Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 162. page

arthur.. easy on the cake

>>9966750
The vertiginous question

>>9966750
What doth life?

Have you tried caring less about if you understand what you're reading?

>>9966759
well then what's the point?

>actually reading books

>The academic discipline & an undergraduate degree in it
Bad for various reasons

>Philosophy itself
Good if you're cut out for it

>Getting a degree in it and tolerating the state of the discipline
Possibly OK, if you can ride the tiger

Currently philosophy is similar to Nietzsche's characterisation of academia as a harem guarded by eunuchs (scholars), i.e., forever guarding and tending and watching over what you can't really touch, and what would be useless to you even if you could touch it.

North American and ESPECIALLY British philosophy departments are nightmare hellscapes of piss-poor analytic philosophy, laggards to assimilate continental philosophy and join it with a childishly unsophisticated neo-pragmatism, which, even if you happen to like it for some reason, still won't give you enough interaction with continental thought in a holistic manner.

Anglosphere philosophy departments are split 50/50 between, on the one hand, a bunch of hidebound logic-chopping analytics tending their walled gardens, as a volcano erupts in the distance that will soon annihilate them and everything they ever worked for, and on the other hand, the aforementioned neo-pragmatists who have managed to smuggle in some more dynamic continental thinkers by immersing them in the more fluid medium provided by pragmatist considerations for flexibility and kinda-sorta-discursivity.

But it's much better to study the pragmatists and continentals EQUALLY, on equal terms, while learning philosophy historically (still a major stumbling block for analytic departments), and make up your own mind from there - not to try to work backwards to an appreciation of continental thought from Richard Rorty or Robert fucking Brandom and their eclectic, half-understood appropriations of continental thinkers.

If you are analytically minded, then you might do fine. The problem is that you don't get the opportunity to CHOOSE whether or not you are, in an Anglosphere department. You are given the aforementioned 50/50 set of choices, and that's it. Even if you thrive in that environment, who is to say you wouldn't have thrived more with more continental exposure?

All of this has bearing on how stereotyped you will be by the time you apply to grad school. If you do nothing but study Rorty and Sellars, or god forbid some stilted logico-mathematical philosophy of algorithms for 4 years, you will probably be applying to study similar things in grad school, which will then immerse you even more deeply and make it even harder to broaden your horizons. And while that's going on, maybe some parallel universe version of you, who stumbled upon Heidegger or Ricoeur, and forced your way through them without the help of a class, discovered his love of continental hermeneutics and had a much more fulfilling career with totally different prospects.

>>9966798
tldr: A Philosophy major is OK, as long as you understand it's EXTREMELY walled-in and railroaded in English-speaking departments.

DO NOT assume that what they are teaching you is "Philosophy." Look at it more like the equivalent of: You are studying statistics, but the department is just called "Mathematics." For whatever reason, the mathematics department thinks that "mathematics" in a general sense is equal to "statistics." You might learn some non-statistics math there, but it will be in a very limited and general way, and only in order to improve your performance in doing statistical mathematics. If you want a non-stats math education, you're going to have to do it on your own - you're going to have to go explore the Physics department, where all the non-stats math people (pure math, let's say) are hiding out.

Similar situation with Anglosphere Philosophy departments. If you want to study non-analytic/non-neopragmatist philosophy, you're going to have to go find the crypto-continental philosophers in the Comp Lit department, and mostly you're just going to have to figure that shit out on your own and study it on the side.

>>9966798
>>9966808
Wow they've clearly bastardized philosophy. So is rare significant philosophy going to come outside the universities?

Which translation did you read? It is a pretty amazing work.

>>9965384

Wow OP, you speak Italian?

I read the Robert M. Durling translation.

I thought it was just a meme book but it really was a great read. Sort of like a redpill on morality.