/lit/ - Literature

1. Pascal's Thoughts
2. Montaigne's Essays

3. The Fountainhead

i'm not really a big philosophy guy, i mostly just dabble. the books that have most informed my worldview are:

- the crisis of the modern world - rene guenon
- essays and aphorisms - arthur schopenhauer
- a short history of decay - emil cioran
- beyond good and evil - friedrich nietzsche
- society of the spectacle - guy debord
- mythologies - roland barthes
- the decline of the west - oswald spengler
- the blank slate - steven pinker
- fooled by randomness - nassim taleb
- beyond freedom and dignity - b.f. skinner

pretty edgy.

>>3199243
at least make a list yourself to start off with, you filthy parasite

Just read aboot a concept yoor interested in yoo filthy facket. What're yoo trying to proove with yoor essential readings?

Plato - Apology, Symposium, Republic, Parmenides

Plotinus - Enneads

Boethius - Consolation of Philosophy

Al-Jilani - The Secret of Secrets and the Manifestation of Lights

Al-Ghazali - Revival of the Religious Sciences

Ibn 'Arabi - Meccan Openings

Ibn Khaldun - Prolegomena/Muqadimmah

Vico - New Science

Guénon - The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times

For kicks: Heidegger - Being and Time

up

Wittgenstein's Tractatus is pretty important. Even if you can't get through the text itself, read up on the ideas. The limits of language are a pretty huge deal.

Include something by Parmenides because he looks like a badass dude and he has a tight ass name that goes well with the face.

BUMP

>>3199279

That's impossible man.

Maybe, MAYBE, I can make a list of 10 most important in a specific school or field, like Ethics.

but 10 most important out of all philosophy would hardly cover anything.

>>3199519

Reality and God, thanks.

>>3199519
metaphysics, pls. with at least a couple books from the 20th century.

The Republic - Plato
Metaphysics - Aristotle
The Enneads - Plotinus
A Treatise of Human Nature - Hume
Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
Ethics - Spinoza
Critique of Pure Reason - Kant
Phenomenology of Spirit - Hegel
The Genealogy of Morals - Nietzsche
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus - Wittgenstein

Tao Te Ching
The Analects
Everything Alan Watts

Fuck Western pretentious ponderings

>>3199534
mahnigga.png

>>3199588
>Alan Watts

>Fuck Western pretentious ponderings

lel ebin troll :DDDD

I'm working my way through this list:
>Plato-The Republic
>Aristotle-Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics
>Marcus Aurelius-Meditations
>Machiavelli-The Prince
>Aquinas-Summa Theologica
>Spinoza-Ethics
>Rousseau-Social Contract
>Descartes-Meditations on First Philosophy
>Locke-Second Treatise on Government
>Various works of Hume and Bacon
>Kant-Critique of Pure Reason
>Kierkegaard-Fear and Trembling
>Hegel-Phenomenology of the Spirit
>Schopenhauer-World and Will as Understanding
>Marx-Das Kapital and Communist Manifesto
>Nietzsche-Thus Spake Zarathustra
>Heidegger-Being and Time
>Wittgenstein-Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Plato: Phaedo
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
Aquinas: Summa Theologica (deal w/ it)
Descartes: Meditations on the First Philosophy
Hume: Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Heidegger: Being and Time
Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
MacIntyre: After Virtue
Hursthouse: On Virtue Ethics

>>3199777

You can skip Nietzsche's: it's metaphoric poetry proning Nazi style life, even though everyone says it doesn't. It's pretty retarded a book and not philosophical at all.

>>3199791
If you think Nietzsche has anything at all to do with Nazism, it is pretty obvious you've never read any of his works. You might disagree with the whole übermensch/god is dead etc. stuff, but if there is one thing Nietzsche isn't, it's being a (proto-?) Nazi

>>3199791
>>3199796
look at these two retards.

>>3199791
>>3199796
Nietzsche's relevance now is just as an enlightenment critic. It's important in the history of philosophy, but his shit is wordy and untidy.

