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/lit/ - Literature


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File: 14 KB, 331x331, Christopher-Hitchens.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12599027 No.12599027 [Reply] [Original]

First time poster, what are you opinions /Lit/ on Hitchens?

Everything on his writings on religion to debates in other areas

>> No.12599046

Letters to a Young Contrarian is based

>> No.12599071

He would probably be a /lit/fag if he was born later.

>> No.12599075
File: 21 KB, 600x600, 3.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12599075

>>12599027
>discovers is actually part Jewish
>becomes raging neocon

>> No.12599090

Generally a good speaker with an artistic grasp of the English language, but also a horrible pseud that encouraged other popsci parasites like Krauss, Dawkins, and Harris to publish their hogwash theories on theology with their bloated egos in tow.
Peter Hitchens is a much better writer.

>> No.12599092

>>12599075
I chuckled

>> No.12599256

A good and articulate thinker of his time, after his passing I find it funny how society started to dwindle ever since with all this false propaganda of intellectual dishonesty

>> No.12599268
File: 20 KB, 577x465, brainlet.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12599268

>>12599027
Undeniably a brainlet.
Just watch this video. Tells you all you need to know about him.


>dude sex, LMAO
>solution to poverty is the 'empowerment of women' dude
>the holocaust dude, the church did this because the anti-semetism, but they didn't renounce their beliefs till le 1964!
>you're against homosexuality and want to ban it???? WTF, i love homosexual, my friend right here is a homosexual. DUDE i would leave him alone with my kids and let him baby sit them whenever he wants to!
>dude let me prescribe my 21st century morality to assessments of slavery, because DAE bad? WTF, why the fuck would any ancient culture have any literature or anything accepting slavery dude???? SLAVERY DUDE

>> No.12599276

>>12599268
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiIU3u3e6I

>> No.12599724

>>12599276
From what I understand, particularly the end, the adaption of one's own culture (societal organism) tends to be fundamentally it's own idea in terms of majority standards therefore it disregards individualism in sense. Cross referencing that with articulations from Saint Augustine and Aristotles' "Ethics" I can safely assert a dialectical observation that of which details if civilizations are to be efficient, one must set a virtuous assumption that one can be far better in its maximizing potential from gatherings of acquiring thought from many different perspectives of "truth" than to simply follow ordained scripture from a specific tree of believes that is predisposed to a specific nature.

>> No.12599736
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12599736

>>12599090
I just had the sudden, terrible realization that Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, and all of these hot-take pop "philosophy" pseuds are Hitchens' spiritual descendants. He really did start all that sort of thing off.

>> No.12599754

>>12599736
They're all part of the long-standing line of glib Anglo "intellectuals"

>> No.12599756

>>12599736
hasn't Stefan been around for a while? JBP definitely though, although he's inferior to Hitchens in every way.

>> No.12599760

A good writer that didn't really have a lot to say. He should just have written fiction instead.

>> No.12599762

>>12599754
Yeah, now that I think about it the "tradition" of them doesn't necessarily start with Hitchens, he's just responsible for its most recent incarnation in the television/internet/social media era.

Who's patient zero for this stuff, then? Bertrand Russell? Does it all start with that asshole?

>> No.12599799
File: 2.14 MB, 1920x2353, Painting_of_David_Hume.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12599799

>>12599762
It goes way back

>> No.12599823

>>12599268
u sound mad

>> No.12599837

>>12599762
>>12599799
leave and never return

>> No.12599841

>>12599799
Gud post

>> No.12599845

I watched through all the c span and etc archives of him a while ago, after hours and hours you start noticing that he is little more than a sophist, bringing up the same clever points over and over

>> No.12599932

>>12599845

You notice this with many public speakers, why waste any time differentiating a answer to a different question when the question is simply a same aspect in different form?

