/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15148443]

>1984 is not meant to be instruction manual!
>Machiavelli was only writing ironically
>Divine Comedy is a bible fanfiction
>I hate reading because teachers forced me to read
>Just finished this book and wow...I'm speechless
>Voracious reader

What else do they say?

[Anonymous No.15148447]

this is not /lit/ related

[Anonymous No.15148448]

>>15148443
>i just finished X and wow, just wow, i absolutely loved it

[Anonymous No.15148454]

literally why do you care

[Anonymous No.15148462]

>>15148443
why are you so obsessed with "them"?
learn to live your own life

[Anonymous No.15148475]

good job OP, redditors are seething

[Anonymous No.15148499]

>>15148443
the npc meme is self-refuting

[Anonymous No.15148532]

>Divine Comedy is a bible fanfictionl, thereby making it the greatest piece of fanfiction ever written

[Anonymous No.15148549]

>there are subhumans in this thread right now defending the redditor

[Anonymous No.15148575]

>>15148443
>>15148448
>>15148475
>>15148549
There are more of us every day. You will lose.

[Anonymous No.15148589]

>>15148462
He doesn't want to look at himself so he obsessed about others.

[Anonymous No.15148594]

>>15148575
Coming to 4chan wont make it more reddit in any appreciable way, it will just erode your instinctive crimestop until you find yourself resembling the thing you used to think was evil.

[Anonymous No.15148609]

>>15148575
lil guy doesn't know he can't earn points in here
poor guy

[Anonymous No.15148614]

>>15148443
>938- nf skd bfosn fo sw jdbaowplndl majdlq!
>Kkdpqofsviq dka palt wofldpa nckdpqutgnq
>Jpdlab Jbdpqd jd n bckal jdiqoflangl
>K hakw ndlaund bakdcaw kfacjwhf dnalred fq dp nvkw
>Nkks fhsiskws cpaj vppk jnd bsb...K'd skddfhecc
>Nidacosnd ndavdr

What? Why are you posting gibberish on /lit/?

[Anonymous No.15148620]

>>15148594
>Coming to 4chan wont make it more reddit in any appreciable way
That’s what /pol/ thought in their pride when they opened the Forbidden Door and made r/t_donald.

[Anonymous No.15148660]

>>15148620
/pol/ is still nothing like reddit though. It's completely ruined of course, but the major effect is still redditors losing their crimestop, not /pol/ becoming censored like reddit.

[Anonymous No.15148670]

>>15148532
absolutely based chadfren

[Anonymous No.15149436]

>>15148532
>Why yes I do intend to use 1984 as my personal instruction manual

[Anonymous No.15149470]

>>15148575
BASED

[Anonymous No.15149477]

>Quietly radical

[Anonymous No.15149488]

>I hate him as a person but love his work
>Nietzsche was a nihilist
>Schopenhauer was an incel
>Plato is outdated

[Anonymous No.15149615]

>>15148443
>Finnegans Wake is just meaningless nonsense! You can even read it!

[Anonymous No.15149663]

>>15148575
this image gave me a big chuckle

[Anonymous No.15149950]

>>15148575
>we are legion

[Anonymous No.15150868]

>>15148614
What in the god damn

[Anonymous No.15150906]

>>15148447
I'm seeing a communism, atheism, and fucking butterfly thread up right now. He's criticising the current trends in literary appreciation and is way more fucking /lit/ than most threads on here right now.

[Anonymous No.15150913]

>>15148443
>Divine Comedy is a bible fanfiction
A buddy of mine sent me a text this other day that was literally just this phrase followed by the thing about Iliad being a superhero movie. I feel like he googled "how to piss off Classics readers" and sent me the top two.

[Anonymous No.15150939]

>>15148447
You're doing a cringe rn

[Anonymous No.15150948]

>>15148443
>Voracious reader
this one is the fucking worst. it annoys me so much and I do not know why

[Anonymous No.15151355]

>>15148443
>People only read James Joyce to show off how smart they are
Some anon mentioned it. I just went over to verify - yep, that's about the level of conversation. Some circlejerk about how the "Dark Tower series is a masterpiece" just made me vomit a little.

