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For all of us tryhards here who enjoy the challenge of reading:

What is a book(s) that you attempted to read, but couldn't finish? Was it out of boredom, difficulty of prose or something else that got in the way?

For me, I read sections of Saint Augustine's The City of God. It was one of the densest things I read in high school for my homeschooled curriculum. I don't think it was ever intended for casual reading, and thankfully I didn't have to read all of it. It's a book of Christian philosophy written by Augustine of Hippo, a bishop in Northern Africa. He's more well known in literature circles for Confessions, which is a more enjoyable read.

It's hard to really say, some philosophers can definitely be harder reads though. Hegel and Kant are generally considered the hardest to read. Kants critique of pure reason, although I didn't finish it, the parts of it I did read I didn't actually find to be that difficult.

Plato I found easy in comparison, he's pretty digestable. Descartes id say was the overall easiest read. Hardest for me personally though was probably actually Aristotle. Aristotle and Hegel. Spinoza was a weird one, where some sentences felt really hard and others really easy, it doesn't help that he also uses math and diagrams for his points.

Aristotle was weirdly hard for me. He was like Plato, except more logical and realistic, but much more dry, boring, uncreative and uninspiring. His prose was a bit convoluted at times, used unnecessary wording which admittedly sounds smart but is less pragmatic, and he was just much more boring. Plato on the other hand is essentially the opposite, i could see someone reading some of his philosophy pieces for entertainment as well as learning. His writing is much more accessible, easily understandable, full of more life, less dry, and presents more personality, and offers a more engaging style.

Aristotle comes across as probably a bit smarter than Plato as a raw logician, or raw IQ wise, but he wasn't a writer. If his written ability is any sort of indicator, he seems lower EQ wise than Plato for sure.

I like Kant's overall ideas, I've been thinking about them a lot recently. Not a fan of Hegel, but most of my exposure to him is from The World as Will and Representation,and Schopenhauer doesn't exactly jump for joy whenever Hegel is brought up. Marcus Aurielias is reasonably good, he at least makes his thoughts understandable and accessable, unlike Hegel who delibrately makes his work obscure to annoy people and show how clever he was (even though Schopenhauer literally showed him up when Hegeel was a professor and he just a student). I think Descartes was right about a lot but his stuff on animals is just atrocious, really just the worst imagiable. Kant wasn't great, but at least he had some idea about morality being applied to animals. Haycartes>Descartes.

Nothing beats mythology and religion though. The more you understand them, the more you realise that 99%-100% of what these philosophers are saying are just simplifications/complications of what's already written down in these stories. Carl Jung at least seems to have understood this. Give me the Bible or the Poetic Edda over these endless treatises and essays any day. Though I'd be wary of the Ancient Greek stuff (Pre-Plato, anyway), lest you start becoming a babbling lunatic like that Nietzsche fellow, who seems to have achieved a level of stupidity only reachable by the incredibly gifted.

Schopenhauer always came across as the first vocal incel to me. That guy was as weird or even weirder than Nietzsche. Nietzsche had some weird racial theories, and clearly had a few screws loose, but its important to not dispel someone's entire arguments because of a few spoiled eggs, even a trash can might have something useful thrown away. I think the will to power is one of the most fascinating philosophical concepts, and one of the most transformative of ethics if true.

Marcus Aurelius' is alright. Overall he seemed rather logical but he never struck me as anything special, but neither do any ethical philosophers, they more so make arguments to pragmatism as opposed to moral arguments based on hard, concrete logical deduction, which automatically means Kant's moral arguments > Aurelius' and others. Although Kant's deontology i think has some likely truth to it, I don't think is the full story either.

Descartes first meditations was a cool read, but i always felt like something was missing, like he could have went deeper there, but he just never did. I agree that he was overly presumptuous about the capabilities of animals though.

I agree that Hegel enjoyed armchair philosophy masturbation. Religion is very interesting, but id consider most of i it much more surface level than the depths philosophers tend to go into. With religious texts you tend not to get in-depth reasons on why certain things are bad and should be avoided, or likewise indulged within. Its generally just "cheating is bad, you shall be stoned if one is just" sort of stuff. Which is intuitively understandable, but we should question our intuitions. With that being said there are some religious figures that I have deep admiration and fascination for, namely Jesus and the buddha, Jesus especially is favourite historical figure. I loved the way he lived his life.

