Is it okay to absorb philosophy from secondary sources if you

>I just mean as a way to make sense of your life and not anhero.

Why would you read philosophy for this?

You have to have the patience to read the original, or else you're just a fag

>>8303541
What the hell else are you supposed to do?

Philosophy is not complete without action.

>>8303543
I'm not worried about being a fag. I just want to know if you necessarily lose the fundamental messages by reading from secondary sources.

>>8303551
You miss YOUR understanding.

>>8303555
>Philosophy is this subjective to litfags

>>8303563
>not questioning the book yourself
>ignoring there are misinterpretations

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You need to read it yourself.

It's okay to go secondary when you dont fully understand something, but it'll be a lot harder to find a secondary source that isnt either pro-Nietzsche or anti-Nietzsche unless, well, they dont add commentary on the quotes.

Another thing might be missed contexts from cut-and-pasted Nietzsche sourcings. A bit of his stuff, even his aphorisms, need to be read in context and mulled over to fully grasp.

>>8303545
Just stop being an INTJ faggot and maybe live the damn thing?

>>8303598
as an INTJ i lol'd

>>8303536
I teach philosophy.

The fact is you're doing it right. 99.99% of people who read Leviathan, for example, without any study guide will not understand much of it or any of it at all. That goes for everyone posting in this thread, I guarantee it.

There's nothing wrong with verbose prose, but if you're just looking to digest ideas or communicate an idea then the simpler, the better.

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>>8303598
I am not hung up on a lack of meaning but I am pretty disaffected with my circumstances and since I don't recognize any meaning and therefore lack the sense that I have any mandate to exist I feel like I would have to be a chump to continue to flagellate myself with quotidian existence. Its not a lack of meaning that bothers me, its the fact that y life is quite frankly a needless pain in the ass.

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>>8303632
Read Camus my nigger

>>8303662
Oh I fucking hate this guy. There is no philosopher for whom I afford lesser respect. His doggish acceptance of life disguised as "rebellion" (aka mooning the universe) is so nihilistic that its basically just philosophical AIDS. Really, incredibly silly. Jainists get more respect from me than this asshole and his followers.

>>8303744
Are you OP? If so, give up learning philosophy immediately. A big part of studying philosophy is assuming the guy you're reading is correct until you know enough of his thought and of the philosophical tradition as a whole to offer a meaningful critique.

2/10

>>8303598
Sage advice. I'm INTJ and wasted so much time with worthless theoretical philosophical musings that I've failed to live life and really am worse off than when I began. To the OP, if all you care about is pragmatics, only get yourself the point of not wanting to kill yourself, whether with secondary or primary literature (really doesn't matter) and stop pursuing philosophy or anything like it completely. Just live your life.

>>8303766
What do you mean by "live" and "life"?

>>8303536
You don't need /lit/'s permission to find a reason to live senpai

>>8303536
>I just mean as a way to make sense of your life and not anhero.
But then, my friend, you are going about it all wrong. That's what got me into it too, someone told me I should read Zarathustra, but then I found out I needed to read Nietzsche, and so on, all the way back to the Greeks.
Thus I can't an hero till I've read Zarathustra, which was and is a big journey. I'm currently at Kant, still a way to go before I can even consider an heroing again.

>>8303764
I didn't want to "learn" philosophy anyway. I wanted to read it and form a personal interpretation that could motivate me into some course of action. And also I don't think you should accept something as true just because its in a fucking book.

>>8303776
Nice try

>>8303830
Let's go down the rabbit hole senpai

>>8303776
That's a good question really. I think the mistake I make with using the word "death" is validating it as a tangible idea to which can and obviously is ascribed wholly negative associatons. Even if I hanged myself immediately I would stll be living my life, just on briefer and less vigorous terms. My death would be irrelevant in not only a cosmic sense but in absolutely any sense. "I" would not be dead because there would be no "I" to be dead in the first place.

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>>8303848
Well at least you actually want to kill yourself, so I don't have to try and convince you. But this is probably the most retarded thing I have read in quite awhile.

