/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6813478]

>Another form of prudence and self defence consists in trying to react as seldom as possible and to keep one’s self aloof from those circumstances and conditions wherein one would be condemned as it were to suspend one’s "freedom” and one’s initiative and become a mere reacting medium. As an example of this I point to the dealing with books. The scholar who in truth does little else than handle books—a philologist at a modest assessment may handle about two hundred a day—ultimately forgets entirely and completely the capacity of thinking for himself. When he does not have a book between his fingers he cannot think. When he thinks he is responding to a stimulus (a thought he has read)—finally all he does is to react. The scholar exhausts his whole strength in saying either "yes” or "no” to matter which has already been thought out or in criticizing it—he is no longer capable of thought on his own account. In him the instinct of self-defence has become weak otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar is a decadent. With my own eyes I have seen gifted, richly endowed and free-spirited natures already "read to ruins” at thirty and mere matches that have to be struck if they are to give out flames—or "thoughts”. Early in the morning, at the break of day, in all the fullness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book—this I call vicious!
Doesn't this all apply to sitting on 4chan? Have I destroyed myself?

[Anonymous No.6813485]

>>6813478
No, because 4chan is interactive.

I would like to observe, though, that the quote is a 100% uncredited ripoff of Schopenhauer like everything else :^).

[Anonymous No.6813678]

>>6813485
I was confused for a sec, in that it may have been a quote of Schopy, but it's one of Nietzche.
Do you have a similar quote for S.?

[Anonymous No.6813683]

>>6813678
"You're a cuck"
-Schopenhauer

[Anonymous No.6813742]

>>6813478
>ultimately forgets entirely and completely the capacity of thinking for himself. When he does not have a book between his fingers he cannot think.
thinking is nothing but a movement of autoproduction in response to a stimuli, either real, textual or imagined. If reading a lot hasn't helped you build your vocabulary and capacity for conceptualisation, then you're a shoddy reader and should be ashamed to call yourself a scholar