>>24949042I don't really agree. Ovid's poem, written in exile, is intended as a critique of authority, and if there is any doubt in this, he ends the poem by saying the Roman Empire will one day perish, an obvious reference to the Aeneid which asserts the Roman Empire will last forever as eternal. Ovid does not care about praising the gods or encouraging piety, like Virgil, in fact he is passive-agressively working to be subversive and undermine the values taken for granted as good in Rome. But most translators of the violence done to women in the poem, try to make the poem impact us from the feelings of the perpetrators. This is correct for poems like the Iliad, which obviously is showing thing from the perspective of the conquerors more than the captives. Although it wouldn't be correct for The Trojan Women, which seeks to convey the experience of the victims, and it wouldn't necessarily be correct for Ovid who, as a victim of the authority of Augustus, now has an ax to grind with tradition. McCarter argues that it isn't so much her ideological bias, as the bias of prior translators which was established by Victorian sensibilities of what was proper and improper in art--this was after all an era that bowdlerized performances of Shakespeare. But there is also the further issue that "rape" in the English language for a long time specifically meant abduction, which did not necessarily suggest forcible sex, as for example the Rape of the Lock. The Roman Legal term which Ovid frequently uses means sex by force. However his use of legal language was often ignored by translators because it sounds less artful in English, which in turn obscures the experience of the victims in the poem. In this circumstance a woman saying she wants to bring out the experience and feelings of the victims, is completely in line with Ovid who even goes so far as to preach vegetarianism in his poem because he believes humans can be reincarnated as animals, actually a big theme in the work. We can only imagine how felt about Augustus having engaged in human sacrifice. Ovid's interest is not making us see violence and rape as purely aesthetic subjects, but to make us feel uncomfortable with the implications even while pretending to glorify them.
>>24949053Ovid almost never uses a single, unambiguous Latin word that corresponds neatly to modern "rape" in the legal/ethical sense. Instead, he uses a range of verbs and constructions, most commonly:- rapere ("seize, carry off")- vim inferre / vis ("to apply force / violence")- euphemistic or narratively indirect phrasing- verbs of pursuit, domination, or possessionCrucially, rapere does not itself encode sexual violence; it means "to snatch" in many non-sexual contexts. The sexual violence often emerges from narrative context, not from a single lexical item.
>>24949102Romans didn't have "rape" in the modern legal/ethical sens. They used the term violence or force for the crime of rape. And she talks a lot about this in the introduction McCarter generally doesn't translate rapere as rape as she mentions in her introduction>At other times, the word strongly suggests rape but in the context is best translated as “snatch,” such as 6.548 when Tereus (clearly a “rapist”) is compared to an eagle that is a raptor (“snatcher”) of a hare. She gives the example of the word being applied to Helen
>>24949118From the introduction >Rape fits well into Ovid’s overall focus on power, victimization, and trauma. The specific language that Ovid employs to designate rape is consistent with Roman legal terms denoting forced sexual penetration. The key word is again vis, “violent force,” which is perhaps the closest Latin can come to a one-word correspondence to the English “rape,” though the meanings do not overlap entirely—vis could cover various acts of public and private violence, such as armed assault or rebellion. Sexual vis was most definitely a crime, and the rapes the epic presents would certainly not have been considered normal or acceptable acts—they would have been as horrific to the Roman mind as they are to ours, especially since they are regularly perpetrated against young virgins who would otherwise have been able to marry and bear legitimate children. And if not virgins, generally against married women. So it would without any ambiguity be considered a crime by Romans. Ovid doesn't describe things we would consider rape but the Romans probably wouldn't, such as martial rape or or raping a slave or raping a woman who has slept with men out of wedlock or raping a woman during wartime.
