/lit/ - Literature

>>6563450

Skipped possibly the second best part of the book. Zosima's flashbacks about his brother were literally emotionally crushing.

>>6568732

>Dated outlooks

Which ones though? While ethical naturalism I agree is pretty "dated" as you put it and has been under a critique for quite some time, moral realism itself isn't dated at all. It has many followers among pragmatists and philosophers of analytic tradition even if it's not held in high regard on the continent. They just switch ethical naturalism for ethical non-naturalism and build their ethical ontology upon modal logic or some kind of intrinsic values of acts and behaviours (like Moore) and first of all the fact that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false.

Now I believe in naturalism and to put it briefly my views rely on a concept of human nature that includes basic desires related to ends we ought to pursue. Evolutionary ethics only indicate in this equation some of "basic desires". My ethical worldview basically is re-interpretation of Aristotle with help of Hobbes (who I believe in Leviathan makes assertions resembling something I'd call proto-evolutionary ethics) and few modern analytics who helped me with "normative justification" of my ethical system asking "What's the desire?" and axiomatic proposition that "desire should be satisfied". I'm not sure if I'm good in describing the ethical system in a hurry, but these are the basics.

>>6568616

Honest question. Is it really hipster to intellectualy subscribe to ethical system which was for so long embedded in Western culture (without Berlin's addition of course)? I came these conclusions being influenced by a weird mixture of Hobbes, G. E. Moore and evolutionary ethics.

As another poster has said, it is fairly boring in comparison with other Dostoyevsky's works and if you're interested in religious themes I would be inclined to say that also his other works are far richer in them maybe besides "Gambler".

That being said without big spoilers I think that best parts of the book are Prince Myshkin's flashbacks from Switzerland which contain emotionally crushing scenes revolving about death penalty, didactic interaction of grown man with children, their psychological development as well as themes of mercy, compassion and "ars moriendi" or how to die beautifully if you like. These are not big parts, but nonetheless stunning ones.

>>6568499

It can be defined as such perhaps and while its lyrical-meritoric value happens rarely to be high, the aesthetic quality of singing itself and musical background is, let's no lie to ourselves more often than not, really low.

>>6568532

Fair enough. To some degree I agree, however these are little jewels among ruins of contemporary Western music in my opinion. Also I'd say closer to sung poetry I would find a piece with musical background of classical instruments, delicate melody and common features of a poem like use of rhytmic and aesthetic qualities of a language as well as metre.

>>6568417
>>6568471
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xeebU8VhmY

>>6568449

Thanks for kind response. I just wondered why it's not big in Western hemisphere.. English has immense potential in its simplicity for musical adaptations of poetry.

What does /lit/ think of sung poetry? Why it's not a big phenomenon in Western countries? In my homeland it's a beautiful highlight of our, especially romantic, poetry. I'll give you an example with an English translation and ask for your thoughts. Honestly, I just wanted to share it with someone who can show some appreciation, I love this piece so much..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nLNYDOIEiU

Lyrics in translation, "To Marcus Aurelius":

Good night Marcus put out the light
and shut the book For overhead
is raised a gold alarm of stars
heaven is talking some foreign tongue
this the barbarian cry of fear
your Latin cannot understand
Terror continuous dark terror
against the fragile human land

begins to beat It's winning Hear
its roar The unrelenting stream
of elements will drown your prose
until the world's four walls go down
As for us? – to tremble in the air
blow in the ashes stir the ether
gnaw our fingers seek vain words
drag off the fallen shades behind us

Well Marcus better hang up your peace
give me your hand across the dark
Let it tremble when the blind world beats
on senses five like a failing lyre
Traitors – universe and astronomy
reckoning of stars wisdom of grass
and your greatness too immense
and Marcus my defenseless tears...

1. Be intelligent.

Do you meet this condition?

You won't get any sincere contemporary sources for sure. Friedman (not that I like him) was almost crucified couple decades ago after implying that British occupation of India was net beneficial for Indian economy.

protip: It was.

