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Unread postby EightEyes » 01 Apr 2010 00:52

Peter wrote:Considering that the Greeks are a major influence on Nietzsche's writing, would it be useful to have a good understanding of Greek history? If so, are there any books that you would recommend?


I'm not sure how necessary or relevant an understanding of Greek history is to the discussion here. I'm guessing not at all - otherwise I imagine it'd be on the list.

That said, I personally find it interesting and useful, and if you're looking to start reading on the subject, I'd highly recommend starting with:

Herodotus, The Histories
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

They're a much lighter, easier read than some of the stuff later on in this list (that I'm still working my way through). So they might be good to have on hand for when you need a break to let the heavier, more difficult stuff sink in.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Apr 2010 22:35

Those are excellent suggestions, actually. Here's another one:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3467/3467-h/3467-h.htm

Not Greek, but Renaissance Italian, so close enough. Borgia was one of Nietzsche's favorites, and after reading up on him he has become one of mine too. Much nearer to us at any rate than, say, an Alexander or a Nobunaga, and much more of a potential role model (especially considering where mankind's headed --) than someone like a Ceasar or a Napoleon. And Sabatini writes his story as if it were a novel.
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Unread postby Famicom Adventure » 20 Apr 2010 14:18

Do you recommend that edition of Fragments you linked to, or was it more arbitrarily linked? I only ask because the Amazon (not the best source for opinions, I know) reviews claim it's a rather inaccurate translation.
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Apr 2010 16:43

Actually, it's not just terribly inaccurate, it's a stupid idea in general. I mean to attempt to render the English translation in verse when even the Greek original is in prose. And I mean, the "Greek original" is in fact a compilation of free quotations (in Greek or Latin, themselves already doubtless distorted from the real original) from other people's works. So this Brooks Haxton dude is simply distorting the fuck out of our original sources to give us something which doubtless has next to nothing in common with the form of the lost original, and is quite possibly extremely distorted in terms of content.

The reason I linked that particular edition is because it has the best back cover blurb (though, like all back cover blurbs, far from 100% accurate) out of all the available options. But yeah, don't buy it because it's practically unreadable. I understand Heraclitus thoroughly and still have trouble making sense of what that shitty edition is saying.

This is an exception though, all the other books linked are the recommended editions. (Except of course if you can read German and/or French at the level of a native speaker, you lucky bastards.)
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Unread postby icycalm » 24 May 2010 17:34

Added another book to the list: The Ego and its Own by Max Stirner.
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Unread postby icycalm » 24 May 2010 21:11

The man is fucking awesome. Best opening paragraph I have ever read. I still haven't read the entire thing, but so far he basically looks like a forerunner of Nietzsche. I will be sure to comment on him at length in my own book.
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Unread postby icycalm » 24 May 2010 21:21

In certain respects, I like him even more than Nietzsche. He dispenses with the flowery language and simply gets down to business.
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Unread postby ProdigalTim » 28 Jun 2010 22:10

Hey icy, as someone who has studied both philosophy and game design I sincerely appreciate the work you've done here; I agree with nearly all of your views and understand the method behind your bravado. I discovered you a few days ago and have read everything on your list of must read essays.

A few questions: have you read much of Rorty? I'd wager you'd have no use for his private immoralist / public liberal dichotomy, but personally I found when I focused on his cataloging of possible metaphysical stances (and his ultimate rejection thereof) it helped in organizing my thoughts on Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Also, I personally subscribe to his epistemological view (in short: that we can't produce an epistemological method if our conceptions of the mind are based on an entirely contingent vocabulary and thus the best we can get at are suggestions based on our conversations).

As for Nietzsche, I wonder what your thoughts are on the theory of eternal recurrence; do you think Nietzsche was actually arguing for a metaphysics here or just using it as a heuristic of sorts? And if the latter, what gives it evaluatory power? I've always been unclear on this point and you obviously have more expertise than I on his writing.

My only major point of contention with you is in wondering why you spend so much time discussing such concepts as gender and sexuality in such a binary, essentialist manner. You claim that you are bowing to societal pressure (which seems unlike you) in discussing such things in the erroneous standard manner, but I don't see what is gained by doing so. I would theorize you just enjoy angering people (especially those who don't know why they're angry :p).