As philosophy goes though, Spinoza > all for me, he does what religion does, as in create a doctrine or belief in a higher power, but does so through maths and logic while not leaving things potentially vague or misconstrue able or arguable based on interpretations, but i have a deep respect for religions and mysticism in general.

Kant is pretty much just an updated explanation of Christianity. Schopenhauer is just gnosticism for atheist nerds, like he comes up with this whole philosophical framework which has already been thought up hundreds of years before him. Neiszche just becomes an outright satanist by the end. Both of their ideas of the "Will to Life/Will to Power" are fundamentally wrong, but at least Schopenhauer had the good sense to say "This will is probably a bad thing and ought to be rejected." Whereas Neiszche basically just stole Schopenhauer's ideas but said "this will is a good thing and everyone should follow it to get power." It's like, I really disagree with what both of these people have to say and I think it would have been better if both of them had kept their mouths shut, yet that doesn't mean that I don't find their ideas impressive.

 

Honestly, I think a huge part of why religion and mythology work is just that they're inherently so much more epic. Fenris the devourer of worlds fighting epic duel against Odin at Ragnarok while Heimdall and Loki fight is far more worth reading than "ethical duties and moral laws as representations of the world and will". And I get the impression it can say a lot more with a lot less than any philosopher can. It's why I have such great respect for Tolkien, who manages to take all these religious ideas and do something cool with all of them rather than just write essays and lectures all day.

 

As for Spinoza, I originally was a huge fan of him over other philosophers and I really like what he has to say, but Kant seems to have eclipsed him recently for me.

I feel like its a little bit reductionist of both Christianity and Kant to say its an updated explanation for Christianity. From what i know of Kant's personal life, he was deeply Christian, but had a lot of internal struggle proving god to exist to himself, instead he just decided to have faith in the end. Deontology often does run like the Christian "golden rule Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I also have struggle finding consistency in the bible where that golden rule is seemingly never violated? I think God is presented as a bit more morally vast and impossible to pin down to simply say that's what Kant was trying to express. I think God, if exists is probably a bit more ethically unimaginably nuanced than just the golden rule, but maybe that's part of the fascination for some religions!

I also do find religion and mythology to be more fun reads, wicca stuff is cool too. A lot of my friends are into that stuff, if I'm sick, she might even do one of her spells to try and make me better lol

Also Nietzsche’s "Will to Power" is not simply a glorification of power for its own sake but a broader concept that includes creativity, self-overcoming, and the drive to realize one’s potential. It is fundamentally different from Schopenhauer’s "Will to Life," which is more about survival and reproduction. Nietzsche’s idea is more about growth and flourishing in a broader sense. I actually quite like the will to power, even if to some it can present as unempathetic egoism. I don't think it needs to be interpreted that way.

Schopenhauer essentially says "Everything you do causes more bad than it does good, so try not to do anything", yet Nietzsche’s ideas are "Everything you do causes more bad than good, but who cares, do it anyway." This is why they diverge so strongly on aestheticism. Fundamentally, they seem to me to be arguing over the same view of the world, but each one has a different viewpoint. I think the view of the world itself is actually entirely wrong and this is where the problem arises, but I think Schopenhauer's view is the less harmful because he at least doesn't see pity as contemptible or as "preserving those things that ought to be dead" or whatever it was Nietzsche said.

I see, I think Schopenhauer was just depressed as hell. I used to be like Schopenhauer as a teen. I spent much of my youth suppressing my competitive spirit and desires because ultimately, I’d never be satisfied anyway. In the end, though, I think the human engine is designed to run, and all it did was build up and build up. You can be content, but there’s just that part of you that never dies, which craves more action.

In the end, Schopenhauer’s philosophy, based on a moral argument for becoming a sedentary bum, is grounded in a moral reasoning he can’t even prove with certainty. Nowadays, I tend to strike a balance. I love competition, and I actually love suffering too - time under tension is great; that’s where growth occurs. It just must be done with balance and breaks. I believe the human mind exists in duality, with opposite states: one part which wants to be wholly passive, and another which wants to be wholly active. The same goes for all other desires. In psychology, it’s called the id, the superego, and the ego, as I’m sure you know. I think a complete human embraces them all, as Carl Jung teaches. We must embrace the shadow. My life became much more enriched once I began doing that, while at the same time giving in to my superego just as much as before. In the past, I tried to quell or eliminate the id and ego while only living selflessly with the superego. I don’t think it works; it’s not how humans are wired.