Therefore, by bypassing a derivative that you've encountered before by observation and intuition you can simply take each question of an underlying sub-network of questions that could arise from a general question and give a direct conversation to its source

>> No.12599957

>>12599932
where tf did you learn English

>> No.12599962

>>12599027
I like him but I think everything he said about the Iraq war is completely wrong

>> No.12599974

A complete brainlet when it came to religion or politics, his brother is far more insightful even if you disagree with him

He was pretty good at literary criticism though

>> No.12599984

>>12599027
Fedoratard that died from the big K lol

>> No.12599986
File: 39 KB, 499x761, 1429459001825.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12599986

Hitchens was on a panel discussing religion, known force of evil
>"Is there anybody here who believes in God?"
>nervous silence from the audience
>"I ask again, otherwise I think my job here will be even easier than I assumed it would be."
>the audience laughs nervously
>"Is there anyone here who believes in the divinity of the Muslim, Christian or Jewish religions, and the word of its biblical teachings?"
>guy raises hands
>the audience, shocked, stares at him, with a look on their faces similar to one you'd give a man about to be executed
>"How dare you. I repeat, how DARE you submit to this heavenly totalitarianism, this celestial North Korea! I assume you'd kill your children if God commanded you to?"
>the audience cheers, claps and yells in unison, a festival of mockery ensues. A loud laughter can be heard from those who are already familiar with the Hitch and knew what to expect. The guy is not given a chance to reply or elaborate on his specific theological views because who cares he's probably stupid anyway. Religion is deemed too stupid for discussion, that particular segment of the entire event is uploaded separately on youtube under the title "Hitchens absolutely fucking OWNS stupid religious audience member who thinks Islam is peaceful" by the user ReasonAndScience. Hitch is hailed as one of the greatest orators since Cicero. Atheism prevails, Religion fails, sorry, deal with it, bye bye.

>> No.12600167

>>12599986
Good post

>> No.12600181

>>12599027
Faggot. I wish he didn’t get cancer, so I could still kick his ass. Arguing against religion from a place of “logic and reason” is the most idiotic thing a person could do. Hume figured that out hundreds of years before this fat drunken Trotskyite ever even fell out of his mother’s cunt.

>> No.12600194

>>12599986
didn't even chuckle. ignore the anon telling you this was a good post, since he is obviously (you)

>> No.12600198

>>12599736
Stefan Molypop is a nobody. you only know his name because he shills his books on this board

>> No.12600208

>>12600181
there is actually no need to argue against religion, as it is already a senescent phenomenon

>> No.12600237
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12600237

>>12600208
>he ACTUALLY thinks religion is dying
>even thinks that Christianity, specifically, is dying

You poor sweet fool.

>> No.12600303

>>12600237
Christianity is dying in Europe - the only place that matters in this world. Europe is the world and the world is Europe.

>> No.12600747

>>12600198
hes produced more content than anyone else in this thread

>> No.12600759

>>12599986
Funny because it's true. His entire arguments are cheap rhetorical tricks, see here >>12599276

>> No.12600763

>>12600747
Hes also vehemently autistically obsessed with being middlebrow

>> No.12601917

>>12599027
insufferable midwit

>> No.12602032

>>12599986
>Hitch is hailed as one of the greatest orators since Cicero
It is funny that Cicero as legitimately even worse than Hitchens.

>> No.12603467

>>12602032
based

>> No.12603728

I'm fairly new here and am honestly unable to tell whether you guys are roleplaying religious pseudophilosophers who like to pretend religion is much deeper and complicated than it really is or if you guys are actually dumb enough to take this shit seriously.

Hitch was unironically based and if you think otherwise you're just a midwit who likes to think himself otherwise by calling people much smarter than him midwits

>> No.12603777

>>12599075
>fourteen years later

>>12599090
He definitely had a pseud side to him, but that only really came out when discussing God. Read his non-God-related works and see a lover of history, literature, and politics who lived a life most of us fantasize about.

>>12599760
He claimed that he could never be a novelist because he lacked a deep appreciation and understanding of music, which he noticed that most great novelists of his era had.

>>12599845
>>12599932
This, I believe, is actually an unfortunate side-effect of being on a book tour. It is not just Hitchens - it is novelists, science writers, even musicians - you are required to promote your book/album/whatever in various ways (many of them not very subtle), and it's expected that you specifically bring up some of the clever, insightful points from the book to get people interested in the topic or your perspective. Once you notice that people on speaking/lecture/promotional tours always have a cache of quips at the ready, you'll never be able to unsee it.

