>"They dance so languorously, the women of Syria. I knew then in Jerusalem a Jewess who, in a hovel, by the light of a small smoky lamp, on a bad carpet, danced raising her arms to clash her cymbals. Her back arched, her head thrown back and as if dragged down by her heavy auburn hair, her eyes drowned in voluptuousness, ardent and languishing, supple, she'd have made Cleopatra herself pale with envy. I loved her barbaric dances, her slightly husky and yet so sweet singing, the smell of her incense, the semi-sleeping state she seemed to live in. I followed her everywhere. I mixed in with the vile crowd of soldiers, boatmen and publicans she was surrounded with. One day she disappeared and I never saw her again. I looked for a long time for her in doubtful alleyways and taverns. She was harder for me to do without than Greek wine. A few months after I had lost track of her, I learned, quite by chance, that she had joined a small group of men and women who were followers of a young Galilean miracle worker. He was called Jesus, came from Nazareth, and was crucified, for what crime I don't know. Do you remember that man, Pontius?">Pontius Pilate frowned, bringing his hand to his forehead like someone who is trying to remember. Then, after a few moments of silence, he murmured:>"Jesus. Jesus. From Nazareth? No. I can't bring him to mind."
>>24944449Actually it was originally called the Province of Judea. It was renamed the Province of Syria-Palaestina following the Romans putting down the Bar Kokhba revolt and sacking Jerusalem.
>>24945494cool
>>24945494This. The Romans literally just falsely attributed Judaea to the Philistines to make the Jews mad in revenge for their constant uprisings.
>>24943625I only wish to read this type of literature, forever.
>>24944367Jews were nowhere near as small an ethnic group back then as you probably think they were, they made up like 10 percent of the empire's populaton which meant millions even back then. And by roman standards their religion was seen not unlike the way non-deluded westerners see islam nowadays.And if you know how jews think of gentile westerners now, you know how the average jew thought of romans back then. Having millions of people adhering to a religion in your empire that think only they are truly human and everyone else are subhuman helots made by their god to serve them is basically a recipe for disaster.
I willingly didnt return my library books after the library near me is suddenly going through unexpected renovations and its been sitting on my shelf for close to a year since i was too lazy to drive across town to another library.I was planning on returning the books when the library opens again in a couple months but at this point i'm tempted to just keep em since I've just been buying my books instead for the first time in my life instead of using the library and i'm liking my growing collection.The library books are the illiad, the odyssey, the aeneid and mythology.I wanted to have this certain set of books anyways and at this point i dont wanna pay for it.Is this wrong of me ? Who else is gonna read these old books in my crappy bumfuck town in the middle of nowhere?they probably have multiple copies anyways.
>>24946054I have to go return some library books
>>24945935>DO WANT TO LIVE IN A LOW TRUST COMMUNITY?Your community is minority white, that's already gone. All that's left now is gatekeeping knowledge from the brown horde by stealing library books.
>>24945852I stole like 5 Hitler books from my school library, didn't even read them but they add to the chudcore vibe of my room
>>24945852I have the very last extant copy of a book that I lost at home on break after taking it from the uni library.I have since found it, they have since held my transcripts hostage and billed me for it.They will not be getting it back. It was never digitized. The book dies with me. None of you will ever read it.
>>24947688well... i'm not sure about that though.
>match with woman on dating app>we both have literature as shared interests>she says "oh what's your favorite genre??">"I'm more into the classics">"but what's your favorite genre? Do you like sci fi?>"I like transcendentalist literature">"oh ok"Why do they ask
>>24948558Not even close to worth the effort to create some fake situation you anxiously want to leave as soon as you get off. Do this if you want to train yourself to be more robotic and sociopathic inside.
>>24948558This is disingenuous and dishonest. That's not how you start, build or maintain relationships with people. Men metagaming dating apps is the entire reason dating is so fucked nowadays and every man and woman is a ghosting expert with trust and commitment issues.
>>24947429>asking for permission
>>24948586dating apps are just for fat chicks who need to hide their belly with bizarre camera angles so they are inherently dishonest
>>24948586>men metagamingto say nothing of the women. Hose that makeup off your face, then we'll talk LIAR
What did I think?
>>24946201Can you name any examples of these supposed "nonsense" words? (You can't.)
>>24945812ts would make me so gassy! would be shooting out green grinch wet farts like a mfer
>>24947523The publisher gave Seuss a list of 200 words he was allowed to use and he ended up writing multiple books using only them. That anon couldn't write something as good as The Cat in the Hat without such limitations.
>>24946201Dr. Seuss books are genuinely lightyears better than most other children’s books, and this is obvious as a father reading hundreds of different children’s books to my kid.