Aside from that, I enjoy your stuff and look forward to your books.
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 Jun 2010 23:36

ProdigalTim wrote:I agree with nearly all of your views


You have 24 hours to bump the relevant threads and tell us which of my views you don't agree with and why. If you don't do this I will ban you.

ProdigalTim wrote:and understand the method behind your bravado.


No you don't. Because if you did you'd understand that there's no "method" to it. That's just who I am. I sit down to write, and the result is the closest I can get to transferring to paper my various brain states that are stimulated by the subjects I approach. This is what "style" means. Style has nothing to do with "method" -- at least if we are talking about genuine style (i.e. not the simulated, affected kind).

ProdigalTim wrote:A few questions: have you read much of Rorty?


Not really, though I've read quite a bit ABOUT him (including his entry on Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy), and have arrived at the conclusion that he was a shallow-pate dickhead, like all Anglo-Saxons who dabbled in philosophy ever. The funniest thing I've read from his was an interview where he says that Nietzsche is "irrelevant" and basically not worth any attention. He also outright dismissed Baudrillard as a "pop philosopher". And the funniest thing of all that he did was to finish his "philosophical" career by saying that if he could change one thing of his life, he would have spent less time on philosophy and more reading novels.

So yeah, lol.

ProdigalTim wrote:As for Nietzsche, I wonder what your thoughts are on the theory of eternal recurrence; do you think Nietzsche was actually arguing for a metaphysics here or just using it as a heuristic of sorts?


I've no idea what you mean by "heuristic". And no, he was not "arguing for a metaphysics" -- he said that the eternal recurrence is the most SCIENTIFIC hypothesis -- and he was right.

However, that was BEFORE THE CONCEPT OF SPACE-TIME. There's your answer then. For the rest you'll have to wait for my third book.

ProdigalTim wrote:My only major point of contention with you is in wondering why you spend so much time discussing such concepts as gender and sexuality in such a binary, essentialist manner.


I do not discuss anything in a "binary, essentialist" manner -- if it seems to you that I do it is because you have poor reading comprehension skills.

As for why I deal with the concepts of gender and equality at all -- quite simply because they are extremely important -- especially the second one (the first is merely a special case of the second). Nearly all of the major misconceptions of the slaves stem from their theory of equality, so when you address them you are obliged to deconstruct it again and again and again.

ProdigalTim wrote:You claim that you are bowing to societal pressure


One more entirely fictitious assertion and you are banned.

ProdigalTim wrote:I would theorize you just enjoy angering people


I do enjoy angering people -- but the best way to do this is to attack them where it hurts the most: at their prejudices and superstitions. So it's not just a matter of throwing random things on paper in the hopes of finding something that angers them -- it's a matter of bringing to bear the most robust ideas, of creating the most coherent, powerful theories, and using them to deconstruct the little delusion of a world in which everyone lives in. So these two goals: the pursuit of truth, on the one hand, and the angering of people, on the other, go together.
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Unread postby ProdigalTim » 29 Jun 2010 00:43

You should give Rorty a chance; he actually takes Nietzsche quite seriously, at least in the books I've read. He sees him as an essential voice in disabusing people of platonic silliness and accepting the limits of 'truth'. I'm not sure what the context was in the interview you mentioned, but I can tell you it's not the whole story. If you ever have a free afternoon 'Contingency, irony, and solidarity' is a quick read that I think you'd enjoy.

As for your having a 'method', we're probably talking past each other. I'd say anything that has intentionality has a 'method' in that, in attempting to achieve goals, they must do so in a particular way rather than some other way. How you choose to go about achieving your goals is your method.

icycalm wrote:Thus man's primeval instinct is for war, whilst woman's for childbearing. With this insight in one's mind there's no sexually conditioned problem one cannot solve. The reason, therefore, that men are so easily seduced by virtual worlds whereas women are generally indifferent towards them (and in fact usually fail to even see the point in them), is because man's vital function, war, can be just as easily performed in virtual worlds as in the real one (and in fact even more easily there), whereas woman's vital function, childbirth, cannot be performed in them at all -- thus spoke Zarathustra. -- This is why they have always looked down on videogames with at best a certain toleration, at worst outright contempt, and this is why they cannot ultimately follow where we are going. -- That is all.


