Is this the ultimate self-help book?

imo "discourses" of epictetus are a better stoic book if you are into stoicism

I like stoicism but never found meditations to really be the primer on self help, it's a lot of unstructured musings written by Aurelius when he was on campaign. They weren't even meant to be shared, much less as teaching material. You can get some good stuff out of it, but still.

Stuff like the Enchiridion is pretty short and more structured primer on the philosophy. Seneca's letters are also designed in a way of giving advice rather than just mulling over his life.

>>8649744
Nietzsche is a raving edgelord, Kierkegaard is basically the bastard child of Socrates and Augustine and has the best prose in philosophy, Wittenstein has autism.

Stoicism barely qualifies as a philosophy, it's more of a delusion if anything.

>>8649750
this is one of the first philosophy book i'm reading, and i don't care much about all the logos and pneuma shit to make me feel better about the universe being random and meaningless, but i do like a lot of other things marcus is saying

>>8649755
Kierkegaard has better prose than neitzche? I haven't read the former but the latter is the best writer I've ever read, is this really true?

>>8649755
>it's more of a delusion if anything.
Why so?

>>8649760
epictetus' book is more clear. "meditations" are full of rambling, i mean it is interesting but i am not marcus avrelius and so his diary to me is not a clear explanation of his ideas. epictetus tried to explain his philosophy clearly because he actually taught others

>>8649755

>Nietzsche is a raving edgelord

Says everyone who's ever read him, and if that's your conclusion after having read him then congratulations - your a fucking Last Man who couldn't follow Nietzsche to his philosophical conclusions.

>Kierkegaard is basically the bastard child of Socrates and Augustine and has the best prose in philosophy

Agreed, though if you read then the former then you'd appreciate the similarities between N&K. One of the biggest 'missed opportunities' in philosophy was that they never crossed paths, or at least never saw one another's work.

>Wittenstein has autism.

As far as le semantics/wordplay philosophy goes, he's still better than all the 20th century French hacks.

>>8649786

*Says everyone who's never read him

Ever is just as applicable I guess.

>>8649768
Yes, Kierkegaard has some of the best prose in the history of philosophy

>>8649768
Yes, Nietzsche's prose is just novel borderline obscurantism with lots of flair. It gets old quick.
>>8649786
>le last man
Nietzsche would have gone sickcrazy even sooner if he saw how irrelevant everything he had done was under Kierkegaard.

The ramblings of an egomaniac don't interesting, the meeting of the two would only do well to break N's ego.
>he's still better than all the 20th century French hacks.
Yes but neither are 'life' philosophies.

>>8649820
so, i should skip niet and read kerkegaard?

>>8649820

>Implying Nietzsche's philosophy made him crazy

You're a retard.

>if he saw how irrelevant everything he had done was under Kierkegaard

Implying 'Le Leap of Faith' man was better than someone who knew better than to do just that.

>>8649870
Nietzsche's philosophy didn't make him crazy, knowing his philosophy was actually irrelevant would drive him to death faster.

I started my journey towards stoicism with The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It was good but very juvenile. I wanted something a bit deeper so I moved to A Guide to the Good Life. Now I'm reading Meditations and I'll soon move onto Discourse and Letters from a Stoic. I think all of these but the first embody all that is self help. Stoicism is invaluable in this modern society.

File: 51CEBeOWQ8L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg (21KB, 226x346px) Image search: [Google]

21KB, 226x346px

This book is certainly not an introduction to stoicism though. Try pic related.

>>8650248
Read this recently. Felt more like a primer on psychology at times. But it explains some common misconceptions about stoicism, which is good

>>8650215
Stoicism is useless ideology.

>>8650422
Proof?

>>8649744

It's a fucking diary basically, so no. Read a book that was intended as a stoic manual.

>>8649755
I really like Wittgenstein's writing, and I'd go so far as to say that many of the greatest philosophers in the world have had autism, just like they have in other fields.

>>8649744
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are meme's because their work was absolutely ingenious.

>>8649744
>Is this the ultimate self-help book?
no

>>8650528
I've read a majority of the "difficult" texts of philosophy and there are certain works that are filled with autism and difficult to read - however, only certain works justify those qualities. I'd say the works of Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Hegel justify these qualities while Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and Sartre certainly do not.

>>8649755
Western Philosophy in general is foolish compared to Daoism.

>>8650569
t. Asian pseud

>>8649792

>Kierkegaard has some of the best prose in the history of philosophy

Lel are you on crack? Don't get me wrong he's a great philosopher, but shit like this is pretty much incomprehensible:

"The self is the self relating itself to its lack of self in-itself before it becomes itself so as to transcend itself by relating itself to its lack of self within itself thereby overcoming the universal relation of the self to itself within the sphere of the ethical, which is itself surpassed by the Absolute, in which the self transcends its relation to itself, and thereby loses itself in order to gain itself."

>>8650601
Sounds like you just might not be smart enough to get it?

:^)

>>8650601
Is that a bad translation?

>>8650618
No its literally just non-sense I made up that sounds like something Kierkegaard would say.

>>8650627
It wasn't very Kierkegaard-esque. Here's a quote:
>“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

>>8650637
This is an actual Kierkegaard quote you can find on the beginning of "Sickness unto death"
The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.

>>8650645
That makes significantly more sense than your made-up quote, and I don't even know if that's a real quote or not.

>>8650681
>Tfw when you know how to post on 4chan but don't know how to use Google search.

>>8650681
I'm not made up quote dude, I just wanted to add a real quote to the conversation.