[Anonymous No.15151366]

>>15148443
The third one is true doe. Divine Comedy must be the most juvenile work in the canon.

[Anonymous No.15151395]

>>15151355
The only thread I've ever seen on there was something someone here posted about their reaction to the meme trilogy. All three books were either treated as "People only read this to seem smart" or "[The Author] only wrote this to seem smart". Seemed like a giant coping chamber along the lines of "Everyone who reads classics is just a narcissist who should shut up and admit they love Harry Potter."

[Anonymous No.15151399]

>>15148443
>Plato's Republic was an allegory!
>thats anachronist!
>Greek gods were just a representation of nature!

[Anonymous No.15151408]

>>15148443
>>Machiavelli was only writing ironically
literally WHO the fuck thinks this

[Anonymous No.15152999]

>>15148614
I was just about to say the same thing

[Anonymous No.15153132]

>>15151408
Well if you apply Leo Strauss' esoteric reading then the stripping away of noble lies might itself be a noble lie. Look at how Western democracies today preach the divorce of ethics from politics (Machiavellian), but if you then look at Schmitt regarding the moral dimensions of modern politics then it gets very muddled. This is very tentative and confused, but whatever.

The book is also not very uniform in its message, and the last chapter is a full on fanfare for the de Medicis - where does Machiavelli's interests lie? Pleb republicanism or prince autarchy? Is the "advice" actually contraproductive for a prince if he wants to hold on to power? Is Machiavelli descriptive (and condemning) or "normative"?

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/machiavelli-s-prince-a-new-reading/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/03/have-we-got-machiavelli-all-wrong

[hungryman !!5BI0oSV9uvS No.15153227]

>>15153132
Machiavelli was obviously trying to be normative; the "prescribed" government of Machiavelli also would be circumstantial-- like Aristotle or Rousseau.
Machiavelli was very much opposed to the whole "this is how things should be" of Plato; he even opens the Prince similarly to Aristotle, shooting down the notion of building castles in the sky (I can't remember the exact wording).
I'm looking at the first piece you posted now-- it seems that she thinks his irony hinges on perceived obscurity. Is the author just averse to political realism?

[hungryman !!5BI0oSV9uvS No.15153253]

>>15153227
Sorry-- Machiavelli was trying to be descriptive**

[Anonymous No.15153272]

>>15153227
>>15153253
You're missing the point. Machiavelli's descriptive account of politics might itself be normatively motivated, this is the "ironic" dimension regarding the text.

[Anonymous No.15153327]

>>15151408
Everyone who just reads The Prince but doesn't read his other books and the history of Machiavelli's personal life, e.g. this dipshit >>15153132

[Anonymous No.15153712]

>>15149436
Lmao

[Anonymous No.15153799]

>>15151399
Says that's anachronistic can be pretty based sometimes imo

[Anonymous No.15153803]

>>15148443
cringe

[Anonymous No.15153943]

>>15148660
A redditor without a filter is still distinct from a native 4chan user and shitty

[Anonymous No.15154077]

>>15148448
You rang?

[Anonymous No.15154918]

>You cant kill an idea

[Anonymous No.15155393]

>>15151366
This but unironically. Fuck Dante, biggest larper.

[Anonymous No.15155512]

>>15153132
Ok, so here's the deal about Machiavelli - above everything else he wanted strong, united Italy. If you look at his other works - The Art of War, Discourses on Livy etc. what he was always interested in is to create a sort of textbook for both war and politics, that would allow someone in power to achieve this goal of his. He is republican by conviction, but he's also showing what can be called in no other way but "scientific" mind, that is instead of creating a sort of political utopia and then trying to introduce it(it's not "politics as a wish" as Burnham called the opposite approach), he sets a political goal - United Italy - and looks to history to see what kind of states managed to unite under one banner after a period of being split into major, roughly independent princedoms - and he notices that those countries that did it(I think the model here was France, but to a degree it happened globally across medieval Europe) were monarchies. Thus despite his republican sympathies he does what this simple semi-scientific deduction tells him - writes a "handbook" for monarchs to use in politics.