I definitely wouldn't be as healthy in body, or mind if i didn't change. I wouldn't train, I wouldn't care about my income, etc. Id be uglier too lol

I certainly wouldn't dismiss Nieszche or Freud,I would never do that. In fact Nieszche made a great deal of points that have actually been incredibly important for my own thoughts and philosophies and Freud has had a tremendous effect on the modern world. And Nieszche's ravings inspire Jung who I think is one of the greatest philosophers of all time.

 

But I do think that, when you get right down to what their conclusions are about how the world and humanity work, and how people ought to behave, they've been  disastrously wrong and had extremely negative conseqeunces. Frankly I rather like Tolstoy's takes on Nieszche, he sums him up better than I can anyway: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10350187-there-would-seem-to-be-only-one-question-for-philosophy

Is Freud even a philosopher? He's more like the original psychologist I thought, his writings are his takes on science and all his weird sex thoughts.

I mean blurring make sense to a degree, ancient and medieval philosophers would've seen religion and the natural sciences and even math as all part of the same thing.

But when coming to figures from more modern eras there seems to be more of a definite line that they would've recognized too. (Unlike Freud's inability to realize how freaky he was while trying to objectively analyze everyone else.)

Kant is a meaty read. I've noticed a trend of philosophy books mentioned here.

I actually have both Spinoza and Descartes in my library. I definitely agree that Descartes is easier. 

I liked the City of God. Of course, I was an adult when I read it. It's pretty serious and heavy, but good stuff.

I liked his style with Confessions. It was just the overwhelmingly large volume of points and subpoints that really irked me with City of God haha (some sections were good though)

I would certainly agree that Confessions was an easier read!

When I was a junior in college, I was assigned Milton, by William Blake.  I hated it so much that I hurled it across the room, 3/4th unread.  I stand by my decision.

The less read of William Blake, the better. The "philosophies" of him and Nietzsche can be summed up by the line "and now for the author's poorly concealed fetish." As soon as someone starts to obsess over sex to the extent that both of them do, I no longer have much interest in what they have to say. And that goes especially true for Freud, too. The whole topic is a psychological tumor.

You should read the stuff Schopenhauer says about women. Freud was a weird ass freak as well, agreed. carl jung >>>>>>> Freud. Carl jung is actually BASED and cool.

Which is your favourite "mythology" or religious text that you'd suggest to read?

The Poetic Edda is a GREAT choice, I absolutely love it. It's concise , epic, easy to understand but with incredibly interesting themes and ideas that I think are still incredibly useful in the modern world. Things like fate, writing, words, the meaning of life, technology, all of these things are all insightful. And even without all the philosophical stuff, there's all the creatures and characters like Odin and Fafnir. All around, great fun.

https://archive.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/index.htm

Thank you!!! ill definitely give that a read.

If you're still taking suggestions for religious texts, if you want some more Christian philosophy, the works of C.S. Lewis (not referring to the Chronicles of Narnia) are numerous and accessible while still being pretty thorough. I'd recommend Mere Christianity as one example.

For mythology, I'd recommend, if you haven't read it already, the Saga of the Volsungs. It's a great read, especially if you're unfamiliar with original Norse mythology.

That I disagree with, actually.  I think a lot of Blake's lyric poetry is wonderful.  I often teach his "London" and his "Sick Rose" and lots of other Songs of Innocence and Experience, and I like the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.  But his mystical works I find very hard to read. 

I read "London" and I remember liking it, then I looked into his other stuff and just couldn't stand any of it.

A diss towards the author of The Tyger? Tsk tsk.

I haven't read that much from him, so I can't actually judge.

I've not had the pleasure/displeasure of reading it. Why the hatred?

Do you generally have impatience with like, mysticism as a concept? I feel like a lot of people just think it's generally kind of stupid (it's not stupid and mysticism is real and god is real)

I always feel, with Blake's mysticism, that I'm coming into Act IV of a play with no program, and also it's part two of a three part play.  Or like I'm starting a fantasy novel and the author has an elaborate history all worked out complete with his own language, and he wants to throw it all at me on page one to world build.  But as a general concept, I don't object to mysticism, even though I am very ignorant of it.  I have a lot to learn on the subject.  Maybe I'll return to Milton at some point.