You might as well assume "someone big criticized the enlightenment project" and then skip to Marx or something.

Isn't it about time we got a /phil/ board?

>>3199796

If you read his actual words and not what everyone else says about his words, it's pretty fucking obvious. He hated Christianity for the same reasons Nazis hated it: defending the weak instead of improving the species by eliminating the weak and promoting the strong.

>>3199918
That doesn't equate for anti-semitism and nazism

>>3199930

Never mentioned antisemitism although he hated Jews.

>>3199918
Not really; he hated Christianity because it promoted pitying the weak, and he thought pity drains people of life-affirmation.

>>3199954
He didn't hate Jews. He hated Judaism for many of the same reasons he hated Christianity.

And Nietzsche did mention anti-semitism several times, more specifically how much he despised anti-semitism.

>>3199954

>although he hated Jews.

You're retarded and you don't know anything. His best friend Franz Overbeck was a jew and even after having problems with him he never wrote anything about THE JEW. There's a lot of stuff on that, if you're interested I'd advise you to read that instead of spouting your bullshit and make it seem like you know anything about Nietzsche's life.

>>3199791

>>3199980

If you read his rants on Christianity, it's fairly obvious this applies to Jews as well.

Nietzsche was a no-life faggot who wrote about the superman: everything he wasn't and wished to be, with the naivety of a high school virgin.

Monitoring this thread. Waiting for your lists.

Principles of human knowledge.
Against method
Ways of worldmaking
Unity and multiplicity of self.. (john o beahrs)

>>3202212
>If you read his rants on Christianity, it's fairly obvious this applies to Jews as well.
This makes no sense.

itt: people who read parts of the "Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche" page on wikipedia debating over who knows more

Nietzsche hated the weak, yet was the exact definition of what he hated: leech. He never produced any food or done anything useful to anyone.

He was the worst kind of leeching parasite a society can produce. Prove me wrong.

>>3202285
ps. if you actually read will to power it's nothing more than Butler-eque mouth-diarrhea with no real substance and dozens of self-contradictions.

>>3199841 has it closest to right. he was nothing more than a critic

you're no better than these high school kids who go around "durr neitzsche wrote about nihilism in europe, so he's a nihilist and promotes a nihlist lifestyle of killing everyone and fucking anything that moves, durr i don't understand basic analysis and criticism and i have no fucking idea what nihilism means and if someone writes ABOUT something, he's automatically PROMOTING it."

>>3202288
>Prove me wrong.

alrighty

>Nietzsche hated the weak
He never said that or anything remotely near to that.

If you can, provide a sample from any of his books, well translated and (here's where you'll get hung up) in context, where he promotes a "survival of the fittest" or whatever horseshit you believe he promoted, I'd like to see it.

>>3202293

"The sick are the great danger of man, not the evil, not the 'beasts of prey.' They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken those are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the feet of man, who instill the most dangerous venom and skepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves…Here teem the worms of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret and unmentionable; here is ever spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy – the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the victorious; here is the sight of the victorious hated."

The Genealogy of Morals (III 14)

>enjoy your fail

>>3199243

Seriously just buy Copleston's set on the history of philosophy. This is what is used in academic doctoral level philosophy! Disregard other posts, chances are they are interested yet clueless lay people.

>>3202313

Anon isn't answering this. He failed and ran away like a coward.

>>3202313
Reading that in context, to me, it seems he's not talking about "the weak" in a manner of sickness, fragility, inability to work, powerless, ect. Who he appears to be referring to are those who claimed to have found ultimate truth.

"You cannot, in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated. They have taken a lease of virute absolutely for themselves, have these weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it; "We alone are the good, the righteous," so do they speak"

He's referring to the philosopher, the "thinker", the one disconnected from reality, from pragmatic lifestyles. The "sick" doesn't mean anything physical, as you implied. ("He never produced any food or done anything useful to anyone.").The sick are the ones who believe they've got it all figured out, that they've received absolute truth. Nietzsche's entire criticism of all Western thought is based on the ambiguity of "truth" and "morality". He wasn't a nihilist, because nihilism is still bowing to an absolute truth, the truth that there is no truth. Total ambiguity is the technique Nietzsche uses to criticize the west, which has used absoluteness as its foundation since Socrates.

