Is being well-versed in philosophy a neccessary prerequisite

>>8799534
No.

Not really.

>>8799534
>After all, you can reduce any work of literature to one or another philosophical idea.
wow. please get out of this board

>>8799573
well, in deleuzian vein, art (like literature) is creation of affects, which potentially can be conceptualized.

yes, you can reduce eveything to philosophy, but that would be the new scientism

In general, no. If you were brushing up on the Western canon to catch all the references in literature, you should start with the Bible, Greek/Roman history and mythology, and European history before hitting philosophy.

However, I will say (as a PhD student in philosophy) having a rigorous and comprehensive training in the history of philosophy makes Beckett's novels x1000 more enjoyable (and they are already fucking amazing). Beckett knew his philosophy and referred to it constantly in his early works.

unrelated question, i just don't want to make a thread about it

when you read and understand what a branch of philosophy is about, what's the point of reading more about it?

e.g. stoicism, why do i want to read the works of the stoics if i already know what this philosophy is about and how to use it? does it get more specific?

>>8799685

if you have the sophomoric understanding of philosophy as "providing a total system" or a "way of life," maybe there's no reason to read more deeply. but that's a bad conception of philosophy.

first off, reading the great philosophers should itself be seen as a sort of literary activity. You should read them carefully, slowly, with all your intellectual effort. It takes hard work, but it expands your mind and can provide deep aesthetic experience. You are there, intimately on the page with this teeming intellect trying to get to the absolute bottom of things, committing all of his/her precision, logic and creativity to the problem. You are struggling to understand the text, so you start precisifying it in your own way, and the text talks back to you. As you try to see things from the authors' perspective (in order to gauge the overall meaning and effectiveness of his arguments), you begin to see the world in a new way (in just the way literature enables you to).

The point of reading philosophy is not really to "get the answer." It's to appreciate the subtleties of the questions, to see the possible positions, to appreciate the complexities and difficulties that go into answering the questions, etc. Along the way your ability for making distinctions and crafting/critiquing arguments is sharpened enormously.

But it takes genuine hard work and genuine intellectual curiosity. No wonder basically no one on /lit/ actually pursues it.

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>>8799700
thanks, i enjoyed this post