ILP book club?

Social Forums Non-Philosophical Chat
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We are (for the most part) smart people here; however, I have noticed that there is a dissonance in language used and a certain amount of dogmaticism amongst posters (I’m certainly guilty of this).

So, to broaden our respective perspectives, I would like to propose an ILP book/essay club. In this club a member would select a readily available book/essay and post a link (for now let’s keep it free and internet-available. As it evolves we can get more in depth). Members of the club have a week (or more if it is a lengthy book/essay. We can let the poster suggest an appropriate length) to read the material, and then we can discuss it.

I think such a system would provide a wonderful exposure for many of us to other systems of thought as well as giving us a focused topic to talk about.

Would anyone be interested in such a system? While I know I would be inadequate for the task, I would be more than willing to moderate for the initial phase until a more worthy group of people could be decided.

Think about it – instead of breaking into various groups we can start to get a Daoist perspective on ‘We’, a Christian view on Zhuangzi’s view of Heaven, a libretarian’s pespective on passages from Corthinithan’s.

I think such a club would both fascilitate understanding as well as lead to really worthwhile discussion.

Anyone else think this is a good idea?

Would anyone else be up for it?

If so, sign up here and suggest a text. Try to keep it of reasonable length and try to keep it available on the internet. I’ll choose the first one, and the person whose topic I choose can finger the next one. As a disclaimer, I promise not to select a topic that I have previously read.

As long as we keep open minds about this, I think this could be a really good thing.

P.S. Try not to make the topics totally obscure/requiring a HUGE background in the field. As much as I want to discuss the Horak debate from Yi Yulgok’s perspective, I’m not so sure than anybody else is. Given that, let’s keep it group friendly for starters.

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This was tried once before 2 years ago or so, and it didn’t work out as well as I would have hoped, but that was mainly becuase there were too few people who participated and it was sequestered in the creative writing thread which meant that the books available for discussion were only fiction books instead of my initial hopes that the books available for discussion were philosophical.

If it happens I would try to participate.

My selection would be :

etext.virginia.edu/latin/boethius/boephil.html

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I’d be willing to participate, but I would suggest the discussions took place in their own respective threads (this may seem common sense but it wasn’t mentioned; I just thought I would)

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Im up for that, might be better to keep it to essays or articles to begin with.

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I would be interested and try to participate…although weekdays might not work too well. If someone can work out the details…definitely up for it!

http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/PD.html

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Let us see what happens shall we.

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So, this never materialized. Anyone currently posting interested in this kind of interaction? It could be difficult to narrow down the selections but if we can at least come to a minor consensus on a few books maybe we can figure a monthly schedule out and work through all the books suggested, whatever those books would be.

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I really doubt I would want it with the crowd currently here. They have typically a very short geographical and historical appreciation for idea, it’s even worst now than it was when this thread was first made.

We had just one member on this site express interest in Daoism for example… and the idiots here hounded him for weeks for being a Buddhist… even though Daoism is not Budddhism… and the way they did it was through the Prussian stereotype of Buddhism being Nihilistic.

I really don’t think the people here could handle Thomas Merton’s reading of Chuang Tzu… most here are mouth breathers who blink a lot, and utter uneducated nonsense.

Someone dropped the idea for Boethius… most of the forum lacks the education to figure out how he was tying concepts from Platonic and Aristotelian schools, his dialogue with earlier literature on Fortune, I think the mixture of Pagan and Christian symbology would confuse the duck out of them, not to mention the impossibility of most comprehending the Roman Senate was still functioning this late, AFTER Rome “Officially Fell”, The Relatioons Boethiys had with.Classifieds and the Eastern Emperor, the Ostrogoths… Don’t even get me started on Numenius’ influence on Boethius’ Theological Tractates… most here can’t swallow philosophy that condensed, much less make sense of it in a historical context before or after.

I also saw a link for epicurean philosophy. They would slap the word hedonism down and go cross eyed in a debate, insisting on Nietzsche discipline (which doesn’t exist, it’s all cock tugging in that religion). It would turn into a discussion about Hierarchy, Nihilism, and Dasein.

It really wasn’t possible then, certainly impossible now… unless you just want to talk about the writings of a few French dogs and fascist authors, all influenced by Hegel. Philosophy is dead on this forum. Everyone is wearing the veil of ignorance here, nobody knows what the fuck is going on, yet everyone clutched onto Anti-Semetism as it seemed a safe bet. Nobody talks about anything else on this site. It pisses me off.

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This is the first time I have been on this site in maybe a year. I was hoping to find some interesting people capable of debating world views in a way that went beyond the tropes and concepts predominating popular conception. I’m guessing you’ve read The Glass Bead Game by Hesse? I’m still curious to discover if anyone is willing to commit to an Ilovephilophy book club. I mean, what else is going on this world. We might as well have a discussion about philosophy in which we all call each other names and accomplish nothing other than the solidification of what we already know, right? And maybe some of us will start to think and expand our understanding of what this ridiculous world is so that we are more prepared when it all falls apart. It’s a thought.

Mr. Ferguson, we should talk about ideas, and historical facts that don’t piss you off.

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Thank you for quoting?

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Sorry. I amended it. I hit the wrong button. I’m out of practice.

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Historical facts don’t miss me off, I spend a few dozen hours per week reading history.