>>24949141>Visual beauty is indeed a constant source of danger for those who possess it, whether male or female, and often prefigures transformation. The word Ovid most consistently uses to designate “beauty” is forma, the same word he uses in the epic’s opening lines to state his theme: “shapes (formae) transformed / into new bodies.” What makes a man lovely in the epic is precisely what makes a woman so: softness, smoothness, youth, a pale but also rosy complexion—and virginity.A lot of translators simply convey aestheticization of violence, but Ovid intentionally and continually links aesthetics with violence as distinct themes; beauty prefigures violence for Ovid, since unlike conventional Roman values which can sometimes identify them, Ovid sees violence as the force which destroys beauty. But McCarter is careful not to presume how Ovid feels or thinks about what he's writing about and leaving the reader to interpret the ambiguity >Whether we see Ovid’s own poem as art that challenges power or reasserts it depends, in many ways, on how we ourselves feel about power and art and how we choose to read his tales. It is not always clear whose side Ovid himself is on—that of the abusers or that of the abused. At times, he seems sympathetic to those who are transformed; at times, he seems positively gleeful to describe their victimization in excruciating detail. At one moment, he seems deferential to power; at another, deeply irreverent.
Is there a single good argument for allowing oneself to live to old age?
>>24948987biology
>>24949035Just take vitamins.
>>24948987there is none; kill yourself; the sooner the betterWhy aren't you dead yet? Oh, you want to live? How egoist of you.YOU MUST SACRIFICE YOURSELF, SO THATOTHERS MAY DELIGHT AND GET ENTHUSED TO DO THE SAME. Quick bring all humanity on this death trip of yours, eternity awaits. We must crystalize ourselves in eternal youth! So much beauty for the dead. Now all dead, and where's the beauty? Please fuck off with your death cult, good is life, the present, beauty is ours and exists in our living minds, what you ask is death for the living's sake, me for yours, until you kill yourself, or abandon yourself aswell for some dumb idea, at which pointit will become death for death's sake, none of my sake I find here.
>>24948987Are you a trooper?
>>24949154Beautiful.
How do you actually overcome post-modernism?
>>24949037trump was a democrat and rolled with rich democrats his entire career in nyc why would anyone except a tds suffering think he was conservative? he's basically an old school labor democrat
>>24948572>How do you actually overcome post-modernism?But the reverse gear and read Marx
>>24949044*Hit
>>24949044thinking u can pick the episteme of any epoch like an ideology buffet is postmodern tho so that would be postmodern
>>24948572Just stop believing in it. Its a religion.
Desperately reconcile with your irredeemable faith, sheep.
>>24948414>>24948511Cope.
>>24948414True story. The instant i saw him i knew i wanted to bend his twink ass over and piss in his rectum and give him an infection
>>24949054If you need someone to spoonfeed this to you, I'm afraid you have a double digit IQ
>>24948717>so anyways, a real pro-choice man is actually pro-abortion and you can accomplish this by kicking a woman in the stomach
>>24949054His voice, his autistic focus on ‘gotcha’s’ (most of which are Amazing Atheist tier), his complete inability to think in abstractions, his beta appearance, the lack of humanity in his eyes, his voice once more. I only watched 3 videos but it was more than enough. Only fags and teenagers would be impressed by anything he says.
>>24947822Snow Country by Yasunari KawabataThe Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecohave read both this month, almost finished i mean...absolute Kino
>>24949131I tried reading the latter and after awhile it bored me
Why yes, half page descriptions of lamps and countertops with the occasional interjection of brain dead criminals speaking futuristic ebonics. It certainly deserves all the praise. Were people really that bored in the 80s to enjoy this?I'm not finishing it. I feel my neurons dying in real time. I was right for putting it off for so many years.
>>24946610Neuromancer doesn't really hold up, mostly because what came out after took what he did and did it better. His prose is very jilted from what I remember. That being said the book is important because it invented a genre/subgenre. It's still a good novel, but if you have read other cyberpunk you probably find it formulaic without realizing that it created the formula.
Gibson has great imagery actually. Some of the best
>>24947771The prose is like the main thing I here praised about it these days since by this point every other cyberpunk story ever made took the ideas and story and characters and ran them into the ground
>>24947918>I here praised
>>24947621I simply don't care for descriptions of mundane objects. It's a waste of time. You dense cunt.
This is Dostoevsky's best novel.
>>24948418Cool, OP. Now explain why.
