Einherjar86
Active Member
Any book titled The Law makes me automatically wary, unless it's titled in at least mild sarcasm. What's its claim?
The Books/Reading Thread
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Any book titled The Law makes me automatically wary, unless it's titled in at least mild sarcasm. What's its claim?
Einherjar86
Active Member
Still trucking along with Jameson, but I also recently started M. John Harrison's novel Light. This book is fucking incredible, definitely up there with China Mieville's best:
Dak
mentat
I am not surprised you (and Zeph) are not familier with this book. It lays a rational framework for law that is limited to protecting individual liberty. Within the first chapter he proceeds to attack the concept of socialism as anathema to liberty and justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat
A free translation:
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G022
Master_Yoda77
Juggalo
Just finished Poe's The Cask of Amontillado and finishing up the last two acts of Julius Caesar so I can spend the rest of my winter break steamrolling A Game of Thrones.
unknown
fuck ftagn
actually did some reading for pleasure recently. Read Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. This is the first Dostoyevsky book I've read, and it's supposed to be a good introduction to him. I liked it but wasn't overly impressed with it. I suppose because the first 30 pages didn't have much of a plotline? I don't know. I thought it was good, but I think I need to read his novels.
Also read John Fante's Ask the Dust, which was just amazing. Fante's use of words is just beautiful. White boy writer in LA during the 1930s ish era falls in love with a Mexican girl. Just goddamn beautiful writing. It's like of Bukowski wasn't angry and bitter at the human race. I highly recommend it
Also read John Fante's Ask the Dust, which was just amazing. Fante's use of words is just beautiful. White boy writer in LA during the 1930s ish era falls in love with a Mexican girl. Just goddamn beautiful writing. It's like of Bukowski wasn't angry and bitter at the human race. I highly recommend it
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
This has been such a refreshing read, since in addition to effectively explaining the ideas of various philosophers, he often inserts his own smug criticism and maintains a high level of wit.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I should read the book, granted; but Bastiat uses the same language that other liberalists do when criticizing collectivism. He claims that the socialists would use the law as a "weapon"; as though they're holding a shotgun and all the good, moral liberal capitalists are at the bottom of the barrel. That's not the way a collectivist society should work, and continuing to insist such a scenario prevents people from seeing otherwise.
On to other things, however; I brought in a pretty damn good haul on books this Christmas:
Being and Event by Alain Badiou
Valences of the Dialectic by Fredric Jameson
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
The Historical Novel by Georg Lukács
Regeneration Through Violence: the Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 by Richard Slotkin
Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky
Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network Theory by Bruno Latour
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society by Jürgen Habermas
unknown
fuck ftagn
A colleague of mine is a huge Jameson fan, but I have no idea where to get started with him. Where do you suggest starting, Einherjar?
rms
Active Member
Is there a well established website that recommends books based on what you've already read? A last fm/netflix/rym kind of thing? Would really appreciate it, thanks.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I'll apologize in advance for this slightly lengthy reply, but there's a reason: Jameson has written so much and on so many different topics, that where to start depends on what exactly you're interested in. Be forewarned: Jameson writes in the most convoluted and disorienting style imaginable. He also frequently calls upon Hegel, Marx, and other 20th-century Marxists for support in his arguments, so it helps to be a bit familiar with the tradition.
First off, I've heard that his book Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature is very good, but I haven't read it. It's an early work, and from what I've read it provides a good introduction to Marxist literary analysis.
His book The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act provides a detailed explanation of his interpretive approach (essentially a Marxist historicist hermeneutics) as well as some decent explication of the writers he's citing for support. It's also typically regarded as one of his most important works, but it can be tough; I'm halfway through it and had to take a break. The book takes primarily late 19th-century realist novels for its subject matter.
His other most famous work is probably Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, but I wouldn't suggest going there first if you're interested in his theory of postmodernism. Instead, look for The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern; it's a collection of six essays, all of which are very informative and interesting. Furthermore, the first essay is essentially a simplified version of the first chapter of his other book; so I'd suggest starting there and then going on to Postmodernism if you find it interesting. For his postmodern theory, Jameson looks at some literature; but also makes a meaningful leap over to architecture, since he has a big concern with space in the postmodern age.
Lastly, because I know you're a speculative fiction lover like me, his anthology of science fiction is really awesome. It's called Archaeologies of the Future: the Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. I'm not recommending it as a starting point, but considering the scarcity of science fiction criticism in academia, I thought you might be interested.