>>3202330
I apologize for the length taken. I had to go to my bookshelf, find The Genealogy of Morals, read the full thesis to understand its meaning and context, and respond using quotes from the further parts in said thesis.

>>3202315
I love non-fiction book series like this. As a child I was obsessed with memorizing as much trivia as possible. This impulse still sticks with me, if a bit altered. OP, get books like this. They're very easy to understand, and because they're published as a set it's very easy to follow the threads through them all.

>>3202290
Will to power is a collection of notes, that's all.

>>3202348
I realize that. And it should be read as one. People tend to read it as a philosophic text.

>>3202338
my understanding was that Christianity's emphasis on turn the other cheek and helping the po etc.or he considered weak

>>3202356
That could be another credible analysis. With Nietzsche's ambiguity in philosophy and writing, it's hard to tell. But what does that have to do with "producing food" or "being a leech"? They seem completely unrelated. I think he realized he himself never worked much.

Have you seen The Turin Horse? I believe its plot and portray is relevant here.

>>3202338

Funny how every time Nietzsche says plain things, someone comes up to say

>but what he really REALLY meant is...

and then something different shows up.

>>3202364

If you spend your life writing about the strong and never yourself become that sort of strong men, you're doing it wrong.

>>3202364
Sorry that was my first post, just jumping in.

Turin Horse, interesting. I should be turned off by this... academic masturbation but damn this appeals to me

>>3202369
Context is important, its hardly plain esoecialky when its translated.

Your use of superman instead of overman (both imperfect translations) shows you dont understand

>>3202370
so philosophers tend to trap themselves in ivory towers?!?!?

you don't say!

>>3202388
translations fuck everything up with German philosophy. The language is so far disconnected from English that it's impossible to translate the exact meaning.

There are parts of my copy of The Ego and Its Own (terrible translation) that make no fucking sense because the translator had no idea how to translate it

>>3202370
He writes that the overman will come in the future and is an aspiration. Worjing the fields or whatever never had anything to dobwith it, its all about morals anf outlook

>itt only read wiki page
>guilty

The dude in this thread knows whats up though

>>3202388

>overman
>superman

>implying super doesn't mean over in Latin

You're subpar.

>>3202403
... Cold and frigid mean the same thing but have different connotations.

This is basic stuff man, stop being contradictory to be contradictory

>>3202403
Uber means over in german.

>>3202419

This isn't even about connotation, imbecile. I have half a mind to ask you to detail the difference you see in "super" and "over", but you're just fooling around.

>>3202424

So does "super" in Latin. Your point?

>>3202427
Super has other connotations in english that Over doesn't. That's why they want to translate it as overman.

>>3202429

And by that you mean...

>retards like you think of blue spandex and red undies when the word "super" is used

>>3202740
If you can't see any difference between over and super then you're the retard.

>>3202750

You're the only one who reads "super" the way teens do.

>>3202761
You're the one who doesn't realise uber doesn't mean super.

>>3202784

Except it does.

>>3202784
>uber doesn't mean super.

>>3202795
No, it means over.

>>3202802

THAT'S WHAT "SUPER" MEANS IN LATIN YOU UNFATHOMABLE CRETIN.

>>3202808
Super in english doesn't mean over.

>>3202802
>>3202811
lol @ you

lol'ing forever

>>3202811

>superintendent
>totally not over a regular intendent

Die.

>>3202811

>to supervise
>totally doesn't mean to look over something or someone

>>3202822
>>3202818
Super doesn't mean superintendent.

>>3202827

What...

A superintendent is an intendent that's above/over the regular intendents. It can't be this hard to understand; words have more meaning than you thought when you were 12. Just grow the fuck up.

Super means "above", you idiots, not "over".