The idea of him being ironic is absolutely stupid, what he really is, is being the precursor of realpolitik, where it's not about his ideas and desires, but about what gets stuff done, where his methods of quantifying what's "effective" or not may not be perfectly modern science, he's still 300 years ahead of his time if not more. To put it simply to unite Italy there needed to be a prince who's to put it simply an extreme amoral dick, otherwise nothing would get done, there's no irony in it, it's about choosing the right tools for the job.

[Anonymous No.15155542]

>>15155512
Good post. The meta-esoteric take is that "machiavelli was le ironic" takes are themselves an esoteric attack coordinated by the dominant political ideology in academia against a realist reading.

[Anonymous No.15155549]

>>15148443
I am one of (((them))) anon. Sojgarçons don't exist, (((we))) inented them so that (you) spend your time shitposting about them instead of working towards overcoming (((us))).

[Anonymous No.15155567]

>>15151366
I think you forgot your green arrow before the second sentence. Or perhaps you've never read the work you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.15156708]

>>15148575
holy based!

[Anonymous No.15156754]

>>15148443
>Machiavelli was only writing ironically
I've never understood the retarded argument behind this of "the things he was writing would have seemed shockingly immoral to his audience". Do people not understand how brutal Italy was in that period after centuries of Guelph-Ghibelline conflicts? A Pope had just recently promised one of the warlords in the Marche full amnesty if he came to Rome, and then as soon as he did beheaded him.

[Anonymous No.15156868]

>>15148443
>Just finished this book and wow..... I'm speechless

[Anonymous No.15157576]

>>15148443
>Stephen King must be one of the greatest living authors!!!

[Anonymous No.15158592]

>>15157576
this. Fuck stephen king.

[Anonymous No.15158670]

>>15157576
ouch

[Anonymous No.15158718]

>>15148447
fpbp

[Anonymous No.15159864]

>we don't need philosophy anymore, we can figure out everything with science

[Anonymous No.15159876]

>Gravity's Raimbow was not meant to be an instruction manual
wtf?

[Anonymous No.15160035]

>>15159876
wait was I supposed to let the octopus do its thing

[Anonymous No.15160049]

>Bro, the enlightenment only happened because European scholars discovered Islamic philosophy and the Greeks that the Arabs preserved during the crusades.

[Anonymous No.15160119]

>>15148532
Good take.

[Anonymous No.15160152]

>>15148575
Nigger

[Anonymous No.15160297]

>>15160049
This is legitimately my least favorite take of all time.

All you have to do is look at Spain to realize that, no, Muslim thinkers did not lead to the renaissance .

[Anonymous No.15160357]

>tradition is just peer pressure by dead white men

[Anonymous No.15160493]

>>15160049
This is a fact though

[Anonymous No.15160509]

>>15160035
>he never did the Kenosha Kid

[Anonymous No.15160512]

>Americans have no culture

[Anonymous No.15160696]

>>15160049
Isn't that what happened

[Anonymous No.15160736]

>House of Leaves gave me anxiety.

[Anonymous No.15160741]

>>15160512
That's true in a way

[Anonymous No.15160752]

>>15160512
seethe

[Anonymous No.15160760]

>>15148499
How

[Anonymous No.15160762]

>>15148443
quality thread

[Anonymous No.15161049]

>>15160741
All you had to do was leave them out of your stupid world wars.

[Anonymous No.15161086]

>we're just a bunch of chemicals and electricity bro

[Anonymous No.15162321]

>philosophy has been solved by science

[Anonymous No.15162346]

>>15160493
>>15160696
No. The people that preserved it were the Persians and the Byzantines. Go read about the Sasanid empire and its library and scholar system.

[Anonymous No.15162549]

>>15148575

[Anonymous No.15162593]

>>15148443
>implying orwell supported any form of authoritarianist ideology
you either didn't read the book or you have absolutely no reading comprehension. the state of this fucking board

[Anonymous No.15162603]

>>15148660
>what is board culture

[Anonymous No.15162644]

>>15150906
>butterfly

the lurking transvestite ?

[Anonymous No.15162664]

>>15162346
>somehow completely ignores the years 700-1400
I understand the argument for the Byzantines, but how exactly did the Sasanid empire contribute anything without passing through the Abbasids or any muslim influence at all? Also what about the evidence of classical thought influencing Muslim philosophy and development (e.g. algebra)? These aren't meant as rhetoric, I am genuinely curious.

