>The Pentateuch>Politics (Aristotle)>Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals>The Paideia Proposal>The Republic>Beyond Good and Evil>The Iliad>How To Think About The Great Ideas>Lies My Teacher Told Me>Stray Birds>The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written>The Concept of the Political>My Twisted World>The Managerial Revolution>Reflections on the Revolution in France>The Brothers Karamazov>Yakub: The Father of the White Devil Race>The Intellectual LifeI started tracking the books I read last year. In that time, I've read these books. Feel free to evaluate my taste however you like. Please remember that my reading these books does not necessarily mean I agree with their contents.
>>25300888Why would you stop at the Pentateuch and not read the rest of the Bible? The whole point is that the inner meaning of the rather crude practices and beliefs of the older books are sublimated through antitypes which emerge throughout the narrative and culminate in Jesus Christ.
>>25300896It's just long enough that I didn't feel like reading it in a single sitting. The Historical Books of the Old Testament (which to my knowledge don't have a short and snappy name like the Pentateuch) are coming up soon on my reading list.
>>25300898If you wanna understand the Bible from a non-dogmatic point of view I recommend The Great Code by Northrop Frye. Turns out the religious people were basically bastardizing the meaning of the [collection of] book[s] they were supposed to understand the whole time.
>>25300888Why haven't you read the Nicomachean Ethics?
>>25300904I have read the Nicomachean Ethics.
You should add "The Social contract "
>>25300888Very high ratio of "Top Ten Tricks Influential People Dont Teach You In Harvard Ever Written And Secrets To Become Rich Fast" type airport books but otherwise pretty good.
>>25300888>Yakub: The Father of the White Devil Race
>>25300888>>25301804A bunch of Greek and Christian classics followed by Nation of Islam screeds! How delightfully quirky!
>>25300888>Yakub: The Father of the White Devil RaceWhy would you bother reading this?
>>25301731Genuinely don't believe a single book on the list fits that description. Only The Intellectual Life is a "self-help" book, and then only by a generous interpretation of the term.>>25301850For pure entertainment. It's not a great investment. It's a comic book you can read in an hour.
>>25300888>Reflections on the Revolution in FranceYou've read some pretty great books. I hope you really sat with them and studied rather than counted them as finished the moment you arrived at the last page, however. Could you share your notes? Summaries?
>>25302165Unfortunately, there are a few books on the list that I feel I read superficially, and did not fully absorb, in spite of my efforts otherwise. I can provide a brief summary and my personal opinion on each book, but it may be flawed.>The PentateuchThe Jewish creation myth, which many people remember as the story of Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark, but that stuff is all a prologue to the biographies of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, which is what the book is really about. The last three books are mostly dense descriptions of Hebrew Law. Some of these rules make sense only in the context of their time, and others are flawed even then; it's easy to see why the Jews were a slave race.>Politics (Aristotle)I expected this to be an argument in favor of a particular form of government, but it was really more descriptive. Aristotle claimed that it was most useful to classify governments as rule by one person, a small set of people, or a large group of people.>Groundwork for the Metaphysics of MoralsKant argues here in favor of deontology, claiming that people should follow a set of ethical rules and never deviate from them independently of context. He says these rules should be those that would make the world a better place if everyone followed them, all the time. I think that for any given rule it is so easy to find a situation that it should be broken that you need to recursively add more and more caveats until eventually there's functionally no difference between following the categorical imperatives and just assessing each situation individually.>The Paideia ProposalA super short pamphlet expressing Mortimer Adler's philosophy of education, arguing that everyone should follow the same course of study, through which they will learn about the great ideas and books of the western world. This is somewhat close to what I myself believe, but this book doesn't really justify Adler's position, just asserts it.>The RepublicPlato writes here about the best form of government, which he defines as a hierarchical state ruled by a wise and benevolent "philosopher king" and divided into a class of laborers and an aristocratic class of soldiers. He also expresses his frankly religious belief in the "world of forms," a place which contains the ideal version of all things (e.g. apples in the "world of forms" have no deviations from what we imagine when we think of an apple). The Republic most closely resembles my vision of an ideal state, although I think it's strange Plato wrote about the world of forms as though he literally believed it was an otherworldly realm and not just a thought experiment.(cont'd)
