/lit/ - Literature

>>5113228
Opinions.

>>5113231

some venerable opinions have elevated some incredible humans

>>5113231
Thanks for nothing.

Me.

What makes a great song?

>>5113233
Some venerable opinions have elevated some incredible music.

>>5113236
You're welcome!

I do really like Lawrence, btw.

>>5113251

Proof?

Napoleon
Alexander
Jeanne D'arc
Ptolemy
Shakespeare
Newton
Socrates
Jesus
Jefferson
Tesla
Churchill
Einstein
Marx
Lincoln
Attila the Hun
Tzu

>>5113254

Oh god Celine Dion.

I'll admit, I liked the Titanic soundtrack.

How about, faggot (had 2 qt ;), we define Great Men as accomplished humans by subjective standards.

>>5113255

>>5113262
Measure it however you like.

Machiavelli? Eew

>>5113261

I like this.

Caesar.
daVinci
moses
Mohammad (and "his sword")
Confucius
Newton
Machiavelli
Xenophon
Cyrus (great)
Genghis
Agis III of Sparta
Andrew Jackson
Rommel
Hannibal
Scipio
Subutai

>>5113261
why is Joan of Arc there, she was just a religious figurehead.

>>5113272
so?

>>5113276

fair point

>>5113261
damn this is such a banal list

summer pls go and stay go

>>5113291

How about you suggest a list before masturbating to a reflection?

>>5113228
tolstoy, thomas jefferson, gracchus brothers, pasternak, goethe, novalis, leopardi, rachmaninov, cormac mccarthy, william faulkner, benjamin franklin, ulysses grant, cincinnatus, nikolai tesla, albert einstein, da vinci, galileo...

>>5113291
YEAH U FUKKIN UNORIIGNAL TARD

PICK SOME BETTER CHOICES
GET SOME UNDERGROUND GREAT MEN IN THERE

>>5113296
>mccarthy
>faulkner
>tolstoy

lol

>>5113298
le pleb face

>>5113315
autism

>>5113276
she lead nothing, she was just nuts. she did nothing to be great

>>5113362
Your opinion.

Ivar the Boneless
Jack Churchill
Gotz von Berlichingen
Vlad III (the Impaler)
Buford Pusser
Miyamoto Musashi
Shaka Zulu
Pope Alexander VI
Agis III of Sparta
Francis Drake
William Wallace
Ernest Hemingway

http://youtu.be/eZUZCahyoFg

>>5114655
>Pope Alexander VI
why is he great?
inb4 you put him in to be edgy and troll the euphoric fedoras

>>5113261
Comparing Napoleon, Alexander, Tzu, and Attila with all those bums.

Adolph Hitler
Iosif Stalin
Mao Zedong

>>5114655
>Jack Churchill
reddit pls go.

>>5114767
>Jesus
>bum

>>5114825

How about I read about Jack Churchill before I knew reddit was a thing, you ad hominizing ape.

William Blake.

>All these people naming glorified murderers.

>>5115027

How can you call yourself a man if you don't know how to take a life?

>>5115058
I would ask you the exact opposite.

>>5113228
there are no great men, only notable men, who differ from other men in a fashion more quantitative than qualitative. there is no great, there is only good, and men and women who were more or less good tools for its coming into its own

>>5115069
shut up faget

>>5115080
no u, it's like you haven't even accepted your role as a cog in the machine of history

>>5115069

Then why does a term "great man" exist?

Can not one distinguish a "good man" from a "great man"?

Sure, it's subjective, but what the hell isn't? We respect some historians and not others. The names change over time. So do the standards of "history". And yet still we have good men and bad men, and we remember great men.

>>5115093
>Then why does a term "great man" exist?
because technical skill is a thing

but it has no metaphysical status, nor should it produce admiration

inevitably it will, people think in terms of myth, it's inescapable

but we should try to minimize this kind of thinking because it reproduces the individualism so vital to the neoliberal project of the current ruling elite

it's not about whether or not that starving person "deserves" food, or whether or not the investment banker "deserves" his mansion, it's about the fact that hey, that guy is starving and this fucking just bought another rari

and the idea of great men is so tied to the ideas of desert (archaic meaning) that justify the whole system

the ideas sort of fall apart though once you realize free will is utterly indefensible as traditionally conceived

>>5115119

That's a fair point.

But one must get into why another is starving, and why the banker has the mansion.

If you have a system of distribution that could prevent such travesty, please propose it.

The total destruction of free will is also not a valuable idea just yet, as a direct irrefutable argument presented to all could be used to justify any travesty anyone might commit.

>>5115027
>>5113296
my list lacks murderers for this exact reason

anyone that says napoleon, genghis khan, or alexander is great is saying hitler is great in the same breath, hitler just managed to lose a little too early

it is blatantly obvious they were all mindless apes with delusions

>>5115191

Are you denying Hitler was a Great?

It is possible to be Great and Terrible.

>>5115179
you have a flawed notion of the sort of free will that is dismissable

also, work on the word choice
>travesty, travesty

Knowing what caused someone to commit a crime does not mean it wasn't THEIR FAULT, I think the "I was insane" defense is extremely ignorant, those should be the first ones we slaughter if we slaughter at all

get plutarch lives anthology

>>5115208
My definitions of great and terrible are mutually exclusive

i was referring to the fact that people say
>Napoleon was so great
>but Hitler he was evil and a horrible person
they are the same

>>5114655
paradox player detected

>>5115179
because the police will shoot the starving dude if he tries to steal food

and because the banker through pieces of paper at people to build his mansion, and the police will shoot people if they try and fuck with the mansion

small communes of farmers, people have a tougher time being dicks to people they know (that said, i'm not a political theorist so i can't say i'd know a good system of organization, only that the one we have currently is clearly not the most efficient, given that production will stop while demand continues just because of business cycles)

the destruction of free will prevents the assignation of blame, but the assignation of blame doesn't really help to produce a better world, i don't care if the framework absolves serial killers, just if it stops them

>>5115228

The notion that there is no free will is a useless notion unless we understand how to properly use it. Running around saying THERE IS NO FREE WILL isn't exactly useful. State what you mean AND how you arrived there (what you mean by it) or you're not making an argument.

Also, you're projecting.

>>5115297
he was referring to the old idea of free will, that you can change your mind regardless of physics or natural laws-and that is dismissable

You said
>as a direct irrefutable argument presented to all could be used to justify any travesty anyone might commit
and that makes no sense in response to the modern view of free will or "choice", or the reason people are sent to prison or rehabilitating institutions

how am i projecting? i have a feeling you don't know what that word actually means

>>5113298
Writing great literature makes one a great man.

>at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

>>5113228
Shakespeare, most canonical authors.

>>5115453
not without her husband

>>5113934
not an opinion, figureheads can never be great. that's really not how greatness works.