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/lit/ - Literature

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3157099 No.3157099 [Reply] [Original]

PHILOSOPHY

I studied philosophy in High School (not America's High School) and read a bunch on my own but haven't in a long time and I'm considering getting back to it.

I'm especially interested in the nature of reality and God, but will read anything good.

>> No.3157104

nietzsche

>> No.3157118

>>3157104

What I've read of him was more like snippets about society which I often hear from teenagers in almost the same depth. Might be a bit harsh, but that's a rough impression.

I can't recall Nietzsche talking about reality, or much about God, just rants against Christianity, which are two very different things.

>> No.3157129

You want to know about God? Try being enlisted to a ship heading straight for a land still shackled by savagery. Try having your enemies fly their plane into your ships and watching your friends leaping into the water and into the ready mouths of sharks. Try having to shoot your friend in the head because a gas tank exploded and the pain of the fire was too much for him. Yeah, then you'll know about God.

>> No.3157132

Foucault

>> No.3157145

>>3157129

I'm pretty sure these would be the best theophanies I could ever expect - I am sure - but these aren't things I can trigger myself, and even if I could, I wouldn't.

Other suggestions?

>> No.3157143

>>3157129

Yawn. Fear of death and pain has nothing to do with the true nature of reality.

>> No.3157151

>>3157143

Both tend to highten our senses and possibly our thinking, so it could be a valid way to explore the true nature of reality, even though anon was talking about God, should there be a difference.

Not to be chucked aside this quickly!

>> No.3157168

>>3157151

Your senses, as well as your thoughts, have no bearing on the true state of reality. It's effectively unknowable

>> No.3157169

>>3157104
probably the most overrated philosopher ever... the guy was a wannabe alpha male who shat on everyone, and eventually had a mental breakdown

>> No.3157403

>>3157168

Sure, but I'm talking about what we may learn from our senes, smartass.

>> No.3157413

>>3157403
stimuli -> perceptions (senses) -> conceptions

>> No.3157416

>>3157403

Senses which might at any moment be deceiving you completely? How can we learn of anything to do with the universe at large, especially something transcendent and timeless, with only our senses?

>> No.3157420

>>3157416
>transcendent and intuitive

fix'd

>> No.3157424 [DELETED] 
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3157424

>>3157129
P-p-pleeease.

>> No.3157427

>>3157420

How can your intuition be said to be anything other than hallucination?

>> No.3157441

What philosophy have you read, OP?

That might give us a better idea of where you should go from here.

>> No.3157448

STOP IT WITH THIS GOD DAMN PAINTING

>> No.3157449

>>3157427
actually I changed my mind back. timeless it is.

>How can your intuition be said to be anything other than hallucination?
you're not the same guy i was replying to, are you? i can feel the bullshit crawling out of your atheistic ass already

>> No.3157453

>>3157129

I konw about God

doesn't exist yo.

>> No.3157457

>>3157449

I'm pretty much a hardline agnostic on just about everything. Claims of knowledge and truth bug the shit out of me

>> No.3157516

Why do people waste so much time on such things as "the nature of reality"? None of this shit is even verifiable so what is the point?

>> No.3157538

>>3157516
Why do people waste time on listening to Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Mozart and Bach? Why do people waste time on reading Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante and Homer? Why do people waste time on watching Michelangelo, Bosch, Raffaello and Rembrandt?

>> No.3157541 [DELETED] 

Contextualize. Read history of theology. Be open minded.

What I call being open minded is more than just receiving, but being able to let things pass without becoming stationary truths in your head. We have a lot of prejudice around the words we read, we associate them all the time and we create a web of linking words that block the entrance to thoughts (and the exit as well).

Any claim can be refuted, don't make claims, even to yourself. Question, but do it humbly. Be critic, but respect the opposing opinion. Cut the line between the dichotomies you have in your head and see other dimensions of the issue. Consider that all that we agree and disagree with is actually a product of the words which we understand and misunderstand. Awareness of this linguistic problem is the best thing I know for reading religious and philosophical texts.

"Nature of reality", reality itself. You don't get through books, you get it through everything. But the things people say about it might strike you as true or not. It's always verifiable and never verifiable. The idea that there is one truth is dangerous enough and make us expect that, when we encounter something that is true, that we would be able to prove it or pass on to others. And by doing that, we are already limiting ourselves and cutting out our own personal truths, instincts, ideas, thoughts. Don't be so serious about what it.

Don't trust your senses, don't trust words.
Trust your senses, trust words.

You know?

>> No.3157546

>>3157441

Pascal, Montaigne, Sartre, Descartes, Nietzsche, but none tackles what I want exactly.