>>3202835

>over
>above

>the bird flies over the tree
>the bird flies above the tree

>so different

>>3202835
th' difference is negligible, as the salesman said to th' housewife

>>3202834
So why don't you call him an overintendent? Because super has a different semantic resonance.

>>3202846

Explain that semantic difference, champ. I've been hearing a lot about this, but haven't heard anyone say what it was precisely.

>>3202846

>overintendent
>superintendent

>both used interchangeably
>should prove there's no fundamental difference

>>3202846
because one of those isn't a word

>>3202850
Above/super seems to be static in nature. Over is continuing.

>>3202858
Kill yourself austist.

>>3202859

>flying
>static

>you da champ

>>3202865
Flying above?
Flying over.

Hovering over?
Hovering above.

>>3202859
You're close. Over indicates more aggression, energy, action, etc. than does above.
Consider
>He was above her
and
>He was over her
and
>He held it above her head
and
>He held it over her head

>>3202867

Hover over exists as well, dumbcunt.

>>3202889

Utterly shit. Above and over have a slight difference in position, but certainly not in mode or anything.

>>3202893
Then how do you explain the difference in connotation of my example sentences?

>>3202897

To be honest, that difference exists only in your mind.

>above her
>over her

The latter sounds like he's much closer, as I said, but for the rest, it's nonsense.

>>3202898
>To be honest, that difference exists only in your mind.

No. You give people "he held it above her head" and "he held it over her head" and they'll have very definitely a different impression of the two sentences.

>>3202910
no they wouldn't (except in the sense that "holding something over someone's head" is an idiom in a way that "holding something above someone's head isn't. but that has nothing to do with connotative differences, just idiom). the only connotative difference is the personal one in your head that no one else shares.

this argument is so stupid, sorry for participating in it yall

>>3202910

They will, but only because holding it CLOSER sounds more threatening. YOU'RE IDIOTIC.

>>3202920
>this argument is so stupid
You're stupid.

>>3202920
> no one else shares.

Or maybe you're just autistic and lacking in a finer linguistic sensibility.

>>3202890
Only in your mind, because you lack the capacity to see nuance.

>>3202276
forgot to add General System Theory - Ludvig von Bertalanffy

now /lit/ you can get ready to make a decent existence on the earth plane.

>>3199791
>Nietzsche isn`t a MUH FREEDUMS capitalist liberal or an edgy communist
>BAWWW HE MUST BE NATSI

>>3202898
I'm standing above you. It's static, doesn't convey any mood.

I'm standing over you. It may be static in meaning but in mood it conveys action, in the sense of power.

>Mfw Kant's Critique of Pure Reason isn't in everyone's list

>>3202948

Thus Spake Zarathustra is not a good book, sorry.

>>3202923
YOU'RE idiotic.

>>3202949
Exactly.

>>3202960

Got this in the mail but scared to start reading it. I have a general education in philosophy, but will it be enough?

>holding an MA in literature, otherwise

>>3202960
Not worth reading.

>>3202968

Really? I'm about to read it, elaborate.

>>3202987
It's boring and long. Just read a book explaining Kant's philosophy.

>>3202987
>>3202997
>It's boring and long. Just read a book explaining Kant's philosophy.
He means; It can be pretty difficult to read. It's an excellent book to try your mind on. Read the book itself, not another person's way of putting it. He put it the way he did because that's the way his mind works and that's the best way to understand it. end of conversation. unless some good points appears.

>>3202338
You might want to check your Book I, that gives you the best context:
>Rather, that occurs for the first time with the collapse of aristocratic value judgments, when this entire contrast between “egoistic” and “unegoistic” pressed itself ever more strongly into human awareness—it is, to use my own words, the instinct of the herd which, through this contrast, finally gets its word (and its words). And even then, it still takes a long time until this instinct in the masses becomes master, with the result that moral evaluation gets thoroughly hung up and bogged down on this opposition (as is the case, for example, in modern Europe: today the prejudice that takes “moralistic,” “unegoistic,” and “désintéressé” [disinterested] as equally valuable ideas already governs, with the force of a “fixed idea” and a disease of the brain).
Here is the first mention of "krank" in "kopfkrankheit"; disease of the brain, in I 2.