>>8303857
Not him but why do you say that? When I see convos between people online thinking about committing suicide, that's consistently brought up as a counterpoint. You don't ever get to actually experience being dead or 'at peace'. You only experience the dying part. (Barring god/religious whatever)

>reading secondary texts instead of original texts

why not read both side by side, as intended?

>>8303874
obviously if you die people in your life are affected by your death. And what is his point anyway, that we shouldn't talk about abstractions?

>>8303879
The point is I sort of shoot myself in the foot by even playing along with the idea that this trifling punctuation mark at the end of life should have a name and a whole mythology surrounding it which represents it as absolutely antithetical to life. Conversely how could something as fugacious as life be said to stand in contrast to the eternity one will spend in this imaginary condition?

>>8303879
>in your life
That's the thing, you don't have a life anymore, you don't exist to care. I don't care for this narcissistic 'world ends when I do' line of thought but it is a consideration in a discussion about death. As for his point, I'll leave that to him.

>>8303536
Start with the Greeks

>>8303904
>he hasnt read Nietzsche and doesnt know about the Eternal Recurrence

youre gonna get reincarnated into a dung beatle if you do that

>>8303909
>implying Nietzsche gets to make up silly metaphysical schemes because he is a genius

>>8303909
also eternal return features in Schopenhauer who I have read. I thought it was silly there as well

>>8303914
>>8303919
I dont even really know if it's a silly idea or not to be honest.

>>8303904
Are you the OP?

>>8303766
>>8303617
>MBTI bullshit
kek. I'm XNXP by the way :^) that is, I vs E and F vs P are at ~50% whenever I take the test and thus, I'm changing between INFP, ENFP, INTP, (rarely) ENTP depending on the mood I fill a test at. If somebody wants this information before listening to my advice, anyway.

Anyway if its just that, just read Nietzsches Zarathustra and try to absorb something from it. You won't "understand" it but its fucking easy to "get" that certain part of embracing life from it, if your temperament is anywhere near right.

I might personally recommend fiction in general rather than philosophy, though. Philosophy isn't always good for making you feel good, unless you have a passion for philosophy itself. Fiction won't necessarily make you feel good, either, but its harder to get it in a totally wrong way - in the sense that it'd worse your crisis, rather than help with it.

>>8303632
Yeah, sounds like theory won't save you, at least not alone. Your problem is something involving your own experience and your own temperament. What can theory do for you if you just feel that life is a pain in the ass? Nothing. Change your life, maybe that will change how you think, not the other way around.

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>>8303937
Well its pretty hard to execute any kind of meaningful action without the proper attitude. And I don't believe in free will so afaik that attitude isn't going to take shape just because I say so. I tried to convince myself to become christian for pragmatic reasons but I just didn't have any kind of experience while I was reading the bible and attending church. So I figured maybe nietzsche would be a good alternative for a euphoric gentleman such as myself.

If I had just read pic related earlier in life I could have avoided this mess.

>>8303766
>if all you care about is pragmatics, only get yourself the point of not wanting to kill yourself

But I am saying I can't afford to be a mere pragmatist because right now I just believe suicide to be the most pragmatic thing I could do. Everythng else seems unrealistic and fruitless.

>>8303936
Yes, what of it?

>>8303764
God Camus fags are annoying.
If he knows an overview of his philosophy as he clearly does and knows it doesn't fit what he wants to learn why would he waste time on it?
Its not like Camus is essential and if he is just getting into philosophy why would he go straight for a shit philosopher from the 20th century when theres so many more before him that he knows he will enjoy more.

>>8303947

>I tried to convince myself to become christian for pragmatic reasons but I just didn't have any kind of experience while I was reading the bible and attending church

This is why Pascal's wager is such bullshit, with Christianity at least. You have to actually believe to get into heaven. I could run around all day loving my neighbor and not murdering people but I can't force myself to believe in something when I don't. Who can create conviction in their heart out of nothing? And the 'pick a religion you like' camp is just as bad. Even if I found one I like, what the hell does me liking it have to do with it being true or not?

