/lit/ - Literature

>"There were also vestiges of Arthur's sexual competition with Anthime in this letter. After bragging about his physical fitness and his wrinkle-free, rosy complexion, despite the fact that his whiskers and hair were almost white, he remarked that he still had to have an occasional "petite liaison," and had sired two children out of wedlock, both of whom died young - "2 batards, que j'avois, sont morts jeunes." For years, he added, he had a secret affair with a woman whom he loved greatly."

Just detach yourself from worldly pleasures bro.

Never heard of him

>"The elderly are venerated because their appetite and desire are judged to have receded with time, leaving only the finer virtues of wisdom and dispassion. This is why the lustful older man is treated with particular disdain by people of all ages, and why coquettish older women are held with a mixture of pity and contempt. At heart, most acknowledge the vile nature of libidinal desire and material ambition, but, cowards as they are, are quite content to allow their wills to be dictated by these base cravings for the simple reason that their lives are made simpler by doing so."

>"A married man with children at first feels a sense of inflated pride at having achieved what he knows his contemporaries are also striving for, but secretly, and over time, he feels more and more jealousy for the man unencumbered by the trappings bought about by an unrestrained libido."

Is Schopenhauer right about this?

>>22239471
No, they may solve some but death WILL solve ALL issues so it's all good.

I require incel books

>"Despite his later celebration of asceticism and negative views of sexuality, Schopenhauer occasionally had sexual affairs—usually with women of lower social status, such as servants, actresses, and sometimes even paid prostitutes. In a letter to his friend Anthime he claims that such affairs continued even in his mature age and admits that he had two out-of-wedlock daughters (born in 1819 and 1836), both of whom died in infancy. In their youthful correspondence Arthur and Anthime were somewhat boastful and competitive about their sexual exploits—but Schopenhauer seemed aware that women usually did not find him very charming or physically attractive, and his desires often remained unfulfilled."

I feel quite disappointed that Schopenhauer was like this.

>"The only manner of self-destruction Schopenhauer finds philosophically acceptable is the ascetic saint's death by starvation. Here the individual will to life is so completely mastered as to refuse even the most basic desire for nourishment, and thereby passes into nonexistence in complete renunciation of the individual will. "

Are there any books about this issue?

Why wasn't he filled with rage that he had to pay a lifetime fine? even more why wouldn't he leave the country

>>20806939
Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer (the best of the bunch) got you covered, they are all still highly relevant, since that matters to you

A thread with the aim to discuss philosophical pessimism and its ideas and further develop and spread them.
Reading list - youre looking at it

What do you think about pessimism? Have you read any of the books in the list? If so, did you like them? Are you a pessimist? If so, how did you become a pessimist? What's your favorite pessimistic book? Have you have any interesting ideas lately that might help advance pessimism in both development of ideas and people getting into it?

FAQ

>Are all pessimists depressed?
No, we arent. We are just realists, even Neetche, the biggest "life affirm-er" admitted it, so there's no point larping as an ubermensch, we just accept reality as it is, and its miserable, even for the "happiest" of us.
>If you are antinatalist, why dont you just kill yourself?
The idea of non-existence being preferable to existence means that better to never have been (a part of reality and of nature), but since you already are, there is no leaving nature, it isnt gonna let us off the hook, so there's no point in killing one's self.
>Didn't pessimism get refuted by Nietzsche?
No, all Neetche did, was to name-call and trashtalk pessimists because he knew if he actually engaged in their arguments he would win,for some of the attempts he's made to disprove it, however, without name-calling, he has just resorted to shitty psycho-analysis, which falls apart upon a closer inspection.
>Where do i start with pessimism?
Secondary sources on Plato and Kant, after that go to Schopenhauer, after him you're free to explore any of the recommended books included in the reading list.

Discuss pessimism.

list of pessimistic books: https://pastebin.com/jmSBPzrW

>"Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation."
Uh, based department?

>>20498106
I think you already know who to recommend.

>>20413323
>Never met someone interested in Schopenhauer
Welcome to /lit/, now go die.

Someone try and refute this because this insight ruined my life.
I’m fully convinced boredom is the fundamental essence of human life. Think of all the reasons why we do anything: we can’t stand not doing anything or else we get restless. Good enough proof existence lacks any positive value and that everything stems from dissatisfaction

>>20403559
You can't answer it because its a false equivalence.
The B does not follow from A.

Even if someone believes people shouldn't be born it simply means that they believe people should never be born. No special action required.

Besides, its hard to argue with the antinatalists that have killed themselves.

lrn2argue or keep losing, your call

>Further, the great importance which is attached to small feet! This is because the size of the foot is an essential characteristic
of the species, for no animal has the tarsus and metatarsus combined so small as man; hence the uprightness of his gait: he is a plantigrade. And Jesus Sirach has said17 (according to the improved translation by
Kraus), “A woman that is well grown and has beautiful feet is like pillars of gold in sockets of silver.” The
teeth, too, are important, because they are essential for nourishment, and quite peculiarly hereditary.