I utterly loathe how The Grinch has become a part of Christmas mythology. Stuff like yard decor and Grinch photo shoots is like seeing Facebook minions posting IRL.
I went to go volunteer sorting books to be donated on thursday and had a great time. there were cupcakes and a pretty girl was there too and i got to touch and sort hundreds of books. Then at the end they let me go through the big rolling trash can of books that were too damaged to be donated and take whatever i wanted. i took a bunch including virgil's aenids and some random historical books and also a nice copy of peter camenzind that wasn't even really damaged. im going back next week
>>24947709Sounds great anon
>>24947709Jealous! Keep us updated on your haul and any interesting finds.
>>24947709Did you speak to the pretty girl?
>>24947709sounds like a great time :)
What is there even left to read after him?? Why is his prose so good?
>>24947080Like what? Stephen King? Is that the phantom that makes you feel good? The modernist I like is Yeats, and subsequently the post modernist I can enjoy (sometimes) is Cormac.
>>24947292>I'm too good for Nabokov>McCarthy on the other handIt's all so tiresome
>>24946325пyшкин и лepмoнтoв
>>24946646He writes this way about two men fucking in Pale Fire.
>>24946400Is he trying to do a Proust impression?
How do you actually overcome post-modernism?
>>24948572post-modernism has been for the most part, a kind of obfuscation and disavowal of a structured universal theory of history, limiting truth to specific historical horizons. The main structured universal theory of history at that time post-modernism was developed was Marxism, and it was very much feared by western governments.How deliberate this move to post-modernism was i leave open, but i do not think it was unconnected.
>>24948600you should read real economics texts not dopey "analysis" by english professors, god i can't believe i used to think this crap was insightful as an undergrad
>>24948572The fact that this man unironically thinks that the sheogorath suit looks good will never stop being a source of amusement for me.
>>24948606ya he should have worn a polo shirt with a zipper now that's taste
>>24948610>he's actually defending the sheogorath suitkek
What makes Ayn Rand such a great novelist?
>>24948286I'm shitposting, but it is one of those books whose ideas have outpaced the appeal of the narrative and the continued existence of the book validates it's ideas more than people going through and agreeing with the ideas because they engaged with a compelling narrative.
>post with a vague question to mimic some sympathy for Ayn Rand>sensationalist pic to bait all the Rand worshippers and hatersI suggest changing the matter of discussion to: what makes this thread the worst in the catalog?
>>24948293It is almost like that is the point of objectivism if you are going to strip it to pure basics to make it comprehensible to retards, yes.>>24948296Well yea, but that really goes for all ideologies and philosophies. People are tribalistic animals who seek confirmation to their biases.
>>24948274Now THAT'S a loaded question.
>Don't ever tell me what i can't doSo the philosophy of Ayn Rand is the philosophy of John Locke from mystery box television series Lost?
Man, you're right, Aristotleanon. Christian apologists are the worst when it comes to anally raping the Aristotelian corpus beyond recognition. They don't fucking understand anything. They don't understand dunamis, they don't understand energeia, they don't understand Metaphysics Zeta, they don't understand syllogisms, and they definitely do not understand the four causes. I just had apologist tell me, definitively, that Palamas was a top scholar of Aristotle (lmfao), and that De Anima isn't about life at all, since according to Palamas, only human beings have life because you somehow need "intelligence" to be "self-subsistent" (fucking LOL). Even when you read Aquinas's commentary on passages like the controversial active intellect, you can see him at pains to make the active intellect cohere with the passive intellect into one united soul. And then he fails to do so. But then magically says "but it has to be the case, and so it is." I ask another apologist, is an intellect which becomes everything, something which changes or otherwise remains as it is? And obviously, they short-circuit. Because obviously, that's the kind of intellect that we have, and it can't be active in any pure sense. So Aquinas is wrong and our intellects are perishable in the sense that it is soul. Oh the horror!!! These fucks have absolutely destroyed Peripatetic commentary throughout history, and they polluted literally everything, especially the translations, with the most hamfisted articulations possible to the point where intelligent conversations with them are not possible. Their brains are wrapped in verbal poison. If you ever get caught up in it, you basically have to spend years unlearning Scholastic hackery as it pertains to the deepest parts of the Aristotelian thought to even have a CHANCE at beginning to understand its depths.
