Which book has influenced you the most over the course of your life?

Which book has influenced you the most over the course of your life? My personal pick is The Monster's "Philosophical Investigations."

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    y tho?

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    introduction to metaphysics by heidegger is making me pretty depressed rn

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      y tho?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        i came from a neoplatonist/traditionalist perspective and this book ruined it for me.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          maybe don't treat everything you read as gospel

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            i have no way to argue against this text; i am feeling the “death of god” as nietzsche foretold from this work.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            its just circular bullshit. meaning is use only if you choose to define it so, wittgenstein has no privileged point of view here, something which he curiously denies for everyone else except only for himself, since he's the brilliant genius after all. Don't fall for it.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Slave.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            says the wittgenstein cultist

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >I know you are but what am I
            Lowwit confirmed.
            >Circular logic
            Meaningless.
            >since he's the brilliant genius after all.
            Envy.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            lmao you uncritically accept the stupid claims of wittgenstein so as to not appear envious and you call me a slave? If only you were smart enough to understand how stupid that looks

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >lmao you uncritically accept the stupid claims of Wittgenstein so as to not appear envious and you call me a slave? If only you were smart enough to understand how stupid that looks

            If only you were smart enough to understand how stupid this post makes (you) look.

            >stupid claims, stupid.
            Running out of vocabulary there chum. Keep going! You will make it one day!

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Running out of vocabulary there chum. Keep going! You will make it one day!
            reddit gringe, why not add sweaty there for emphasis

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >reddit
            What the frick are you even on about? Are you using "reddit" as an empty insult or do you unironically believe what you're saying? Reddit basedencists are diametrically opposite to the late Wittgenstein. The implications of Philosophical Investigations literally culminated in the most anti-sciencism book of the 20th century, "Against Method"

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            despite any superficial protestations to contrary, you write like a redditor and think like a redditor trying to use clever sarcasm with exclamation marks. It marks you out as a moron, whether you be in r/science, r/philosophy, r/gnosticism or here.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            You analyze writing patterns so well that you did not notice that OP and the Heidegger anon were different anons, and, later, did not notice I (

            >reddit
            What the frick are you even on about? Are you using "reddit" as an empty insult or do you unironically believe what you're saying? Reddit basedencists are diametrically opposite to the late Wittgenstein. The implications of Philosophical Investigations literally culminated in the most anti-sciencism book of the 20th century, "Against Method"

            ) and

            >lmao you uncritically accept the stupid claims of Wittgenstein so as to not appear envious and you call me a slave? If only you were smart enough to understand how stupid that looks

            If only you were smart enough to understand how stupid this post makes (you) look.

            >stupid claims, stupid.
            Running out of vocabulary there chum. Keep going! You will make it one day!

            are different anons. You didn't even care to realize that the number of IDs went up.
            Whatever. You've been pointless this whole time, and there' no reason to continue yellling at the monkey.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            ironic of you to say this since im not the same anon who responded to the heidegger anon lmao

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >number of IDs went up.
            t. the redditor on phone

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >reddit
            Can you voice your thoughts without relying on these stock phrases? Take this friend, before reading Kant you should really brush up on the basics.

            INB4
            >Le, Reddit, Seethe, Cope, Midwit, Kino, Psude
            Try harder.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >complains about stock phrases
            >inb4
            stupid c**t lmao

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >stupid c**t lmao
            Proves my point, you only know the same hackneyed meme speak words. You can tell who, actually, reads here by the extent of their diction.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            My diction is a long, baby

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            im the heidegger poster. i don’t give a frick about wittgenstein.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >i don’t give a frick about wittgenstein.
            You should bruh, you can reconcile both of them

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            im probably going to start reading simone weil and jean-luc marion so i can make sense out of things after heidegger. probably will also delve deeper into kierkegaard.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Coincidentally I'm in exactly the same position as of this week
            For all the beauty of neoplatonic metaphysics I'm choosing to use this as an opportunity to engage more authentically with religion and feel freed in a lot of ways
            Simone Weil is great and it's a crime that she is not mentioned more on here. Tolstoy's "The Gospel in Brief" was mentioned in another thread and is a good read also, if that's you're kinda thing
            Good luck friend

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            yeah theyre both equally shit. frick pragmatism.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Low t

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous
          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous
          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Read Levinas.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            which work(s)?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Totality and Infinity is his magnum opus of course, but you can read his essay "Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism" for a short overview of his critique of Heidegger. Given your interests, you might also want to check out his book Difficult Freedom where he talks more about religion.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            thank you!