>>12599962
Although I vehemently disagree with his perspective, he was one of the few people who had been consistent about the issue since the early nineties.

>> No.12604609

God took the right brother.

>> No.12604616

>>12604609
This.
>>12603728
Idiot

>> No.12604679

>>12603728
No roleplaying. Christianity is unironically the most redpilled religion, which has produced the greatest literature, music, and art in world history. Being an atheist in 2019 without realizing the cultural and ethical significance of Jesus is fucking cringe.

>> No.12604685

>>12599027
Anti genital mutilation and unironically super based.

>> No.12605002

>>12604679
Do you believe it's possible to recognize the significance of Christianity in shaping western society without believing in the divinity of its scripture or prophet Jesus Christ? Like, do you make "choices" about your fundamental beliefs based not on reason, but simply based on what effect holding those beliefs might have?

>> No.12605007

>>12604679
im not trying to be a dick but that sounds still like roleplaying to me. Do you believe Jesus was the divine incarnation of God?

>> No.12605010

>>12599736
This spate of political Youtube and Twitter thinkers had a precedent with the New Atheism movement.

>> No.12605062

>>12605007
>incarnation
Try again buddy

>> No.12605080

>>12605002
If Jesus wasn’t the true Son of God then the whole religion falls apart, which renders the Christian ethic null and void.

>> No.12605093
File: 41 KB, 585x501, 1549238743288.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12605093

>>12599027
Fuck off faggot

>> No.12605097

>>12605010
I sometimes hear that point made that the New Atheists moved on to the alt-right or alt-light YouTube pundit sphere or whatever you want to label it. But I personally doubt most people who are Shapiro or Peterson fans were previously fans of Hitchens and Dawkins though. I know a few Peterson fans IRL and they aren't the atheist type at all. They are all Christian conservative-ish normies. They come off more as anti-intellectual types if anything.

>> No.12605106

>>12599268
Based and red pilled

>> No.12605151

>>12603777
>deep appreciation and understanding of music
fucking nonsense...listen to him telling jokes. He's got a narrating voice. He was just fucking lazy.

>> No.12605211

>>12605151
In what sense was he lazy? His whole career, his output was anchored in non-fiction: journalism, criticism, historical and political commentary.

>> No.12605246

He is very enjoyable on everything except his New Atheism shit. I do, however, think he was a bit warped by his idolization of George Orwell (there are certainly worse people to idolize). In Islamofascism I think he believed he found his own era's version of Stalinism insofar that people of the ostensible Left were willfully ignorant of the destructive nature of that system primarily because it served the purpose of being adversarial toward a decadent, capitalist West. Just as Orwell was derided and resisted (esp. because he never directly addressed the problem of Fascism) and later vindicated, I think Hitchens took comfort in what he considered similar objections from the Left about his advocacy of the Iraq War. He was quite a brilliant man, though, nonetheless. An almost superhuman ability of recall and an exceptionally erudite speaker. His book on Orwell is quite good too.

>> No.12605255

>>12605080
you didn't answer the questions

>> No.12605260

>>12605246
Orwell does address fascism, he considered one version of what he called 'Nationalism', a term he applied to New deal USA, the USSR and the Fascist states

>> No.12605271

>>12605260

My mistake, I was a bit too broad. I could be wrong, but I was under the impression he never wrote anything addressing the danger of Nazi Germany- you say the Fascist states in your reply though so I'm perfectly willing to accept that he did so in something I haven't read from him

>> No.12605285

>>12605271
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat

This was the essay I was thinking of. I imagine saying this in 1945 was fairly edgy

>> No.12605298

>>12605211
Lazy about writing fiction, i meant. Did he ever try to write a short story?

>> No.12605305

>>12605285

Nice man, thanks- haven't seen this

>> No.12605320

>>12605298
I don't know. But his writing output was prolific for almost forty years. Pretty baseless to call him lazy just because he didn't write fiction.

>> No.12605526

He's mid-wit.

>> No.12605531

>>12605526
But he's by far the most based mid-wit author

>> No.12606392

>>12605010
"New atheism" is not and will never be a thing, my SJW friend. Give it up already. Your entryist movement failed.