>>24948554I didn't change any questions, dude. That question I posed was taken word-for-word from the claims that Aristotle made from DA III.5. I took Aristotle's claims about the two intellects, one that "makes all things", is like techne, and is impassive, immortal, eternal, etc., and another which "becomes all things", is like material, is perishable, etc., and I reframed it as a question to make it clear that he's talking about two different kinds of intellect which *must* exist in two completely different ways.And then you just outright assert that Aristotle argued that the active intellect is a part of the human soul, when Aristotle never makes any such assertion whatsoever. That's the problem with you fucks, you don't read the passages, and when you do read them, you don't pay any attention to what is actually being said and you just hallucinate whatever you want into the text despite the lack of basis for it or the presence of more fitting explanations.
>>24948516>He literally believes that animals don’t have life as part of their essenceHe is not making the distinction you think he is, he is making the distinction that the human soul can exist without the body. Considering this was also assumed by Plato and his followers, and that Aristotle thought he was worth following for 20 years, I hardly think it would be laughed at. But since you don't know the terminology and don't seem to have read more than a passage, you seem to think he is advancing some sort of Cartesian position where animals aren't alive, or one where animals don't have an essence which you would know is an absurd misreading if you knew anything about Byzantine thought.
>>24948576>I didn't change any questionsYou worded the question dishonestly with your own premise embedded in it so any answer acknowledges the very thing in dispute.>when did you stop hitting your wife?In part 5 he's talking about how humans think.>Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul.>And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.>Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms).>Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.Disputing the translation of "soul" is largely meaningless. We know he isn't using it in the same way people will later, that applies to all translations.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24948577>you seem to think he is advancing some sort of Cartesian position where animals aren't alive, or one where animals don't have an essence which you would know is an absurd misreadingNo, I'm tracking exactly what Palamas is trying to do, which is to talk about the theology of "everlasting life" and the immortality of the soul. But in doing so, he has to redefine what life is and what soul is as set forth by Aristotle in De Anima. The consequence, which he states extremely clearly, is that animals are not living in any essential way, which is clearly pants-on-head retarded. This is what happens when you get carried away by poetic language and start to taking it first literally, and then backport the literalism into the ontology. It makes a complete mess of everything, and you're doing everything you can to ignore the downstream consequences of haphazardly tinkering with first principles. And I think it's lost on Palamas that if you take away life as part of the essence of an animal because life supposedly needs rationality for "true" self-subsistence (which is a ridiculous definition of self-subsistence in the first place), then you also have to take away life from the essence of human beings because human beings are in potency to God and therefore not truly self-subsistent either. But, of course, you're not tracking any of these moving parts because you don't understand the debate and you have your rose-tinted goggles for anything Orthodox to the point where you miss basic entailments and their problems.
>>24948602>You worded the question dishonestly with your own premise embedded in it so any answer acknowledges the very thing in dispute.If quoting claims from the passage and then rewording it as a question is "dishonest", then I am all for being dishonest here. You are being ridiculous. Aristotle puts forth several criteria for what he is talking about, and he makes a clear distinction between two kinds of intellect. You need to exercise your brain to figure out what entity or phenomena those criteria fit. Newsflash, if your mind can change in some sense, then it is not active intellect, which is described both as a first cause and as an activity in Bk3Ch5 in such extreme terms that there is no potency leftover. The suspected entity described here can only be the unmoved mover, which it lines up perfectly with in Metaphysics Lambda. In contrast, the way passive intellect is described can only apply to a mind which becomes all things or has movements from potential to actual, aka it applies to something hylomorphic, something with both potency and act. What does that describe? Oh, right, human minds. >In part 5 he's talking about how humans think.No, he's not talking about how humans think at all except in the sense that it happens as a hylomorphic entity, e.g. as a passive intellect *relative* to the active intellect which makes all things intelligible for the passive intellect in the first place. When does the human mind create all things? When is the human mind impassible? When is the human mind prior to the universe as a whole? When is the human mind fully actual? When is the human mind unmixed qua substance? Do you know of any human mind with thinks without stopping? Chapter 4 is where we have the discussion of what the mind is actually like qua passive intellect, as in it becomes all things. That actually matches with how a human mind operates as a vessel to "receive" the being of objects. It certainly doesn't make anything, and by that point in De Anima, all of the cognitive functions necessary for intellect have been described, so there's no more functions to attribute to any other aspect of the mind, let alone to make up a smorgasboard headcanon for what the active intellect is supposed to do.>The mind, as free of memories is beyond time. It's not an organ of the body or a product of the material.The mind is not material, but it is part of the form of something material in the case of human beings. That's what soul is. It's the form of living beings, and some souls have powers of thinking. This is the whole point.
What the FUCK was Stephen King thinking?
>>24946769The characters are 11-12 years old in the original book.
>>24946769OK boomer
>>24946769gen x babs being know-it-all attentionwhores in their 50s isn't noticed nearly enough.
>>24946769Okay, but these are like, literal elementary schoolers.