>In the year 1854, I had the good fortune to see here [Frankfurt] such extraordinary feats
of Mr. Regazzoni of Bergamo, in which the immediate, that is, magical, power of his will
over others is unmistakable and to the greatest degree astonishing, of the authenticity of
which feats none could remain in doubt, except those to whom nature has completely
denied all capacity for comprehending pathological conditions; however, there are such
subjects, who must be made lawyers, ministers, merchants, or soldiers, but for heaven’s
sake not doctors, for the result would be fatal, since in medicine diagnosis is the primary
thing. — [Regazzoni] could put his somnambulist, who was under his influence, into
complete catalepsy; in fact, merely through his will, without gestures, as she walked
forward and he stood behind her, he could make her fall backwards. He could paralyze
her, put her in a state of tetanus [Starrkrampf], with dilated pupils, completely insensible,
and the unmistakable signs of a completely cataleptic condition. He had a lady from the
audience play the piano, and then standing 15 paces behind her, through his will, with
gestures, paralyzed her so she could not play. Then he put her against a column and
charmed her so that she could not move from the spot despite the greatest effort.—
According to my observation almost all of his tricks can be explained from the fact that
he isolates the brain from the spinal column, either completely, whereby all sensible and
motor nerves are paralyzed and complete catalepsy occurs, or the paralysis affects only
the motor nerves, while sensibility remains, so that her head retains consciousness atop a
body apparently dead. Strychnine works in just the same way: it paralyzes only the
motor nerves to the point of complete tetanus, leading to death by suffocation; yet it
leaves the sensible nerves, hence also the consciousness, undisturbed. Regazzoni does
the same through the magical influence of his will. (WN 408/102)

>So what have they done for their old friend, the hard-pressed cosmological proof, already lying half dead? – Oh, they have devised a fine trick: ‘Friend’, they have said to it, ‘things go badly for you, very badly, since your fatal encountera with the stubborn old mule of Königsberg, as badly – as with your brothers, the ontological and the physico-theological proofs. But have faith, we will not abandon you because of this (we are paid for this, you know). However – there is nothing else to do – you must change your name and clothing, for if we call you by your name, everyone runs from us. But if, as you are incognito, we take you by the arm and once again introduce you into society – but only, as we said, incognito – then everything will be fine! So first, from now on your object takes the name of “the absolute”; that has a foreign, decorous and noble ring – and we know best how much can be accomplished among the Germans by putting on an air of nobility. Everyone understands what is meant and imagines himself all the wiser. But you yourself enter disguised in the form of an enthymeme. That is, leave right at home all your prosyllogisms and premises, which you use to drag us up the long climax; everyone knows that they amount to nothing. But as a man of few words, appearing proud, bold, and noble, you will reach your goal with a single bound: “the absolute”, you exclaim (as do we, too), “then, by the devil, that must be; otherwise there would indeed be nothing”! (with this, you pound on the table). But where would it be? “Stupid question! Have I not said it was the absolute”? – That will do, upon our word, that will do!
>Germans are accustomed to accept words instead of ideas: from childhood on we train them for it – only look at Hegelry: what is it other than empty, hollow, disgusting verbiage?

Was he right?

Where does one meet girls into philosophy? There are hardly any at my school and the ones there won’t put out

What the fuck is his problem?

>it is not my business to combat the scepticism of ignorance whose over-wise gestures are daily failing out of favour and will soon be current only in England, Whoever at the present time doubts the facts of animal magnetism
and its clairvoyance should be called not a sceptic but an ignoramus

i've heard it stated here that schopenhauer "completes Kant's metaphysics." Is this true? If so how and where? I don't want to have to read 3 volumes of his ravings to find out how he completes Kant

>Every causality and every explanation presupposes some original force; therefore an explanation never explains everything, but always leaves something inexplicable. We see this in the whole of physics and chemistry; in their explanations, the forces of nature are everywhere presupposed; such forces manifest themselves in the phenomena, and the whole explanation consists in reducing things to them. A force of nature itself is not subject to any explanation, but is the principle of all explanation. Nor is a force of nature subject to any causality, but is precisely that which endows every cause with causality, i.e., the capacity to produce an effect. It is itself the common substratum of all the effects of this kind and is present in each of them.

>Thus the phenomena of magnetism are reduced to an original force called electricity. Here the explanation stops; it gives merely the conditions under which such a force manifests itself, i.e., the causes that call forth its efficacy. The explanations of celestial mechanics presuppose gravitation as the force by virtue of which the particular causes are here effect in determining the course of the heavenly bodies. The explanations of chemistry presuppose the secret forces that manifest themselves as elective affinities according to stoichiometric relations. To these forces are ultimately due all the effects which promptly occur when called forth by specified causes. IN just the same way, all explanations of physiology presuppose the vital force, which reacts in a definite way to specific inner and outer stimuli. And so it is everywhere. Even the causes dealt with by so comprehensible a science as mechanics, such as impact and pressure, presuppose impenetrability, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, inertia, gravity, elasticity, which are unfathomable forces of nature no less than those just mentioned. Hence causes everywhere determine nothing more than the when and where of the MANIFESTATIONS of original, inexplicable forces, and only on [the latter's] assumption are [the former] causes, i.e., necessarily bring about certain effects.