>>24948426The novel marks a turning point for the author. In it, he explores and critiques the class-based society of the time for the first time. It is also emotionally and psychologically profound. It has few characters, but all of them are unforgettable.
>>24948445gpt tier analysis
>>24948445Cool, OP. Now explain in detail.
Overrated or deserving of praise?
>>24948938Mid writer, GOAT person. His only works worth reading are the reviews where he shits on other people. He even reviewed video games.
>>24949021
More of an "industry figure" than a writer. Like a scifi Gertrude Stein. (Or less politely, a rider of coattails) Some of his stories are okay, but they aren't the reason he's a household name in the scifi world.
>>24948849An unsurpassed greedy kike goblin. Incel, snob, elitist, sexist, racist, plagiarist, sellout, rapist, pedophile and nepotist. Absolute unit of /ourguy/, definitely underrated.
>>24949108>racist, plagiarist, sellout, rapist, pedophile and nepotist.I’d heard about the rest but when was he accused of this stuff? I know he groped that woman on stage but i’d never heard him be accused of pedophilia
Everything else just seems so spooked and retarded. Like these "philosophers" can't even see past their own circumstances or analyze their own thoughts and motivations, only (poorly) justify their own particular neuroses. Has there ever been a half decent attempt at addressing, let alone refuting him?
>>24947750So, Taoism?
>>24948041>ignoring the reality of the world and power...Stirner didn't ignored nor denied it, he actually recognized it by what it is instead of justifying it with some bullshit pretext like law, politics or god.He pierced through the bullshit like no other philosopher.Other philosophers would have written a super mambo jambo salad of words just to not say "real power is whoever wields it". And that applies to property ownership too.His writing style is shitty and chaotic though, but that doesn't diminishes the lucidity and accuracy of (some) of his ideas.Spooks everywhere, you too got spook'd.>>24947773You too, spook. Your ego is a spook.
>>24947731You dont enjoy philosophy, you live it.
>what if… YOU are the spookyou didn’t read the fucking book
>>24947731Stirner was right, so yeah he remains unbreakable. I think although he did say a lot good things along the lines of "live for yourself" "think for yourself" "seek happiness" "don't bow to ideas they do not really exist or own you; you have made them" it isn't clear to me, or I think he didn't spend enough time on how to approach Justice and Aesthetics. There are atleast 100 sentences that boils down to "Christianity is a spook", I wish he had cut these parts to go a bit wider in scope. On Justice there is [pic related] that I find enlightening. Since as an egoist everything is "good" or "bad" in relation to oneself (the criminal is bad towards himself), I think there are a lot of insights to have on justice regarding why is it bad to steal/kill/exploit/lie to other strong humans specifically, in most circumstances, and not other animals? (part of my answer : because humans cannot be made to serve, because focusing on stealing prevents you from prioritizing your own creative strength, because promoting servitude of others towards you means you have to hold some dumb beliefs and be constantly dishonest that you are also acting out of servitude; basically it takes so much efforts to try to hold the reins of power that it chips away your individuality; other animals are easy peasy to conquer) Other questions : As an egoist, do I even want to put people in Jail? As an egoist, do I want capital punishment? On aesthetics and how to reach happiness I think those 2 quotes encapsulates things best :"Reserved for the future are the words, 'I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of mind'.” -- Stirner, The Ego and Its Own “As we there had to say, 'we are indeed to have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us', so we should now say, 'we are indeed to have mind, but mind is not to have us'.” -- Stirner, The Ego and Its OwnComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
2025 is almost over. What's the best book you read this year?
>>24947281Candide
>>24947281SuttreeThe Tunnel (the Argentine one)The Glamour by Christopher PriestAnd the Second Apocalypse fantasy series which is 7 booksHonourable mention to Interlibrary Loan by Gene Wolfe, and Hard to be a God by the Strugatskys.As far as nonfiction, I haven't finished these books but Laocoon and Wagner's On Music and Drama.
I really liked pic related.
>>24948804Whn Huck Finn and Douglas widow whether it was Tom Sawyer that found the booze in the hotel.