I'm not trying to be euphoric here but it's so damn hard for me to talk to people about religion irl, not even argue, just discuss with chill people, because their entire half of the discussion is built on sand. I wind up smiling, nodding, and walking away so I don't come off as the asshole who doesn't respect others' religious beliefs. Just the other day at work I was talking to a coworker who said he believes in a generic God and that he'll go be with his family after he dies. I asked him why he thought that (not quite so bluntly though) and he said because that's what he wants to happen.

What the fuck does what anyone WANTS to happen after we die have to do with anything??

>>8303961
But the thing is I did read Myth of Syphilis and it felt like the worst elevator pitch for life ever.

>yeah you could commit suicide or latch onto some religion but then you would be a dweeb. Instead you should become my version of the Ubermensch! Only 25.59 to learn the secrets of becoming the absurd hero!

>>8303976
I don't know, I ultimately felt the same way. I think what bothered me about Christianity is that I couldn't get over the idea that it was just about getting into the ultimate amusement park. So I even thought about becoming a Cathar but then I wouldn't have anyone around me to sustain my confirmation bias and I would look like a total asshole to everyone. And ultimately I don't think you can choose what you believe in and that's without taking the matter of "free will" into account.

>>8303954
You don't seem that dumb

>>8303993
Being dumb and being too dumb to fully comprehend certain philosophers is not the same thing.

>>8303989

This post made me smile, I wish I knew someone like you in real life op. Don't an hero, the world is lacking in humans like yourself already.

>>8303961
It's not necessarily disliking Camus that makes me immediately think "pleb". If this is how he reacts to Camus, why do you think he'll react any better to first order philosophers like Nietzsche or Plato?

Clearly he already knows what he's looking for something specific and he'll get nothing out of anything until he gets that.

>>8303818
read some self-help book then you dickwad.

or meditations or something idk

>>8303976
>You have to actually believe to get into heaven.
actually a contentious point in wider christianity friendo

>>8304019
I guess I just have faith that there is more to Nietzsche than life-apologetics and prescribing moral doctrine that doesn't seem to logically follow from his ontology.

>>8304019

Because everyone knows Camus was barely a philosopher, and that his ideas are worth nothing.

>>8304039
I said I didn't want to "learn" philosophy because I'm not trying to becoming erudite and wank over how enlightened I am by my own intelligence. I didn't say I was a normie.

>>8304045
Yeah I suppose that's just the version I was taught, I'll always view Christianity from 'my' branch. The others are clearly absurd (which really says it all). Insert relevant Mark Twain quote here.

>>8304046
Doesn't matter. One mediocre idea doesn't invalidate his corpus. Ressentiment, master and slave morality and the Dionysian are all concepts that land him in the upper echelons.

>>8304051
Camus' contribution to philosophy is more from The Rebel and the Plague than his meme-core early works.

>>8304111
I said '"more to", I didn't suggest that I expected him not to engage in those things. But its the very thrust of Camus which is why I've written him off. I can appreciate building pretense around the idea of life. I can't appreciate just accepting life at face-value like a chump.

>>8303536
>Is it okay
By whose standards? I mean, it's not like you'll be arrested for it.

>>8303934
Nietzsche's idea of it is not necessarily silly but you have to read his notes and mull over what he's thinking.

Like he thought eternal return was a logical conclusion to how the world goes on and works. But I don't think it's like everything happens identically over and over. It's like an enlightenment re imagining of the Greek idea of repeating history, like they believed there were other Trojan wars before and more would happen after in the sense that there was always a possibility for similar wars.

It's also interesting how personally he takes it. He's very excited about amor fati for instance.

>>8303976
Pascal's suggestion was for skeptical people to just pray n pray a lot.

It might work for many, to be honest. If you really do a lot of all that jazz and for a long time, I can imagine even some of the hardest persons believing at the end.

>What the fuck does what anyone WANTS to happen after we die have to do with anything??
Many modern people are incredibly practical when it comes to their beliefs. They'll (pretend or learn to) believe what they want if it makes them feel better about life and themselves. If it makes them "better people" in this life, they'll believe in another.