Every time I get around to actually reading some famous author, I immediately realize that 99% of what I've heard about him is meme shit from people who never actually read him. I've been reading Gibbon, I'm about halfway through volume one (of three in my edition), and despite a decade of hearing "Gibbon's thesis is that Christianity caused Rome's decline" from BOTH online retards and Classics professors, that is very obviously not his thesis. Maybe he really goes ham on Christianity once he gets to Constantine and the Christian emperors (I'm just getting there), but even if he does, the first 300 pages are a sophisticated structural account of Rome's decline, with several interrelated substructures. He's fascinating from a historiographical and intellectual-historical standpoint, because he's clearly drawing on things like Montesquieu (explicitly), French Enlightenment "philosophical history" (Voltaire, Mably), and Scottish Enlightenment sociology, and synthesizing them with late Renaissance and Early Modern methodological innovations, like Tillemont and others in the ecclesiastical history tradition. His Englishness also constantly shines through, to the point that you almost feel you're reading Burke whenever he talks about political philosophy or political economy. What is interesting about Gibbon doesn't seem to me to be anything close to "Christianity bad, Enlightenment good," although as I said I haven't gotten to the Christian emperors yet. It's that he's writing a historical account of independent but dialectically related causal nexuses. The latter are the protagonists of the narrative, not nations or individuals, judged against static a priori criteria as in Voltaire and still somewhat in Hume. Historical causation emerges on its own terms, with multiple structures interacting and causing mutations, even when Gibbon still has Enlightenment/anticlerical priors like Hume or (most schematically) Voltaire, which is a genuine advance in historical method. His coverage of Christianity FITS INTO this style of writing, it's one causal nexus among others. Now I finally understand his importance for the emergence of the field, and I find it amazing that he's roughly contemporary with the Gottingen school. Worse, whenever you actually read something like this you realize that all the "things people always mention/cite/say" are from the first 50 fucking pages of the first volume. I'm never trusting anything anyone says again. I'm only reading primary sources. I will attack anyone who tries to summarize a text or an author to me.
You are correct. It's really really depressing. I was raised on classical literature then fell into online right circles after I left home and the amount of disgust and rage I felt at their retarded butchery of the pre-christian literature I loved is hard to convey. The Web (specifically, not the Internet) and the iPhone were huge mistakes. People listen to 5 minute videos that summarize three blog posts that summarize the opinions of their dumbass authors on the actual work in question and then think they understand said work.At least it motivates me to actually read more. I'm working on re reading fear and trembling (long overdue, I missed a lot the first time and I forgot how wonderful it is) and actually reading Leviathan since I skipped most of it in highschool.
>>25208027exactly.read the communist manifesto
>>25208027>I'm never trusting anything anyone says again. I'm only reading primary sources.Correct attitude.And it's not just that you should read primary sources; you should read them IN FULL. I've noticed over and over again that popular soundbites don't do the author justice.First example off the top of my head:Lots of people like to laugh at Edward Bulwer-Lytton for the "dark & stormy night" opening. Now, some people also know that he happened to say "The pen is mightier than the sword."OK, they think, he did at least say that too. But even knowing that, you might reasonably think, "Well, that's a bit platitudinous. Sorry, but the pen isn't always mightner than the sword."But then suppose you read what the guy actually wrote:"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."Very different. He's saying, a great ruler will enforce civilized values, so you don't just get "might makes right", the way you do in a state of nature. It's almost the opposite of the platitudinous meaning most people remember.
>>25208061>"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."Holy shit lol that's so much betterI hate midwits who parrot things without verifying them
>>25208027He does write more about Christianity towards the end of volume 1, anon. The perception that he firmly believed Christianity caused the fall of rome isn't something people just made up.It sounds like you've picked up from somewhere that he wrote what was essentially an anti-christian axe-grinding polemic interpretation of Roman history instead of what he actually wrote which was an earnest but ultimately off-base attempt at an explanation for the fall of the Roman empire.
>>25208027I noticed this with the Bible too. 90% of what people talk about are the first 50 pages of the Old and New testaments. As for Gibbon, agreed. He does talk a little about how Christianity is a more passive worldview not focused on the material realities, but it's one of many factors and it's not even presented as a total negative, where popular understanding would have him presenting it as a civilization wide suicide. If you want to see Gibbon actually mad about something, wait till the very end where he spends a few pages bitching about the fucking Italians constantly going to war with each other and destroying old Roman architecture.
>>You accuse all people of making half-formed opinions of books they've never read>>You haven't even made it halfway through the book, yet you have magically formed the correct opinionRetard
>>25208027>i will only read primary sources>reading secondary sourcebro
Criticism of Gibbon comes from spergy e-tradcaths seething at based Gibbon's work despite it being a foundational work of history.
>>25208027>be me>read volume 1>jubilant that I still have 2,500 pages left to read>still me>now on volume 6>realise it will all be over soon>ywn read Gibbon for the first time again
>>25208027This became apparent to me when I read Schopenhauer. Everyone only ever brings up his depressive and anti-woman stuff but never his metaphysics or aesthetics. Another example is about a year ago there was a thread here on lit about Robinson Crusoe where, approximately 30 posts in, nobody in the thread knew that there were other human characters in the book besides Crusoe. You have to remember that only, generously, 10% of people actually read and of that 10%, 9% only read YA slop and smut. Whenever anyone tells you they read ask them a few surface-level questions and you’ll pick up pretty quickly if they’re lying. However, sometimes you’ll find yourself in the company of a bunch of people playing pretend in which case you can wallflower and listen, laughing or crying as you see fit.
>>25208027Based. Your observations should always come first anyway. You honestly are making Edward Gibbon sound interesting; I might buy his book. I recently bought some stuff from Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, and was wanting to get back into reading, and I keep hearing about Gibbon and his history book, I might buy.
>>25208027It's retarded too because gibbon was like one of the first people to do a full dive to a semi complete history of rome.So like if anyone would have a correct opinion on it i imagine it would be the guy who went through like 99% of the sources.
>>25208027>the "things people always mention/cite/say" are from the first 50 fucking pages of the first volume. I'm never trusting anything anyone says again. I'm only reading primary sources.100% true, this is generally true even at the scholarly level. I went to a meeting of academics recently and honestly nobody had read what we were supposed to be discussing, nobody had the first clue what any of the authors were talking about. Honestly I may as well have just posted on /lit/ all day instead.
>>25208027Yes this is completely accurate. I have been reading philosophy for 10 years now and every single philosopher has been more interesting than others made him sound and has had only the dimmest, or even no connection with the standard take. You have to read for yourself, never trust summarizes. Frankly some of the random autistic effort posts I have seen here have been more accurate than what ‘everyone knows’ about a given philosopher.
>>25208027Test.
>>25208027Thanks for reminding me to read the English enlightenment authors.
>>25208027Are you any good at math? If so, you will be shocked at how much you've been lied to about modern physics, really science in general, by people who don't understand the subject and are simply repeating what someone else who doesn't understand it told them once
>>25208027true Nietzsche talks about this