>>24949049*When he asked
What's your reading plans for 2026?Suggest a book to read in 2026 collectively. I'll add dubs (Jan to Sep, 11 to 99) and trips (Oct to Dec, 111 to 333) to the chart.
Against the Day --- Thomas Pynchon
>>24948587This year I am going to read poetry and related nonfiction as heavily as I typically read fiction, because I intend to get serious and write poetry. I'm done jerking off.
>waiting for trips on one of 4chan's slowest boardsAnyway, I vote for Crocosmia by Miranda Ellis. I'll be reading it anyway on a friend's recommendation but it's apparently very good.
>>24949085ironically enough, we had three double sevens so far. rollin' for Portnoy's Complaint.
>>24948587i plan on finishing erikson's malazan books by feb, hopefullyafter that, don't know yet
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.
>>24949004Enjoying these postscaptcha: SAYDO
>>24949070>You're mocking an opinion no one holds, i.e., a strawmanI just debated a bunch of Orthobros who all had those opinions. So you're wrong there too. Sorry if you feel embarrassed by them. You otherwise seemed more thoughtful and honest.
>>24949004>Under no circumstances does Aristotle ascribe any kind of creativity to the active intellect,accessibility* instead of creativity. the active intellect obviously creates. but the chapters immediately preceding DA III.5 on knowledge refer to the mind receiving forms and thus obtaining knowledge, in direct contrast to the creativity of the active intellect. and even then, the creativity that the active intellect has is that of the technique that the craftsman has. this is formal and final cause. the text juxtaposes the art versus matter in the analogy (the matter being what becomes all things, aka hylomorphic minds), and efficient cause is completely neglected altogether. that's the point I wanted to make. my bad for the confusion.
>>24949050This:>You're engaged in the equivalent of some modern assuming that when they see "soul" in an English translation of Aristotle it means some sort of sui generis Cartesian thinking substance, and then accusing Aristotle of believing in magic homunculi that pilot the body because he used the term soul and then calls it "immaterial."Really wasn't that hard to parse. He is saying you are misunderstanding the terminology in the passage you quoted in the same way the people often misunderstand Aristotle by projecting a Cartesian/modern understanding of the terms "soul" and "immaterial." That isn't accusing you of taking up a Cartesian position. It is just pointing out that you are misunderstanding the distinction in the passage you are quoting, as pointed out here: >>24948855I can provide another example. It is like reading a passage from Aquinas where he mentions the "form of the whole/part" and assuming he is talking about the idea that substantial forms/essences exist for parts of things. But that isn't what the distinction means (although last time I tested it ChatGPT spit out something like that). So too, you don't seem to understand the distinction of life according to essence and life according to activity, which goes back to the Synod of Ancyra and earlier.
>>24949004>So it is, in a sense, virtually a chair.And I believe he says so for the other senses too, but the problem unique to the soul here is that what is now virtually a chair is, apparently, me. Which problem does not arise for, e.g., sight, because he isn't saying that I actually become red when I see red. But then if the faculty of thought is identified with me, or rather my soul, then, actually I do become red when I think of red, something like that
Seriously what happened to this "Mature but crazy enough" archetype, Like are there any other writers or artists who look like Artaud's physiognomy
are there any biographical books about chronically depressed historical figures that went on to accomplish anything?
>>24947901Chateaubriand was very melancholic and mentions his failed suicide attempt in his memoirs
>>24948622If you can read spanish i highly recommend:https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/items/02de698a-248f-4aa6-a5ed-3a6c331e74c5https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/items/fe547f22-e20e-456e-bd28-cc79345934e0
>>24947901Uhhh maybe something about Kurt Cobain?
>>24947901Not about historical figures but maybe you should read>Ferdinand von Schirach
>>24947935Mass murder is actually good
>another mid whore catapulted into fame and fortune for existing That's it. This has gone too far, the woman problem HAS to be addressed now. Simping is an epidemic that is destroying society and it's only going to get worse.
>>24948238So do I. What of it, homo?
>>24948217Actually pretty good. Glad I read it.
>>24948297>inverted triangle bodnope
>>24947980Who?
>>24949026U gay or something?