Then is 3:
>Secondly, however, and quite separate from the fact that this hypothesis about the origin of the value judgment “good” is historically untenable, it suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction.
Literally, not only is it untenable, it is also sick (suffers) from the contradiction.

>>3203852
Then in I 6, the third mention
>So, for example, for the first time the words “pure” and “impure” appear as contrasting marks of one’s social position, and later a “good” and a “bad” also develop with a meaning which no longer refers to social position. Incidentally, people should be warned not to begin by taking these ideas of “pure” and “impure” too seriously, too broadly, or even symbolically. Instead they should understand from the start that all the ideas of ancient humanity, to a degree we can hardly imagine, are much more coarse, crude, superficial, narrow, blunt and, in particular, unsymbolic. The “pure man” is initially simply a man who washes himself, who forbids himself certain foods which produce diseases of the skin...
Purity is tied to sickness. Sickness just means impure, and most mentions after that concern this, including the Abrahamic inversion (blessed are the meek etc)

>>3203858
By the time we get to the third essay, he's tied together these meanings:
>Whoever possesses, not only a nose to smell with, but also eyes and ears, senses almost everywhere, no matter where he steps nowadays, an atmosphere something like that of an insane asylum or hospital—I’m speaking, as usual, of people’s cultural surroundings, of every kind of “Europe” there is right here on this earth.
And later in 14 again
>Among them there is no lack of that most disgusting species of vain people, the lying monsters who aim to present themselves as “beautiful souls” and who, for example, carry off to market their ruined sensuality, wrapped up in verse and other swaddling clothes, as “purity of heart,” the species of self-gratifying moral masturbators. The desire of sick people to present some form or other of superiority, their instinct for secret paths leading to a tyranny over the healthy—where can we not find it, this very will to power of the weakest people! The sick woman, in particular: no one outdoes her in refined ways to rule others, to exert pressure, to tyrannize.

The brain disease being a nihilistic approach to morals and life, which has caused Europe to become an asylum. Because if you go against this and strive for excellence you are villainised. If you fail to read it like this the first part of 15 doesn't make much sense either (doctors are sick themselves?)

This is the problem with quoting small parts of a translated work by a philologist who uses genealogical (clues in the title) meanings of words. You can't see where he's used that word in the original easily, and so it becomes unclear what is meant. Also hopefully give some perspective to Foucault and his History of Madness.

>>3199930
You could only possibly characterize some things he wrote as racist, but never anti-Semitic. Anyhow, don't disregard works, because it hurts your feelings.
.

>>3202846
Why don't you ever want "chips and fish" or "quiet and peace"? They must also have different "semantic resonance" because convention doesn't exist.

>>3199777
>2012
>not having finished that list by now
Also, it is a terrible list and you oughtn't group the genius of Hume with a pleb like Bacon.

I agree with >>3199519 but I'll have a go anyway

The republic - Plato
Metaphysics - Aristotle
Meditations - Descartes
Leviathan - Hobbes
Ethics - Spinoza
Locke- Human understanding
Hume - Human understanding
Kant - Pure reason
Hegel - Phenomenology of spirit
Nietzsche - Beyond good and evil

That is a simple introductory-level knowledge and gives a pretty simple view of the whole history, before C20

>>3199930
>Beyond good and evil, Ap. 248-252 is in praise of the jews
>Nietzsche praises the OT and its credo
>Rejects Kristos
Sure, not jewish-sympathiser at all. Idiot. Someone has obviously not read about his brother-in-law altering his writings

>>3204042
Is Ethica a tough read? Anything i should read beforehand?
Going to order a bunch of books from a retailer online anyway. They all cost around 10€ so wouldn't mind getting a few other classics.

>>3199507
Those bracelets are fackin GAY

>>3202784