[Anonymous No.15162943]

>>15162593
Are you stupid? It is obviously a criticism but I'm talking about normies comparing how living under Drumpft or Obummer is equivalent to 1984 for millionth of time

[Anonymous No.15163034]

>>15162664
The Sasanids had an entire system set up of libraries and scholarship that was tied to the elites and had been for quite a few centuries. Most of Greek thought (philosophy, math, literature, etc) was in this library system. When Islam took over one of the first things they did was allowing this system to continue, because they wanted the local elites on their side rather than running an insurgency against them. So while Islam might have taken over in a politico-legal sense, it was the remnants of the Sasanids that carried on the traditions over a long period of time.

This isn't the only cultural products that Islam takes credit for either. A significantly large amount of things (art, philosophy, architecture) that Islam takes credit for arose from within Persian culture, not the Arabs and definitely not Islam. They might have made extensions to this culture, as every culture does with its cultural products, but definitely weren't the key part of a causal chain from Greece to the Renaissance and Early Modern period (take the historical counterfactual: what happens to Islamic culture if Sasanid culture did not exist?). When your average redditor says something like what the other anon greentexted above about Islam, he is more signalling his atheistic progressive wokeness than anything.

[Anonymous No.15163136]

>>15155549
I can tell your one of them just by looking at how shitty your joke was.

[Anonymous No.15163269]

>>15148575
based and confirmed large penis

I for one welcome our new /r/books and the more sophisticated /r/literature overlords

[JN !!vXXhA/qzhjm No.15163351]

>>15148443
>and that's a good thing
>powerful
>necessary
>important

[Anonymous No.15163619]

>>15163034
This is a lot of words to say 'yes, it was preserved by Muslims', they just weren't responsible for it in the first place. Of course the original post was about 'Arabs' rather than 'Muslims' per se which muddies the waters, as many of the greatest Islamic scholars were ethnic Persians.

[Anonymous No.15163625]

>>15148575
>E936A086-DFDE-45A6-A97C-1(...).jpg
>>15148620
>673A31E4-B5F0-4502-86B2-9(...).png
>>15160736
>4ACE112D-70D5-4605-8A1F-D(...).png

[Anonymous No.15163738]

>>15153799
half of what people say about the past is anachronistic because they're fucking braindeads who can't take a small step outside of their narrow worldview, so yes

[Anonymous No.15163745]

>>15163351
That's huffpost not reddit

[Anonymous No.15163777]

>>15163619
>This is a lot of words ...
The typical counter of a person who is out of his depth. Shouldn't surprise me with your original passive aggressive post about being "genuinely curious". You aren't, you just think your self-image is. You are probably the opposite: closed-minded. Judging by the OP topic you probably waltzed in here from reddit and thought you could get some dumb zingers that works on your tightly controlled site.
>... 'yes, it was preserved by Muslims', they just weren't responsible for it in the first place
I'd suggest you take a few years to go read up on what it means to be a historical counterfactual and its ties to a causal chain of events, and then what it means to be collectively responsible for something. Since these are the issues at hand. I already gave you a question for the former in the post above, as to the latter a major factor is _ongoing_ guidance and control by whatever group is held responsible, i.e. goal-directed group coordination. To gloss over the larger Sasanid system of preservation -- its literary/scholar culture, elite networks, the informational systems at play (libraries, scholars, etc) -- and say "DURRRR this is the same as saying 'preserved by Muslims'" is really quite stupid. You missed the part where the intent of the outsider Muslims was about keeping the Persian elites busy. There is no guidance and control there in terms of Islam and Arabs _wanting_ to preserve literary works. It's a matter of contingency that this happened because of previous path dependencies. Hence they aren't responsible for it.

>Of course the original post ...
Shut the fuck up you literal sperg. It's quite clear what he is talking about both contextually and historically. You are an idiot. Don't bother responding, I won't be reading any more of this thread as I'm interacting with an idiot.

[Anonymous No.15163782]

>>15148609
>not adding up the number of ">based" responses and subtracting the ">cringe" responses your post gets