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >maybe don't treat everything you read as gospel
            Maybe don't begin statements with "maybe". It's obnoxious.
            Do you have a reason to think he's doing this?

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    For me it's Capitalism and Schizophrenia. I actually carry a copy in my bag wherever I go

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

      Two things that dont really exist? I am surw its very brilliant and insightful.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Two things that dont really exist?
        See, you are already thinking in a deleuzian way! Rhizomes, not platonico-fascism

        [...]
        One of the most bullshit book. The ability of hacks to unnecessarily complicate bullshit to serve their fragile egos

        The book is written that way ON PURPOSE! It follows the principles it puts forward in the text in the text itself.Sorry but you are being filtered :/

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          It is platonically correct that Capitalism does not exist

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Calling being creative "rhyzomatic thinking" is the most emptily masturbatory possible way of saying

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >The book is written that way ON PURPOSE!

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

      Two things that dont really exist? I am surw its very brilliant and insightful.

      One of the most bullshit book. The ability of hacks to unnecessarily complicate bullshit to serve their fragile egos

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I read the anti-oedipus for the title alone. Most badass book title ever. Didn't understand a word but gave it 5 stars to appear smart

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Deleuze's great strength is his titling - Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus, Difference and Repetition, Capitalism and Schizophrenia

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      What do you get out of it

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >I realize, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to lexicographers, and at worst, an idle tea-table amusement.
    - Reddit Russel, coping after learning the simple truths of the world

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The only correct answer to this question is the Holy Bible. If you live in the west, there's simply no escaping it. Even western atheists are extremely Christian in epistemology (and think every other religion is based on orthodoxy, which is funny). Also, what a wasteland of a thread

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    This one. The Upanishads are a close second.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      forgot pic.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    For me, it's Ellul.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Four book actually, read them in my late teens and early twenties.
    Decline of the West by Spengler made me reconsider my interests and ideas to such an extent I'm still trying my best to escape its shadow (failing). You could say it fundamentally shaped who I am and how I will develop my intellectual desires since.
    Being and Time by Heidegger (and subsequently most of his latter work) came later and I was already subconsciously developing some of the concepts, especially surrounding being-in-the-world, so it was almost like reading a deja-vu. Disagree a lot with the book regardless, but still failing to escape its shadow.
    Creative Evolution by Bergson and Bergson in general, probably one of the very few philosophers I almost entirely agree with, absolutely brilliant mind.
    Reading Process and Reality by Whitehead is the first time in my life I've actually lost words. It's one of the two books that completely changed my worldview, although you could say this philosophical system goes way back in time (and space).
    There are a couple more, but these are the ones from the Western Tradition.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Elaborate on your worldview. Have you read Husserl? What are you actually getting from Whitehead?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        he read them in his late teens early twenties so he probably didn’t pick up much