http://insomnia.ac/commentary/cocksucki ... ogameland/

icycalm wrote:But there's nothing to be done about it. All these people really do believe that they belong to these entirely fantastical categories, and have identified themselves so thoroughly with them that it is now impossible for them to view themselves as individuals. "I am a woman", "I am a black", "I am a gay" -- to try to remove these ludicrous categories from their minds would be next to impossible, EVEN WITHOUT the retarded "equal rights" movements making things worse by continually emphasisizing them.


http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=13046#13046

The above quotes are the ones I had in mind when talking about your gender/sex comments. I did misrepresent you in saying you 'were bowing to pressure'. I apologize. I'm still not sure exactly how you can talk about 'women' or 'fagots' as if they're a single thing when you also say that there's a continuum involved. Perhaps this is just a semantic misunderstanding: are you defining woman as biologically female in the above or is it a matter of self identification or is it a matter of what the individual believes their "vital function" to be?
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Jun 2010 18:56

First off, you are banned, not only for chickening out of following up on your bluster that you "do not entirely agree with everything" I've said -- but, even worse, for not even so much as acknowledging my direct demand that you do so.

Nevertheless, I will address your frustrations, not for your sake (since I can tell by your cowardice and impudence that you have no hope of understanding me), but for the sake of everyone else reading this.

ProdigalTim wrote:You should give Rorty a chance


A chance to do what? To waste my time and bore me to death? He did not introduce a SINGLE new concept in philosophy. He did not offer a SINGLE new insight, i.e. he was not a philosopher at all -- merely a popularizer and at the same time a bungler of ideas which had already been extensively -- and CORRECTLY -- elaborated by others decades and centuries before he was even born.

ProdigalTim wrote:he actually takes Nietzsche quite seriously, at least in the books I've read. He sees him as an essential voice in disabusing people of platonic silliness and accepting the limits of 'truth'.


It is impossible to "take Nietzsche seriously" if you are a proponent of democracy, "equal rights" and other herd illusions. All Rorty does is popularize a few of Nietzsche's ideas which it seems to him (wrongly) that they do not threaten his much-beloved "libertarian" prejudices. He is just too stupid to see that it is in fact these very ideas, which effect the destruction of the "platonic silliness", which pave the way for the destruction of his precious "libertarianism". The difference between Rorty and other slave theorists (e.g. Russell, Popper, et al.) is that Rorty is a bit more honest and a bit more intelligent than them, so that he can at least acknoweldge that there is no rational basis for, no way to ground his prejudices in some "universal truth". And that's where he stops and abandons philosophy (since he finaly realizes that it cannot serve him to FORCE his ideals on others) and turns to "literature", i.e. to bed-time story peddlers, telling you to read George Orwell and other novelists so that, if you are not already entirely dominated by the herd instinct, you will become so after being suitably brainwashed by them (i.e. “tamed”, “weakened”, “discouraged”, “refined”, “pampered”, “emasculated”).

ProdigalTim wrote:I'm not sure what the context was in the interview you mentioned, but I can tell you it's not the whole story.


The whole story is what I just gave you. As for the interview, here it is:

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-0 ... he-en.html

Practically every other sentence in that article is a gross idiocy, but I will only point to this one:

Rorty wrote:Nietzsche's critique of egalitarianism is unoriginal and uninteresting. Experience has shown that high culture, and the expression of individual genius, remains possible even in mass democracies, countries in which the rulers are chosen by the mob. None of the eighteenth and nineteenth century predictions that mob rule would result in the vulgarization of thought and life have come true.


"Experience has shown", lol. EXPERIENCE HAS SHOWN THE EXACT OPPOSITE, IMBECILE! (-- as I will be demonstrating at length in an essay I will be publishing in the next couple of days titled On the Genealogy of "Art Games"). In fact Rorty himself is part of this "vulgarization of thought" which he claims has not happened -- he himself contributed his little bit of effort towards this vulgarization, with the result being little imbeciles such as yourself who, in order to make time to read such drivel as "Contingency, irony, and solidarity" will leave the works of the masters untouched.

ProdigalTim wrote:As for your having a 'method', we're probably talking past each other.


No, I am talking whilst you are throwing mouthfarts at me.