>> No.3157547

>>3157448

I'm not the only one posting this masterpiece?

>> No.3157558 [DELETED] 

>>3157546
Aquinas, Epicurus, Aristotleman & Platobro, Kant.

Dare I say, you could check some eastern thought as well. Confucius, the Tao te Ching, a good edition of the Dhamapada, etc.

And Alan Watts. People don't like him here, but I think he is quite a clear thinker and has a lot to say on "god", the "nature of reality" and most importantly: how absurd it is that we conceptualize those things.

>> No.3157560

>>3157546
just start from the very beginning and work your way up. grabbing random philosophers and thinkers won't get you anywhere. good luck reading nietzsche without understanding schopenhauer, greeks and the pre-socratics

>> No.3157564

>>3157541

Very Pyrrhic of you. I'm familiar with it, and skeptical of it, which is just what it wants...

>> No.3157566

>>3157558

Aquinas was on my list, Kant too, glad to see them confirmed. Thanks bro.

>> No.3157571

What's a good edition of Aquinas' Summa Theologica?

>> No.3157579

>>3157541
>Read history of theology.
ugh oh, how do you know OP was speaking of the Christian God though?

>> No.3157588

>>3157579
>Theology
>Exclusive to Christianity.

Son, you don't even realise how full your retard just went.

>> No.3157601

>>3157571
you do realise that Summa Theologica is 3,000 pages long right? and that is the smallest edition I've found.

>>3157579
Cretin

>> No.3157605 [DELETED] 

>>3157564
I don't really get what you mean by that.

>>3157579
I don't know that, in fact I didn't expect that. Theology is not only about the christian god, I mean, not at all really. I really don't know how you got that from.

>> No.3157608

>>3157601
Aquinas was such a dick.

>> No.3157630

>>3157608
Yes, he was. He had nothing original to say and simply stole from Aristotle and Augustine.
In reality, any reading from the medieval period is an unprofitable experience if you want to understand the nature of reality or God, given that the scholastic terms are redundant in modernity

>> No.3157633
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3157633

>>3157605
>preaches scepticism
>doesn't know who pyhrro was
>Mfw

>> No.3157664
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3157664

>>3157546

Sartre? Have you read Being and Nothingness? If you are interested in the nature of reality, then you might want to start with Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason). It's very dense reading to some. It is about how the mind perceives things, classifies, them, etc., and it is considered the main refutation of Descartes' mind-body dualism. Edmund Husserl formally phenomenology, which is the study of 'phenomena' in the perceptual sense. That might be what you're looking for. From there, you can go to Martin Heidegger (Basic Writings, Being and Time) to whom Sartre was replying to with 'Being and Nothingness'. Heidegger is where philosophy went into the different camps of Analytical and Continental.

Going into the Analytic tradition, you will want to read Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Blue and Brown Books, On Certainty) who proposed that "language is the limits of the world". There is then Bertrand Russel (Basic Writings, etc.) and A.J. Ayer ('Language, Truth, and Logic') and the logical positivist school. Continental Theory delves mostly into philosophy as it relates the social sciences. That's where postmodernism, deconstructionism, etc. comes from.

>> No.3157671

>>3157601

Yes, I'm very aware of that. I found an awesome edition but from amazon.com, and that's a bit far from me.

>> No.3157685

>>3157664

Epic post. Saved the image.

Yes, I've read Sartre's fat book, in French and it's very interesting, but I have no idea how it held in the philosophical world.

I might get Kant, then Husserl, then Heidegger.

>> No.3157683

>>3157664
that chart is utter crap.

>> No.3157687

>>3157683
use this instead, http://www.mindmeister.com/23290325/western-philosophy

>> No.3157691

>>3157687
>http://www.mindmeister.com/23290325/western-philosophy
That too is terrible.

>> No.3157692

Spinoza and anselm Descartes, a book on logic.

>> No.3157693

>>3157683
It misses a lot of non-mainstream philosopher.
Though it is a good start up point for newfags such as op.

>> No.3157694

>>3157664
lol at recommending a foreign high school kid Kant's Critique. without reading Locke, Berkley and Hume he'll essentially get stuck

>> No.3157696

>>3157694
That entire post is just a crock.

>> No.3157700

the prolem of evil, teliological, William James, the watchmaker,

>> No.3157703

>>3157694

I'm 30, majored in English, French, and some other branches, and I've had a fair general culture in every mainstream philosopher from Plato to Sartre during high school.

>> No.3157711

What do you recommend when it comes to the old Greeks?

