Which metaphysical book gave you the most insight and knowledge?Hard mode: no physicalist theories
>>25372986John Paolucci. If you like Advaita Vedanta, it's a must read.
>>25372986The Critique of Pure Reason by far. I haven read the first few parts of Process and Reality a few times and while what he wrote about the extensive continuum, and atomism and potentiality is very interesting I don’t find the project as a whole to be very compelling. The way he arrives at his categories is just very milquetoast, it’s basically “this is how I feel like experience works after like, experiencing it and this is my best attempt to describe it most generally.” I’m glad that he moved beyond Kant’s need to claim he can deduce everything apodictically but I think that there must still be more rigorous ways of developing the categories and explaining also why they are like that. That’s one reason Charles’s Peirce’s are better as while he doesn’t go into much detail or extensive argument he at least describes the methods he uses to arrive at his categories.
>>25373108>havenhave*
Nagarjuna's MMK and VV along with their numerous commentaries and derivatives by medieval Indian madhyamikas* that I have been working through slowly (eg Shantideva, Chandrakirti, Dharmakirti, and so on). They did not give me knowledge of metaphysics per se, but completely shattered the possibility of my holding any metaphysical position with conviction ever again. Instead of trying to find some ultimately true metaphysical system, which is actually beyond linguistic conceptualization, it seems clear to me now that pure stillness and control of mind (nirvana) is only possible by rigorous examination of cognition, language, causality, etc.. So in a sense the works of Western masters like Hume and Kant are valourized by this relaxing of consistency and completeness. In other words, the difficulties or errors in their projects can be stepped over by simply recognizing their a priori futility. Now I've begun to reread much of the western canon in this way, trying to find the limitations of the various metaphysical theories against this horizon of emptiness. The end goal of which is a personal enlightenment rather than any so-called progress toward a complete metaphysics. Although the ancient Indian philosophers had sophisticated logic, epistemology, etc., the modern western work in all fields is clearly better developed and of course more accessible in English. Funny how the letting-go of any hope to understand reality made me more interested in philosophy than ever. Go figure. *Surely the Tibetan commentaries have some philosophical value beyond just their preservation of the older Indian texts, but I find the syncretism with their mystical and tantric traditions too distracting, so I have set them aside for now.
>>25372986natürlich
>>25372986Bump