Finnegans Wake

You should have just skipped to the song version

Not one I couldn't finish, I gladly did, but one I found in unexpectedly advanced prose. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's "Respuesta a Sor Filotea" is a letter in reply to I think a bishop who published her writings, pretending to be her friend, to create drama or a scandal or something. It's very funny and very juicy banter. She basically toes the line of insult while pretending like she doesn't know. She kills the bishop with kindness and passive-agressive roast session that's many pages long.

Maybe the translation I read was particularly complex prose, but it really made it all the better because she's so much smarter than the bishop and a very talented and well-studied writer in a time where women of the church were not especially respected for that sort of thing.

Ezra 4:8-onwards. I took a semester of Aramaic, not realizing it was one of those glasses mostly for grad students that they will occasionally have a little one sit in on. Threw us into the text at a level of speed I was unaccustomed to, because everyone around me had a ton of Semitic language experience and I didn't. When I hear about fucking Rehum and Shimshai, to this day I get a bad feeling 

I also want to plug my beloved House of Leaves, which to me is essentially a text about how meaning collapses when you attempt to project it onto a frustrating and confusing world. The book itself is essentially a labyrinth of layered footnotes with their own separate stories, attached as commentary to a piece of  (amateur) academic film criticism. I love that book so much.

I liked it.  I thought the first half of it held together better than the second half.  Maybe that's the point (I don't think so).  But it was a cool read nevertheless.  As a footnotey genius-mess, I thought Infinite Jest was more fun to read, but obviously there's less metatextual shenanigans.

I think the first half is more cohesive (insofar as a book like this can be), but I really really like Navidson's final expedition. Him losing his eye in order to gain knowledge of self, which no other character in the book really has, kind of completes the Odin and Yggdrasil paralellism in a way I really like. 

The nostalgia. I remember baby me getting this story read to me by my teacher while I hugged her leg like : D lol, so much joy

I assume you've posted that in response to the initial post in this thread. Did you at least manage to make it through the audio book version, or was that too difficult as well?

Lol

Ugh religious philosophy. I've always struggled with philosophy. I can't say I've ever heard of The City of God but you reminded me of a time I tried to learn a bit of religious philosophy.  I'm not naturally gifted in that way nor am I willing to put in the work to learn so I guess I'm sol. My Torah study group once decided to read the Nineteen Letters. I slogged through a translation of the first three but was so confused as to what I'd just read that I had to read them again. Unfortunately that didn't make it any easier. Gave up right then and there.

In your defence, that whole strain of Jewish philosophy is kind of incoherent 

I found Walden a bit of a slog. Parts of it are interesting but I just found Thoreau such a self-righteous hypocrite (of the two years he was supposed to be living in a cabin in the woods he went into town almost every day and snuck off home half the time or went on holiday to Maine) that it was a struggle to get through. I also found the Communist Manifesto a hard read as I disagreed with every word of it.

For some reason two books that I have never finished are Gulliver's Travels and A Tale of Two Cities because I just lost interest in them (after Lilliput all the islands seem to me a bit samey and Two Cities just seemed to take a while go get going, a bit like a reverse Oliver Twist which kind of drags in the second half). With the Bible I managed to get through the New Testament (Revelations reads like it was written by someone on acid) but all the Eli son of Eliah son of Eliza son of Eliziah stuff in the Old Testament made it too hard to read (ditto with the Iliad, by the way, just too many names).

For some reason I never thought of the communist Manifesto, but that's an example of something I tried reading as well but found it way too boring. 

A lot of modern day communists also seem more like a disorganised cult as opposed to a political leaning as well, which is off putting. 

 

How hard the bible was mostly just depended on the version I tried reading it in. The ones in old English are especially hard (for obvious reasons) but some itterations  I found to be very readable. 

Yeah, I think the King James version is pretty accessible. I think I had a modern version of the Bible (perhaps a Gideons?) but just found the pre-Jesus stuff a bit tough.