>> No.3157716

>>3157703
i think the best idea for you is to spend some time with Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus to refresh your memory. and by spending some time i mean taking notes and studying it. then move onto the Rationalists and Empiricists, then, finally, read Kant

>> No.3157717 [DELETED] 

>>3157711
If you haven't read it already: Aristotle and Plato are essential. Not saying that they are the best asses walking ancient greece, just that they form a nice core on each philosophy revolves around.

>> No.3157722

>>3157711
Someone's going to go on about the pre-Socratics, and they're fine but not as important as is sometimes made out. You're meat and bones are Plato and Aristotle, and by association Parmenides, Heraclitus and a few others. By all means look at the pre-Socratics, they're interesting, but I find people who obssess over them end up looking at all philosophy in relation to those dead old dudes and really missing some important points.

>> No.3157723
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3157723

>>3157717
>Not saying that they are the best asses walking ancient greece

Of course they are.

>> No.3157725

>>3157716

So what books do I get? The Republic? What did Plotinus write?

>> No.3157726

>>3157711
Plato's Theatetus is a great work in metaphysics. It concludes with an argument for objectivity that I still quote today. I highly suggest works by Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley and Hume also. In fact, read the Theatetus and then read Descartes' Meditations.

>> No.3157741

After you've read Kant and maybe Hegel, Kierkegaard is a must.

>> No.3157739

>>3157725
>So what books do I get?
the sticky has it all covered, you should look into that.

>What did Plotinus write
The Enneads

>> No.3157737

>>3157726

I remember hating Descartes back in high school. His logic wasn't logic, his conclusions were wrong, his attitude was cocky and his French was silly.

>animals don't have souls and therefore feel nothing
>vivisection is fine
>the French language is more apt to support thinking than any other language because of its syntax
>I think therefore I am, but I won't tell you what I think about exactly

>> No.3157744

>>3157737
>>animals don't have souls and therefore feel nothing
in which book did he say that?

>> No.3157747

>>3157737
It was not that his "logic" was shaky, but it was that he didn't always argue from accepted premises. Use the term "logic" to denote the structure of his arguments, try not to use it in replacement of the term "reasoning" or "validity".

>> No.3157752 [DELETED] 

I think we are already too poisoned by Cartesian views. Not saying he is not cool in some aspects, but you have to know he is also full of crap and that crap is taken for granted because we live in a cartesian society.

>> No.3157754

Philosophy is a just a stop-gap measure until we are able to discover the casual reasons for occurrences.

>zomg, thunder & lightning, the gods must be angry!

Yes, philosophy is the same as religion.
It provides "answers" to that which we pretend to know by mere thought.

I long for the day that philosophy is entirely irrelevant.

>> No.3157762

>>3157752
>but you have to know he is also full of crap and that crap is taken for granted because we live in a cartesian society.
>the height of arrogance

>>3157754
>>>/sci/

>> No.3157763

>>3157752
No we don't. Realism has been dead since Hume (I say Hume instead of Kant or Hegel just for the fact Hume came first). I think his ideas are more common sense ideas that the masses hold, but I don't think they are the common views of philosophers. So much work has gone into understanding his philosophy that if there was a hole in it, it has already been discovered and critiqued for generations. I think Descartes is a necessary read no matter what spectrum of philosophy you are interested in. For example, even Husserl was greatly influenced by gangsta ass big D.

>> No.3157766
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3157766

>>3157754
>Yes, philosophy is the same as religion.
I'm not sure if you're a degenerate or not.

>> No.3157767 [DELETED] 

>>3157754
Science is just a stop-gap casuality based answer machine until we are able to think things over and what they mean to us

>zomg, thunder & lightning, oh it's just like my lightbulb...

Yes, science is the same as religion.
It provides "answers" to that which we pretend to know by mere reason.

I long for the day that science is entirely irrelevant.

>> No.3157768

OP, start meditating.

>> No.3157791

read Zapffe

>> No.3157815

>>3157766
What else does one call believing in the existence of something based on faith alone?

>> No.3157830 [DELETED] 

>>3157815
Science. Faith in reason, faith in logic, faith in experiments, faith in observations.

Nothing against science though.

Philosophy is neither religion nor science, nor art or politics either, but it is how we reflect about those things, discussin their nature and how people perceive them.

>> No.3157840

>>3157830
I see it as an art

>> No.3157846 [DELETED] 

>>3157840
I can see why. Not a bad point.

>> No.3157903

>>3157846
Statements equivalent to "I think x is true" are not "points." They are opinions.

>> No.3157909 [DELETED] 

>nature of reality and God

Try Plotinus, Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart, the Philokalia.

>>3157118

This guy... I like this guy.

>> No.3157911

>>3157903
>idiomatic language