/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17142074]

>There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. While the one have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, the others want money; and so they write, for money. Their thinking is part of the business of writing. They may be recognized by the way in which they spin out their thoughts to the greatest possible length; then, too, by the very nature of their thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse, forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally show to saying anything straight out, so that they may seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before they betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover paper. This sometimes happens with the best authors; now and then, for example, with Lessing in his Dramaturgie, and even in many of Jean Paul's romances. As soon as the reader perceives this, let him throw the book away; for time is precious. The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.
Does he fail to see the irony here?

[Anonymous No.17142196]

>They say what they have to say in long sentences that wind about in a forced and unnatural way; they coin new words and write prolix periods which go round and round the thought and wrap it up in a sort of disguise. They tremble between the two separate aims of communicating what they want to say and of concealing it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look learned or deep, in order to give people the impression that there is very much more in it than for the moment meets the eye. They either jot down their thoughts bit by bit, in short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences, which apparently mean much more than they say,—of this kind of writing Schelling's treatises on natural philosophy are a splendid instance; or else they hold forth with a deluge of words and the most intolerable diffusiveness, as though no end of fuss were necessary to make the reader understand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas it is some quite simple if not actually trivial idea,—examples of which may be found in plenty in the popular works of Fichte, and the philosophical manuals of a hundred other miserable dunces not worth mentioning; or, again, they try to write in some particular style which they have been pleased to take up and think very grand, a style, for example, par excellence profound and scientific, where the reader is tormented to death by the narcotic effect of longspun periods without a single idea in them,—such as are furnished in a special measure by those most impudent of all mortals, the Hegelians[1]; or it may be that it is an intellectual style they have striven after, where it seems as though their object were to go crazy altogether; and so on in many other cases.
Seriously, is this dude totally lacking in self-awareness?

[Anonymous No.17142213]

I think OP might be retarded. Schopenhauer published only 3 books in his life and didn't earn money from them. He actually might have paid to publish.

[Anonymous No.17142221]

>>17142213
That's not the part I'm referring to retard, did you even read the whole excerpt?

[Anonymous No.17142259]

>>17142221
How would you have phrased his point?

[Anonymous No.17142272]

>>17142221
What is your point, then? The long and abusively complex wordings he's complaining about? Schopenhauer is a notoriously concise and stylish writer of 19th century. The other German idealists he is complaining about are known for pages long run-on sentences.

[Anonymous No.17142288]

>>17142272
The fact that he criticizes people for just filling pages, but then spends the paragraph repeating two ideas over and over with different wordings.

[Anonymous No.17142293]

>>17142288
He isn't 'repeating'. He is talking about different aspects or examples of it. I was right about your retardation.

[Anonymous No.17142340]

>>17142293
He's repeating. You can read the first two sentences of any paragraph in this work and then move on to the next paragraph without missing anything.

[Anonymous No.17142372]

>>17142074
Schopenhauer is obviously great, as much as OP is a fag. But OP at least has the merit of making a thread discussing Schoppies thoughts on literature, instead of his opinions on women.

[Anonymous No.17142491]

>>17142074
yes

[Anonymous No.17142554]

>>17142196
If you've read anything by the authors he's talking about, you'd clearly see the difference between them and this.

[Anonymous No.17142612]

>>17142259
>>17142272
Not OP, but while I like Schopenhauer's writing, it's true that in this case, if he had strove for concision, he could have easily cut that paragraph in half.
Schopenhauer is concise by 19th century German philosophy standards, but by, say, 17th century French moralist standard, or even by the standards of many Roman writers, he's pretty long-winded.

[Anonymous No.17142645]

>>17142074
>does he fail to see the irony here?
Of course OP, you really btfo'd schoppie... absolutelly DESTROYED him.
What is this german even rambling about? OP just revealed to us what a terrible, terrible writer schoppenhauer is.
I guess i will just burn my copies of his books.

[Anonymous No.17142839]

>>17142645
You're almost as redundant as him.

[Anonymous No.17143894]

>>17142554
What mean

[Spengler No.17144866]

>>17142074
>>17142196
Schopie was just butthurt that Hegel was much better known than him in his lifetime

[Anonymous No.17144872]

>>17142074
Germans have a tendency to not see the irony. It's a racial trait

[Anonymous No.17145914]

>>17144866
If you had actually read Schopenhauer you would know that he was disdainful at the pathetic response from the post-Kantian 'academics' prior to himself, such as Hegel, whom claimed through reason we have access to a metaphysical cognitive faculty which doesn't factor in the possibility for experience.

[Anonymous No.17146083]

Are you really this linguistically incapable, OP?
Schopenhauer is known for his pleasant-to-read, concise, and easy style. It’s one of the things that made him so popular among the public in an age when philosophers like Hegel and Kant would write almost incomprehensibly. This is one of the main reasons I love to read Schopenhauer — I don’t even agree with most things he says, I just love his prose.

[Anonymous No.17146374]

>>17142839
expression's utility is not in-information, you robotic cur

[Anonymous No.17146387]

>>17142288
Behold, the densest matter in the universe: Your thick skull.

[Anonymous No.17146407]

>>17146083
Must have hit a nerve.