Stuff like Numbers and Leviticus can just be skipped imo, they're pretty dull and you're not going to glean anything too meaningful from either one. That's a record of geneology and a handbook of rules for the priest caste respectively, they're interesting in the historical sense but nobody's coming away with anything profound from that.

King James is not "old English" (old English is like, the original Beowulf) but if Crimson finds the Shakespearian era language tough, Malk has said KJV actually kind of sucks as a translation anyway and he has no idea why a lot of conservatives treat it like it's the only valid one. A lot of passages apparently make "wild interpretive leaps" on stuff found in the source material.

I don't know anybody else who studied ancient Hebrew so I take his word for that, I guess it does make sense that they didn't have super strict standards about some things in that time period.

NJKV is pretty nice, but the English Standard Version has always been my personal favorite, and he's said those don't have the same issues. The ESV for me is like the sweet spot for readability and still keeping the poetic flow.

The translations that go TOO modern to the point they're just clunky and tone deaf are just painful for me.

The New Testament is probably the most approachable (it's fantastic that Paul's letters do all the heavy lifting of philosophical explaining after you read the events) but a lot of the Old Testament just has some really beautiful writing that the New Testament rarely matches. The book of Job, and most of the prophetic books like Ezekiel and Isaiah are full of some wild imagery and poetry that anybody who likes reading epic things written out in the English language should enjoy.

Jeremiah is also a favorite of mine, if you appreciate torrents of prophetic doom.

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes: 9 "Take in your hands large stones and hide them in the mortar in the pavement that is at the entrance to Pharaoh's palace in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah,
10 and say to them, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will set his throne above these stones that I have hidden, and he will spread his royal canopy over them.
11 He shall come and strike the land of Egypt, giving over to the pestilence those who are doomed to the pestilence, to captivity those who are doomed to captivity, and to the sword those who are doomed to the sword.
12 I shall kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive. And he shall clean the land of Egypt as a shepherd cleans his cloak of vermin, and he shall go away from there in peace.

The inhabitants of Egypt being compared to lice on a shepherd's cloak is just a great burn in any era.

Ah, Mizal's secret hobby has been discovered! Tbh, I might give the Bible another go when I visit the UK next month and can pick up my old copy (I also have a Quran that I got in Egypt twenty years ago and always meant to read sometime). I wish I had more time for reading generally but this holiday has been ridiculous on the work front. I'll catch up on my reading next month when I have my holiday :)

I do remember quite liking the ESV version a lot too. Although more than anything I loved just switching between lots of different versions to read the same passages, because I'd be shocked by how subtly but substantially different some passages could be, and Once you read through those same passages in different versions you could kind of synthesize them to get a more full picture of what is actually being said. But typically the differences are usually quite trivial. 

https://youtu.be/FFCXHr8aKDk?si=x_81qq7qSBb62vVr

 

This is easily one of the most memorable scenes in cinema for me. I really loved this when I watched it. 

Just watched it, they managed to fit a lot into a very short time!

I haven't yet finished the Canterbury Tales because for some autistic reason I keep wanting to read the version that came before we all agreed on how we were going to spell things from now on. I don't really regret my decision, it's really more fun that way, I'm just bad at making progress because I have to go back and re-read the parts I've already parsed to get back into the rhythm and bizarre pronunciations

Read it out loud.  It helps so much.

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4wzJZdmelA

I've been studying a few excerpts of one of the books mentioned in this thread and the foreshadowing is amazing. There are so many references to past chapters, even those that are seemingly unrelated, and this book practically creates its own symbolism. It's possibly the only book I've read which utilizes the deus ex machina plotline well. The only thing is that there are so many characters it's hard to keep track of them all, though the main ones are always well-characterized. This book is the Bible, btw.

Love this comment haha

Not only is the deus ex machina plot device used well, it’s used often. Jews need to escape Egypt and lose their pursuers? Boom: Moses parts the sea and so they can cross then drowns the army behind them. 

The authors didn’t feel like killing off the beloved character of Elijah? Boom: he’s whisked off in a fiery chariot. Some even claim that to this day he stops in on Passover just to drink wine and hangout. 

Jacob needs a new name? Boom: he fistfights God by a river. 

In fact, the use of deus ex machina is brought to a new height when the Divine Figure becomes a man. He literally comes to save humanity wholesale from a threat of doom they have no power to overcome by themselves.