Of course on the other hand we have cases like Belgian Congo which was obviously an awful highlight of colonialism.

:^)

Dostoyevsky is against it for obvious reasons. Even though I am for it his description in "The Idiot" of death penalty executed in some protestant community in Switzerland sends shivers down my spine. He managed to make it so comforting, yet so shocking that it's even hard to describe what you feel reading that passage.

Ethical naturalism within Moral realism

With Berlin's Value pluralism attached to the above

/pol/ is Voltaire incarnated into a collective community

>racist against blacks
>heavily authoritarian
>anti-semitic
>believe in higher power, but not a Christian God (at least in majority)
>attempts of sophisticated, philosophical thought with mediocre results (not outright negative, but neither with much success)

So if anything, don't read him.

Reymont. Any gave his saga a read?

>>6496831

Thank you. I also wanted to note that this proposition I made is only true if there's an aesthetic value to art... Shit on canvas invoked by someone early in the thread. I know that modern world will howl at me for this, but I genuinly for the reasons mentioned above.. I don't think constitutes art in the slightest.

I always felt inclined to say "the scientist" for I couldn't find a reasonable justification for artist's importance to society... Heh, took me a while, but I finally see that art is something more than I deemed it to be. It may sound a bit reductionist, but I think that for the most part science fulfills our primitive desires which are extensions of a will to live, a will to survive. Art isn't about survival. Art is about transcendence. Rising above the animal kingdom and becoming humans.

>>6374563

I'm starting to think you're a bot yourself.

philosopher: Kierkegaard

novelist: Dostoyevsky

poet: Słowacki

>>6373158

Big names you missed from the top of my mind:

Russians
>Lermontov
>Gogol
>Herzen
>Bulgakov
>optionally Pasternak and Gorky

French
>Chateaubriand
>Hugo
>Celine
>Dumas

German
>Schiller

(i suck at German lit tho)

>>6372946

>he just used what he found in the literature to elucidate his spiritual views

Fair enough, however what he found in literature and conclusions he's drawn from it are simply invalid. This kind of scholarship is poor (the awful part was directed at contemporary afrocentric movements), because he attempts to use flawed interpretation of history to lay out his spiritual position. If the foundation he builds upon is anthropologically wrong and let's face it - it is then how does that elucidate his spiritual position in any coherent way.

>you clearly don't know much about this topic... their positions are not substituteble for Evola's

I listed political philosophers or philosophers who have in their works a pol phil material of some sort. The notion that "traditionalism" of these authors is a simple adherence to the past is dead wrong. Traditionalism of Hobbes for instance is not a simple reverence of past forms of governance. His whole system of thought is based on the notion that nature of mankind, human political relations and power dynamics in society themselves force people into submission to traditional forms of authority. This is not a perennial philosophy that links various dimensions of philosophy into one, traditionalist doctrine, but it's much more than simple reverence of the past. Hobbes lies out a traditionalist imperative for politics - natural law which constitutes any political actions of conservative/traditionalist politics. It's as much a system of the past as one of the future, because the Hobbes' imperative applies universally. You find the same description in Tocqueville's or Kirk's or Strauss' works that frame conservatism/traditionalism as universally applying political philosophy, not just hanging on to the past. I understand that Evola's perennial philosophy tries to connect multiple realms of philosophy into one doctrine, but it's a proven failure. Marxists tried doing same, saturating other domains of thought with your political agenda is devastating.

>>6372269

>Dumas

Octaroons don't qualify as "black".

Du Bois and Douglass for non-fiction, agreed. Achebe is a mediocre author honestly.

>>6372865

I don't like Evola precisely because he makes the system of thought he adheres to look bad. It's really this simple. You have amazing, academically acclaimed philosophers that have written a lot of material you could learn from on traditionalism, but you choose to read a sub-par author that I have doubts can be even called a philosopher rather than Oakeshott, L.Strauss or Berkeley. Your movement went in a wrong direction.

>>6372827

I don't really know who the fuck moldburg is and I am only vaguely familliar with red-pill meme. I recommend wasting less time on such nonsense.