ProdigalTim wrote:I'd say anything that has intentionality has a 'method' in that, in attempting to achieve goals, they must do so in a particular way rather than some other way. How you choose to go about achieving your goals is your method.


So you have basically taken the concept of "method", which has meaning only in conscious action, and applied it also to unconscious action, where it is meaningless. In other words you are mouthfarting.

ProdigalTim wrote:The above quotes are the ones I had in mind when talking about your gender/sex comments. I did misrepresent you in saying you 'were bowing to pressure'. I apologize. I'm still not sure exactly how you can talk about 'women' or 'fagots' as if they're a single thing when you also say that there's a continuum involved.


Dude, there is a continuum EVERYWHERE -- this is what "flux" means. But words are not continua -- they are fragments of this flux. As fragments therefore they are NECESSARILY "binary, essentialist" tools, but tools with which we need to work OTHERWISE WE CANNOT COMMUNICATE. It goes without saying therefore that when I talk about "women" I am not referring to every human being that has a vagina, but to the MAJORITY, the VAST MAJORITY even, of human vagina-holders. But the fact that there are exceptions does not in any way, as the imbeciles like you would have it, that there is no rule -- on the contrary, they merely reinforce the fact that if there are exceptions there HAS GOT TO BE A RULE -- despite the fact that neither rule nor exceptions are objectively localizable (for this would mean to separate them from the flux, something which is impossible).

So there's nothing "essentialist" or "binary" in my analysis, nor will there ever be -- it's just that people with poor reading comprehension skills are incapable of using the signs that I give them (the words) in order to reconstruct inside their brains the, let us call it fluxial movement of my thought process.

ProdigalTim wrote:Perhaps this is just a semantic misunderstanding: are you defining woman as biologically female in the above or is it a matter of self identification or is it a matter of what the individual believes their "vital function" to be?


More nonsense, as if the bullshit you spew makes any difference to what I am saying. You are still desperately trying to avoid facing the reality of the rule I am describing. What you want in the end is to reduce reality to "just" a "semantic misunderstading" so that you can retain your prejudice that everything is equal to everything else and that therefore value judgements (such as for example "women are stupider than men") are impossible.

But they are not, and no amount of pseudo-philosophical muddling will change that.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Jun 2010 19:34

He sent me a long answer via email which is simply not worth posting here. My reply, however, IS worth posting, so here it is:

icycalm wrote:The reason I am not going to unban you is that, as your email proves, you continue to fuddle and to dig yourself deeper and deeper into bullshit in order to APPEAR to salvage your retarded arguments. This is what subhumans do, and it is something for which I do not have the time nor patience. I EXPLAINED to you that you used the word "method" INCORRECTLY. The CORRECT response would have been to ACCEPT that you made a mistake, then SHUT YOUR MOUTH and move on. But no -- you have to keep digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole, which obliges me to keep writing more and more shit to POINT OUT TO EVERYONE ELSE WHO IS READING OUR EXCHANGE THE FACT THAT ALL YOU ARE DOING IS MERELY DIGGING YOURSELF DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO A HOLE.

And the same goes with much of the rest of the new bullshit that you sent me.

So, do whatever the fuck you want to do but leave me alone. I do not want to have anything to do with you -- you have no idea how to communicate with me. You are trying to "save face" in a conversation with a master, with someone who stands so far above you that you do not and never WILL have any "face" with him for fuck's sakes -- it's just ludicrous. Even your language is repeatedly offensive -- that you might be too thick to realize this is irrelevant to me. So again, kindly please fuck off and leave me alone.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Jul 2010 14:50

Via email:

Sterling Barnard wrote:It must be a very lonely life you're living.


icycalm wrote:Yes, if I turn down a couple of hundred idiots like you out of the thousands who approach me because they want to communicate with me, I must be lonely. Keep telling yourself that, dude.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2010 01:45

Had a few moments to spare on the internets, so I checkout out Rorty's "Contingency, irony and solidarity" on Google Books. By the SECOND PAGE OF HIS INTRODUCTION he had already committed more errors than Nietzsche did in his entire literary output, but just to point out the more flagrant, more unforgivable one of all:

Richard Rorty wrote:There is no way in which philosophy, or any other theoretical discipline, will ever let us do that.