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Yes, I have. Well, at least half of Ideas. I can't quite muster the energy for his writing style. I'm not well versed in Husserl nor will I pretend to be, he's a hole in my chronology if you will. Probably a huge one, considering I've read most of Heidegger. A mistake I'll fix eventually, maybe next year.
        My worldview is an imitation and departion of a Spenglerian theory of history, although I don't think his determinism and pessimism around ever reoccurring cycles is an actual thing that happens. I don't even think Cultures with big C are a thing, more so they're a World of Worldviews united under a common metaphysics (difference being that eventually one of those Worldviews will diverge enough to become entirely it's own thing, i.e. Ptolemaic Egypt or Byzantium, to give some examples). I also disagree entirely with everything he has said about Magian Civilization and the way he uses it as a vague umbrella term to describe the extremely complex World of the Near East (for example putting Iranians and Arabs under the same Culture is a grave mistake).
        From Whitehead I get a comprehensive theory of metaphysics (Process Philosophy) that, if interpreted a bit, could be aligned with Being and time and Decline of the West respectively, i.e. everything being a web of interconnected relations rather that isolated objects located on a cartesian grid. Process (or change) is the underlying First Mover (a bad term to use here but it'll work for now) that shapes and forms "objects" out of unifying different relations. You could interpret this as the Culture determining the outlook of the individual or the historicity of Dasein.
        Bergson gives me more of the same, however he provides an interesting interpretation of time and memory that is more close to my intuition than Heidegger's, that is Duration, and how Memory fits into the metaphysics of a very weird "dualism" (my own theory of time rather unifies both). Creative Evolution is one that has specifically influenced me because it has expressed the possibility of infinite creativity (imagination) and ever occuring change into something greater than what has formed before (which to some extent fits to Process Theology, Bergson himself has been quoted with saying Whitehead it the greatest English philosopher, so take it as you will). This also connects to Neoconfucian concept of Taiji.
        I believe everything is a product of Spectrality, be it ones of Time-Space, Matter-Idea, Change-Creation or Memory-Forethought. Spectrality would mean a nondual spectrum whose ends cannot exist without the other. As in, for Space to exist, Time must change and the other way around. For Memory to exist, Forethought must create it and vise versa. Same for Individual and Culture.
        That's why my own "Creative Evolution" relies entirely on the concept of Syncretism. Thus I digress from Spenglerian pessimism. New Cultures are formed in an ever increasing complexity of Worldviews towards an infinite trajection to the unknown.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          what university are you at?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Thanks for taking the time to write this.

          Can you tell me more about your views of time? It doesn't really seem to be possible to unite Bergson + Heidegger + Whitehead 's theories of knowledge and time. How exactly do you square an Eschatology with continually existing contrary universals? How do you square Heidegger's subjectivism with Whitehead's universalism?
          What's your view on Bergson's (spiritual) memory?

          Sorry for asking to many questions but I'm curious, and a bit skeptical.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Redpill me on Nagarjuna

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Nagarjuna

        I think you have to read Candrakirti to understand Nagarjuna properly. Basically everything is phenomena that are the result of previous phenomena. There's no "intrinsic existence," which is confusing but he just means there's no essential objects that have always existed (e.g. atoms or electrons in classical physics). Since everything is passing away, we suffer for wanting to hold on to it. From there it's just the rest of Buddhism. So Nagarjuna is a theoretical underpinning of Buddhist conclusions.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Language/conception cannot satisfactorily account for reality and leads to impossible contradictions.
        Instead we must recognise reality as empty (of substance) and merely conditionally dependent on convenient explanatory conditions which are subjective.

        Seeing reality like this will end suffering.

        This may be a rhetorical device.
        This may be a slightly heterodox statement.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >Language/conception cannot satisfactorily account for reality and leads to impossible contradictions.
          >Instead we must recognise reality as empty (of substance) and merely conditionally dependent on convenient explanatory conditions which are subjective.
          >Seeing reality like this will end suffering.
          I came to this conclusion through Wittgenstein last year. But I am still suffering. What I should do? I still live with family and have attachments. I forget this wisdom whenever I go into the world.

          I know this concept but it hasn't clicked yet. It isn't gaining depth. What do?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous
      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        based and dasein-pilled

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        based and dasein-pilled

        What does this mean?

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Every single book on this chart together.

    midwittgenstein is a joke

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >no Cioran
      Oh no no no no

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You're right, but I can't find a good image of The Evil Demiurge, and I'd have to add 3 more books to fill out the row. Any suggestions?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          bataille

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            trash, he isn't a gnostic no matter how hard he tries to larp as one

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          I would say short stories of Ligotti like The Lectures of Professor Nobody on Supernatural. His general obsession with puppets, shadows, degenerating world, "Bungalow Universe" and shit. He came out as a bugman in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race but I don't believe him like he was avoid the talk about "shadow" realm to keep the topic easy to swallow for normies. He hinted shit like someone is deceiving us. And his chapter FREAKS OF SALVATION, especially the sub essay, "Buddhanomics" was bizarre. He kind of accepted those mysterious metaphysical stories. He talked shit about Gnostics which I have found distasteful. Based Mani was an antinatalist he should have simped for him at least.

