are just that. Provenance, bias, limited recording, record loss, archival quality—it all contributes to the third order nature of reading in history.

History is a social science as well as a humanity. Its method is discursive. Large n discursive. And for me, the gap between me and a text is resolved by the presence of Meaning and Faith, and by a blind leap into an abyss hoping that Meaning will lift me up in his arms and gently masturbate me.

>> No.3137896

>>3137874
>Meaning will lift me up in his arms and gently masturbate me.
Dude, What the hell?
Also, signing off now... I think.

>> No.3137922

>>3137874
I got the impression that some of the older academics in my faculty had long since given up staying abreast of newer developments in the field. Considering that History only woke up to postmodernism in the 90's, they might easily not have touched that part of the historiography before they had to teach it as a foundational course.

I won't pretend to understand the second part of that. Are you saying that History moves to a state of description (to the position of a 'social science'), through a subjective resolution of the conflict between truth and representation by way of an experience of meaning?
(I apologize if this is way off. I am out of my depth and unschooled.)

Because if so, I agree. The problem of historical truth is annihilated by the experience of a meaning in history. It, of course, doesn't give back to History the position it has lost.

>> No.3137932

>>3137896
>Dude, What the hell?
Obviously you've never had a muse.

>>3137922
No, history is a social science because it produces structure and process knowledge about the ordering of social life.

History can produce knowledge at all because of meaning in history. Texts are purposive with a teleology.

>the position it has lost.

History never lost its position, it was _always_ serving the needs of the revolutionary proletariat.*

* Your meaning may vary.

>> No.3137940

>>3137932
So being 'masturbated' by Meaning is the experience of having a text comply with your own
conception of meaning in history?

>> No.3137943

immanuel kant cuz i cant read german

>> No.3137946

>>3137940
Yes, but the point of jumping with Faith is that your faith must be in line with all that you know about reality, you can't jump in bad faith, you will simply fall into the abyss. You must deploy every tool you can to ensure that your reading is exegetic in nature, it needs to be grounded in large ns and careful interpretation.

And if you're lucky you'll get a handjob. And if you're unlucky every other historian will turn on you like a pack of hungry pigs—while you're still alive.

>> No.3137976

>>3137946
I liked your conception of history better when I hadn't understood what you were saying.
But thank you for being patient with all my questions.

>> No.3137983

>>3137976
There are some other solutions to the reading problem:
will to power
inter-subjectivity
farcical meaningless struggle

Hermeneutics works for me because it is exactly the same reading technique that historians use themselves

>> No.3138492

Kierkegaard difficult?

It wasnt easy, but jesus, it felt like the fucker wrote a book about me.

>> No.3138540

>>3137943

don't you mean you kant read german?

ohoho but in all seriousness do you really think kant is the most difficult philosopher to understand?