The man with philosophical degrees and publications, fellowships etc. coming out of his ears never even managed to figure out THAT PHILOSOPHY IS NOT A DISCIPLINE FOR FUCK'S SAKE -- A DISCIPLINE IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU CUT OUT, SEPARATE AND BAPTIZE LITTLE TINY BITS OF PHILOSOPHY. HOW HARD CAN THAT BE TO GRASP AFTER 2,500 YEARS OF PHILOSOPHICAL EVOLUTION?

Apparently, if you are an Anglo-Saxon, very.

But who knows. Perhaps in another 2,500 years they might evolve to the point of being able to finally grasp that.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2010 01:48

I stopped reading at the very next paragraph from that sentence. It is simply unforgivable -- every sentence from that point on is a gross stupidity. I have seen less stupid JOURNALISTS than him for fuck's sake.

And this, we are told, was America's finest philosopher.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2010 02:29

Immediately after, to counteract the insipidity of Rorty's prose, I checked out Baudrillard's Passwords, which I'd been meaning to read for a long time now:

http://books.google.com/books?id=D9Prl2 ... &q&f=false

I mean, what a difference. Right away, from the first few sentences, I can breathe freely again. What spaciousness of thought, what power of vision! What fluidity of expression! You can tell right away that you are reading the work of a sage -- of a sage without equal.

In contrast, even the MERE IDEA of going back to Rorty again makes my chest feel constricted. I would not inflict that book on my enemies -- let alone on people I care about.
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Unread postby icycalm » 07 Jul 2010 17:12

Only one person on this page is not a moron:

http://www.pyke-eye.com/galleries/philosophers

No prizes for guessing who.

Click on the portraits for fun-time.
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Unread postby icycalm » 07 Jul 2010 17:15

It's funny how for one of the "women philosophers" they have provided a quote from someone else (a man, for course), instead of quoting HER:

http://www.pyke-eye.com/galleries/philo ... photos/331
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Unread postby duckman » 17 Dec 2010 02:13

icy, would you recommend reading Baudrillard's Seduction?
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 Dec 2010 23:56

I would recommend reading everything Baudrillard ever wrote.
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Unread postby plus » 23 Dec 2010 09:23

I took a quick look around and found several editions of Heraclitus' Fragments to choose from:

Kahn, Charles H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus
Kirk, G. S. Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments
Robinson, T. M. Heraclitus: Fragments

Which would you recommend?
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Unread postby icycalm » 23 Dec 2010 16:53

Haven't we been through this before? I have read the Greek text -- I cannot give recommendations on translations I haven't read. Besides which, you can just read all of them -- the text is only about a dozen pages for christsake.

I am starting to get annoyed with the responses in this thread, so I am going to be increasing the rate at which I drop the banhammer in the hope that they might improve. You've been warned.
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Unread postby icycalm » 27 Jan 2011 21:21

http://insomnia.ac/essays/the_voluntary ... hilosophy/

Gerry Coulter wrote:An hypothesis: The ability to take Baudrillard seriously is directly linked to the ability first, to take Nietzsche seriously...


And to take me seriously, you first have to take both of them seriously. Which is the whole point behind this reading list.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Feb 2011 23:15

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Unread postby Mac » 09 Aug 2012 06:23

Greek culture isn't relevant to the conversation? Aren't we talking about the nature of pleasure and the source of pleasure? Isn't Greek culture important to understanding the alternative to our own aesthetic exhaustion? Like the Greeks didn't have an interest in – games? What civilization besides our own ever played more games more seriously?

One of the key issues, I think, has to do with the nature of athleticism, and what it meant to be an athlete in their culture versus our own – not only subjectively, in the psychological experience of being healthy, but objectively, in their apprehension of the athletic hero as something socially incompatible with the base and the wretched. I can't work this out as well or as far as icy, but I think it's a critical issue for the 21st century, and it is why I keep coming back to this website. The response to Baudrillard is, I suspect, as physical as it is intellectual.

If I'm right about any of this, I didn't get to these conclusions on my own, either. I got there by working on that reading list until it started making sense – and it does.

Anyways, Burckhardt seems like the right author on the subject. http://studyplace.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/w ... khardt.pdf
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