          I don't know man. He isn't explicitly gnostic but u would say that he is so read some of his shit and decide.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I'm trying to avoid the kind of black Gnosticism you get from SC Hickman/Ligotti spheres. Even the dark stuff in the chart like Voyage to Arcturus is explicit about a higher God. If Ligotti has his own Pleroma analogue (like Lovecraft does, strangely enough) then I'll add him

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >I'm trying to avoid the kind of black Gnosticism
            Hmm, this leaves out majority of pessimists like Zapffe, Ligotti, Caraco etc. but it's understandable.

            What do you think about UG?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            UG is great but I wouldn't call his temperament gnostic. Knowledge of a transcendent-immanent goodness simultaneously beyond and trapped within space and time is antithetical to his 'teachings.' Zapffee, Ligotti, etc. do what they do well, but without the promise of some kind of freedom from this place, it's just the same moldy 20th c. pessimism I'm trying to avoid like the plague. Adorno is more a gnostic than any of these guys (without a Pleroma analogue, though, I admit)

            Thought being a kind of cognitive ouroboros that generates the problems it tries to solve is the kind of insight only a gnostic in temperament could really understand, but it might go over most people's heads and muddy the waters if I add UG to the chart

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Death is the hope of pessimists and not being is the ultimate redemption is you can give to a potential being. Mainländer's The Philosophy of Redemption also said this, merging with God's Will-to-Death. That is a philosophy of freedom.

            In this regard Julius Bahnsen was the ultimate pessimist, he literally offered no freedom. He said life will keep popping up from the corners of the universe and the wheel of suffering will keep spinning eternally.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            But death as the void (not-being proper), not death as some ineffable abyss of light which will dries all tears (non-being as that-which-is-other-than-being). This is where the pessimists and gnostics diverge. For the gnostics, pessimism is just the basement.

            >Bahnsen
            I'm still waiting on a translation of his stuff.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >But death as the void (not-being proper), not death as some ineffable abyss of light which will dries all tears (non-being as that-which-is-other-than-being).
            Semantic games. Only Cioran implied that we have no way to prove that nonbeing is better than being

            >I'm still waiting on a translation of his stuff.
            Checkout Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy for a brilliant summary.

            Also according to r/Mainländer, Mainländer's first volume of The Philosophy of Redemption is going to get publish in this October.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Semantic games.
            Hardly, I'm talking about the traditional definition of non-being in Platonism. Non-being is not a negation of being, but something other than being. Which means it must be other-than the conditions that transcendentally ground the possibility for suffering down here.

            I read some articles on Bahnsen awhile back. There is not even a universal will, but the seething blood orgy of individual wills seething eternally. Bahnsen was a Buddha without nirvana, which is to say a Buddha without the buddhahood. Truly tragic

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >I'm talking about the traditional definition of non-being in Platonism
            Nasty and shameful

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >talks shit about midwits
      >indulges gnosticism
      Sorry, but gnosticism is the most Joe Rogan, most 6 Secrets That The Bible Hides From You, most I Discovered Discovery Channel Yesterday shit possible.
      It's irredeemably midwit.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >gnosticism is new age
        Midwittgenstenians strike again. Go back to abusing children because they don't like math you goof

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    For me it’s Arjunishka’s Ramamalayanad

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    To all my german anons, get this book for a few euros on zvab: Martin Faßbender - WOLLEN Eine königliche Kunst, Gedanken über Ziel und Methode der Willensbildung und Selbsterziehung, 1918

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Emile by Rousseau

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    100 years of solitude. Showed me the magic of phenomenal prose, and the hyper specific mini details and clues left along the trail for the reader to pick up on

  15. 2 years ago
    Sage

    hello Archives, how is Brazil these days?

  16. 2 years ago
    A Pneumatic

    The Republic. Everything else follows from it.

  17. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Ulysses, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, The Hebrew Bible, and The Nichomachean Ethics

  18. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I didn't start reading again until 6 or so years ago, after busying myself with music for about 15 years so I would probably say Leibniz and his Monadology. Reaffirmed my belief in God and gave me a cosmological system to work with. Other than that, Schopenhauer's On The Basis Of Morality gave me an ethical system first presented to me by Immanuel Kant that was smoothed out by the formers emphasis on compassion

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Oh and The Christian Bible, ofc. Forgot to mention that

  19. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >all philosophy
    >not a single trade book or inspirational tale
    >not even gilgamesh
    Philosophers are soulless parasites.

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