What posses me off is nobody else reads it, so have some really ignorant understandings of the past and other cultures.

I’ve tried this in real life with my philosophy group in.Hawaii… Asians and Caucasian philosophy isn’t something easily jumped over to, there is a lot of unexpected resistance from Prussiaphile Philosophy to embracing anything, Zen Buddhists on the lay level won’t touch Christianity. I’ve joined just about every group and sect out there for their knowledge, the sole consistent trait I’ve seen is a general indifference, if not hostility to learning outside their group. Only people consistently consistently breaking this narrow minded approach ate the leaders. Its a weird dichotomy.

This site is dedicated to Nihilism and Nietzsche and Dickgames.

And no, Ad Homs are a excellent rhetorical tool employed by some of the very in history to encourage change. Mental sloth runs deeper than just the posters, but also moderator ideology. When properly employed, it results in profound change. You shouldn’t look at the short term but long term effects, a lot of the shitheads on this site have broader horizons now. I don’t think it’s gonna result in a Opera Book Club though, still a remarkable dense and illiterate crowd.

And no, I haven’t read that book, I’ll look for it tomorrow if I can find a copy for kindle or scribd.

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I read both history and religion and do not have any self imposed limits about either
As I wish to learn as much as I can about every major culture which has ever existed

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Of course you got limits silly, everyone does. History would lack meaning otherwise, and the Philosophy of History would be a meaningless endeavor. Nobody, not even the most drugged up Unitarian, is without limits. Dialectics wouldn’t exist.

But I grasp the ambition to dig deeper, wider, a obvious aspect in me holds to it too. But it has severe blindspots that isn’t evident in and of itself. It an backfire and alienate, make our thinking too esoteric and rarified, to the point it becomes a absurdity.

theonion.com/article/guy-in- … ck-up-1804

Different eras of philosophy look back comparatively, and always assumed something special was going on, with themselves or in a Golden Age that probably never was as good as they make it out to be. We do a lot of Subjective-Objective Heurmeunetics in History, reading the current and past intent, it’s all the silly busy body rage going on. If you get down to the deepest philosophy most here have, it’s this post modernist pseudo-Marxist critique of spectacles. We acknowledge on the one hand, people always were fairly complex and variable in their thinking, but had to make due with the inherited knowledge they had… but at the same time we call bullshit on them because we’ve already preordained how history should unfold. It never really occurs to us to question our own knowing in regards to history.

Most of the impulse to write history, be it fictional novels or biographies, or topos… I’ve been increasingly finding modern philosophical presumptions filter out a lot of information. Roman History is currently being rewritten by Nietzscheans… Its very embarrassing, not even intellectual, not even the scrum you find here, but guys with even the faintest passing understanding. They suddenly gotta reorient the whole of history to make fit their subculture. What Sauwelios and Jacob do here is bad enough, but I’m talking about big authors with a fan base. I can get the desire to namedrop and quote on fictional revisionism for a historical drama… especially when you obviously violate history by introducing obvious unhistorical facts, but they don’t always do this. The philosophies we have floating around now becomes the past. Its unnerving to touch on a primary text, and discover they dealt with things very differently.

I look at the people on the site, wonder what will happen once they start touching upon history or philosophies from another culture. Even someone highly insulated, like Zoots with his Nazi outlook… he uses Ryle. Ryle was friends with Cottonwood, who continued Vico’s school of History. Its gonna fuck him up, everything he has done up till that point will dissipate.

I used to talk to George Feuerstein on his forum prior to him dying. He spent his whole life studying eastern philosophy, only in the end, he started reading ancient western philosophy. It was a big eye opener for him. I wonder where it would of taken him had he lived. Very few people can cross over and take on multiple philosophical systems, much less dance with them across time. I look at the downloads for some of the papers and books I consider essential, the most important in History… a few hundred at best, sometimes just dozens. Some of our best minds are left to rot.

Despite the flow of information, the near universal access we have, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a very dark age. I might as well be St. Bede living on a isolated island in the midst of the dark ages. Dark Ages wasn’t dark because people didn’t think, have opinions and suppositions. It was dark because they thought they knew better, and never doubted their own motivations or themselves. Absolute certainty quickly leads to absolute ignorance. Doesn’t matter the root and beauty of the original idea they cling to, it eventually falls to rot.

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Dude, never realized your quite the submissive. Your like the male version of this woman.

onionstudios.com/videos/how- … h-him-1458

Ladies, please notice me! I’ll pretend to be anything, just notice me! I’ll eat you out for hours if you acknowledge my.existence!

Pretty much what those books scream.

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What I meant was that I will not automatically reject learning about other cultures just because they are not mine so make a conscious
effort to extend my knowledge as much as possible since knowledge acquisition is my goal in life. And this applies to all serious subject
matter so is not limited to just history or religion. Now I am more an observer rather than a participant in this respect by which I mean
I am not doing it to form my own personal philosophy but just to be aware of those of others. I avoid making moral judgements for that
can be a distracting influence and lead to dogmatic thinking. And this is something that I consciously strive to avoid as much as possible

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Your asserting a dogmata in saying you will reject all dogmata, then say you will study anything, but make the moral exception you won’t judge by comparison, moral conceptions. You will absolutely avoid any judgment, when it comes to knowledge?

Right?

Interesting… certainly you have this all figured. Clearly, you are incapable of fooling yourself.