>>24933848Clearly he was thinking about kids having sex
I just finished reading Journey to the West for a book report. holy shit Chinese books are awesome. Does anyone have the china /lit/ recommendations?
>>24947530>>24947549how challenging do you think water margin is to a casual reader? been curious about that one for a long time. also I guess which of the 4 great classics there are the most accessible?
>>24947522What does >marry in the afternoonMean for Tianjin and why is Henan’s reputation so poor?
>>24947549>classical Chinese poetry is like the greatest literary achievement they ever produced>t. never read Thomas Pynchonsorry, you spelt "Gravity's Rainbow" wrong
>>24947522
>>24947522There were some great poets. Du Fu and Li Bai
Philosophical essays, scientific essays, or any text that claims to be a bearer of truth are not literature.
Any recc.s for non-fiction books that aren't just a biography, or a dull reference/history of x book?
>>24948190it's a pretty broad request. are there any topics you're into specifically? some assorted non-fiction i read recently and found fun (not all fit your criteria):>My Tiny Life, by Julian Dibbell (essays on the early internet culture of the 90s)>Addiction by Design, by Natasha Schull (anthropologist writing about Las Vegas slot machines)>An Inland Voyage, by RL Stevenson (travelogue of his trip through France and Belgium by canoe)>The Origins of Monsters, by David Wengrow (study of the spread of images of hybrid creatures - griffons, minotaurs, etc - through the ancient world)>A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders (short-story writer breaks down classic Russian short stories and shows you how they work)cool thread pic btw. reminded me of the Herzog doc The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner.
>>24948190Interesting account of con-men around the 1930; basically "The Sting" but for real. (I think the film might have been based on the book, or DWM might have been employed as a consultant or something).A big part of the book is the criminal's argot which was a whole independent language. (Michael Crichton seems to have had a similar interest in "The Great Train Robbery".)
>>24948190
>>24948372ty for the selection, I appreciate it leaves a wide range of topics but hoped the fun part narrows each poster's view back down again - looking for books for me and books as presentsStevenson's Inland Voyage sounds like a fun adventureSaunder's looks interesting for me as well, probably not one to gift(used this pic as my phone background for a few years)>>24948376Nice, the lingo glossary in the back sounds fun as well - will have a flick through before gifting
>>24948190Immensely redpilling yet gripping book
>...and then Bilbo whispered to a thrush, a particularly old thrush perched on the mountain, mind you, who conveyed the message of Smaug's missing scale to Bard, who was very good with a bow, you see, and then Bard shot Smaug with the black arrow, which was a very special arrow, forged by the dwarves under the mountain long ago, which instantly killed Smaug!GRRM's autistic edgelord criticisms of Gandalf are nothing compared to this bullshit. If a modern author wrote this slop he would be thrown into a pit and torn apart by apes.
>>24948231Why do people perfomatively hate Tolkien? How would you know this much about the Hobbit unless you were an actual fan? Enjoying fantasy without enjoying Tolkien is like being a Christian whilst hating Christ (I hate Jewbrahammadans I'm just using this as an example).Just admit you like him and that your life is at such a low point you're desperately trying optimise your 4chan trolling algorithm because your soul is ugly and you have nothing else going on.
>>24948231>and then Bard shot Smaug with the black arrow, which was a very special arrow, forged by the dwarves under the mountain long ago, which instantly killed Smaug!The black arrow was some random guardsmen's dad's lucky arrow. This guard was introduced to the reader one page ago and there is no hint that he was talented with a bow. There is one passing mention to the idea that the black arrow might have been forged by the dwarves but no real confirmation. Please stop comparing Tolkien's works to that hack Peter Jackson that turned a short book into three full length movies and therefore had to pad them out with meaningless shit
The only thing i dont like about tolkien is his reliance on providence and constant references to christianity. Other than that,the thing that makes me fume the most are the alt right grifters insturmentalizing and taking intellectual property over tolkien, using it in online discourse and warping and bastardising the m story and morale to their ends (most notably their assertion about evil never being able to create but distort, which is ironic coming from them). We're talking about a man who wrote personally to hitler telling him to piss off, i have no doubt in mind he would regard the average poltard with disgusted contempt and restrained hatred.
>>24948327Pretty good page, this guy might be talented.>>24948352What an absolute parody of a useless faggot.
>>24948273>Pro-Nationalists Spain and war veteransHe was based unlike GRRM semi-feminist cucks
This is horrifying. Is there a better way than Christianity to transcend this?
>>24948191No
>>24948191Islam
>>24948443lslma offers no solution to the problem outlined in the book
>>24948191Rene Girard is super based. Everyone should read him.