>>25302165>Beyond Good and EvilFrom what I could tell, this book was just a collection of short writings by Nietzsche which don't converge to a single argument. His most important claim is that western morality, dependent on religion, is now irrelevant because people abandoned religion, and that we must now create a new morality which emphasizes achievement and excellence over altruism. While I think the reasoning which lead him to this conclusion was flawed, the conclusion itself is correct, and I try to align my life goals with achievement and excellence myself. I also agree with his criticism of women.>The IliadDescribes in great detail some battles near the end of the Trojan War, which should have been easy Greek victories, but were complicated by Achilles' refusal to participate after the Greek king Agamemnon seized Briseis, a sex slave that was rightfully his. I kind of think I read this one wrong because I didn't understand it. It seemed as though the story has very little content except for meticulous descriptions of Greeks and Trojans fighting each other. I found it hard to differentiate them and didn't understand why I should care about the outcome.>How to Think About the Great IdeasA transcript of Mortimer Adler's television program in which he describes and pontificates upon the "Great Ideas," which are the various things that western authors discuss most frequently in their works, like "man," or "love," or "God." If you already understand these concepts then there isn't much of value here.>Lies My Teacher Told MeA critique of contemporary history education from a Marxist, feminist, and in particular racialist perspective. I remember reading this book in middle school and thinking it was interesting. As an adult I can see how pretty much everything Loewen believed actually did integrate into American public education, and also that most of it is propaganda. Loewen was plainly more interested in cultivating animosity towards white men than he was in accurately describing or interpreting the past.>Stray BirdsA collection of poems, none more than a few lines long, by the Indian poet Rabdrinath Tagore. Most of them evoked appreciation for nature and simplicity. I'm not really a poetry critic so I don't have much to say here.>The 100 Most Influential Books Ever WrittenLists of influential things are a guilty pleasure of mine; Michael Hart's 100 Most Influential People of All Time is one of my favorite books. I was curious if there was a similar book that listed books, and there is. About 2/3s of the books listed were obvious inclusions, but there were some obscure or strange choices; Seymour-Smith is strangely preoccupied with Jewish mysticism and included the Kabbalah and a few other books in a similar vein. It also did not include Mein Kampf. Reading it made me wonder what my own list would be.(cont'd)
>>25302165>The Concept of the PoliticalTo be frank, I barely remember this one. The main argument I recall is that politics isn't really as ideological as people like to think, but just a method of differentiating your friends from your enemies. I find this framing useful in considering American politics, which is clearly just conflict among interest groups.>My Twisted WorldA book I read for pure entertainment. This book is so over the top that I sometimes believe a fed wrote it. It actually has the line "Morocco was a backwards country. They didn't even have the latest video games." Elliot Rodger is unintentionally hilarious because his sheer autism shields him from any self-awareness, and he is extremely dramatic.>The Managerial RevolutionA book that argues that neither capitalism nor socialism will be the mode of the future, but rather "managerialism," a system in which the means of production is owned by the state rather than people who have a direct interest in it. This system is marked by bureaucracy, globalism, and hierarchy determined by commitment to the status quo rather than ancestry or meritocracy. This has proven broadly accurate.>Reflections on the Revolution in FranceA letter criticizing the French Revolution. Burke is not against revolution in all cases, and defends the Glorious Revolution, but argues that it must be directed towards some purpose. He argued that plain animosity towards the ruling class is insufficient for producing a prosperous government. The outcome of the French Revolution proved him right.>The Brothers KaramazovSuper deep and nuanced book and I have too much to say for this summary. It's about three brothers of wildly different dispositions, the conflict between one brother and his father over a woman, and the investigation and trial that follows the father's murder. I interpreted the book as primarily being about the progression of humans from bestial to heavenly when they accept religion. Although not religious myself, I am strongly committed to life affirmation and despise philosophies that view life as painful. I therefore find it compelling when Alyosha has his moment of transcendence and understands that he must fight for good rather than submit to Ivan's atheistic perspective.>Yakub: The Father of the White Devil RaceAlso just a book I read for entertainment. It's a comic book and takes less than an hour to read. It's remarkable to me how childish and resentful Afrocentrists are, and reading their work feels like taking a trip to the zoo.>The Intellectual LifeI wanted to read a book about lifestyle, but I couldn't find one that fit what I wanted and ended up landing on this. Although I want to adopt an intellectual lifestyle myself, Sertillanges advocates for a minimalist lifestyle where you do nothing except for what's useful to your studies, which I find pretty unappealing because, as I mentioned earlier, I think people should affirm their lives, feel joy, and maximize their experiences.