Usually if you search for a book on Amazon.com, it gives you a list below the product that says "Customers who bought this item also bought..."
rms
Active Member
unknown
fuck ftagn
thanks for the lengthy reply! I suppose I'll start with The Cultural Turn and Marxism and Form
Srontgorrth
Member
rms
Active Member
Srontgorrth
Member
Pho sho. I need to start using/updating it again (especially now that I got a $50 gift card to Barnes and Noble... still have a lot to read though).
I was going to try and work through this over break, as I've been meaning to for about 2 years now, but I just don't think I'm well-versed enough in the authors he draws upon (particularly Heidegger; I was talking to one of my professors about Badiou one time and he recalled a video lecture that was basically just re-packaged Heidegger) to get much from it right now. I'm really just interested in his (supposedly) rigorous approach to set theory as an ontology.
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
So besides what I gleaned from a single-semester class on Late Modern Intellectual History, in which we briefly touched on Heidegger, Bouvoir, Adorno and Lyotard, my grasp of 20th century philosophical thought it unjustly impoverished. I require recommendations to remedy that injustice. My girlfriend is reading Foucault, whom I hear is very Nietzsche-influenced, so what's good by him? And who else? Give this classicist/medievalist/early modernist a new outlook.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Holy shit, let the continental philosophy bonanza begin!
It's interesting that he calls it "re-packaged" Heidegger, because Badiou claims right away in the introduction that he's looking to provide a philosophical system that replaces Heidegger's. However, Badiou is certainly influenced by him, and even the title of his work recalls Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time. I can't say anything about the work itself yet, because I haven't read any further than the introduction; but I can tell it's going to be a rough read. I've been brushing up on my set theory on Wikipedia, but needless to say I'm still confused.
I think you'd enjoy Foucault. He takes a Nietzschean approach to history and essentially rewrites what a lot of people take for granted regarding "histories of..."
He has an essay called "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," which basically outlines his approach to several subjects. I know it's included in an anthology titled Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, but if you can find a copy of it online I'd recommend checking it out as a sort of introduction.
EDIT: found a link to a PDF version: http://web.mac.com/davidrifkind/fiu/library_files/foucault.pdf
Other than that, he has several famous books; it's mostly a matter of what your interested in. Discipline and Punish looks at the history of the penal system and what Foucault sees as a shift from bodily/physical punishment to moral/spiritual punishment. History of Madness looks at how the definition, classification, and diagnosis of people deemed "insane" has shifted over the centuries. The full version is fucking long. The Order of Things lays out the framework for Foucault's theory of multiple epistemes that occupy certain periods of history, and from which derive conceptions and intuitions that govern how humanity creates knowledge. He also has published several volumes of a history of sexuality, which was unfinished when he died.
Those are just a few, and any one of them is a good place to start.
It's interesting that he calls it "re-packaged" Heidegger, because Badiou claims right away in the introduction that he's looking to provide a philosophical system that replaces Heidegger's. However, Badiou is certainly influenced by him, and even the title of his work recalls Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time. I can't say anything about the work itself yet, because I haven't read any further than the introduction; but I can tell it's going to be a rough read. I've been brushing up on my set theory on Wikipedia, but needless to say I'm still confused.
I think you'd enjoy Foucault. He takes a Nietzschean approach to history and essentially rewrites what a lot of people take for granted regarding "histories of..."
He has an essay called "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," which basically outlines his approach to several subjects. I know it's included in an anthology titled Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, but if you can find a copy of it online I'd recommend checking it out as a sort of introduction.
EDIT: found a link to a PDF version: http://web.mac.com/davidrifkind/fiu/library_files/foucault.pdf
Other than that, he has several famous books; it's mostly a matter of what your interested in. Discipline and Punish looks at the history of the penal system and what Foucault sees as a shift from bodily/physical punishment to moral/spiritual punishment. History of Madness looks at how the definition, classification, and diagnosis of people deemed "insane" has shifted over the centuries. The full version is fucking long. The Order of Things lays out the framework for Foucault's theory of multiple epistemes that occupy certain periods of history, and from which derive conceptions and intuitions that govern how humanity creates knowledge. He also has published several volumes of a history of sexuality, which was unfinished when he died.
Those are just a few, and any one of them is a good place to start.
He was actually just telling me about that particular video lecture quickly among a sea of other topics, so it may have just been a passing comment. Again, I'm not sure how Badiou actually uses set theory in his system, but I wouldn't worry about "getting" it immediately. I'm fairly certain that most mathematicians can't rattle the ZFC axioms off the top of their heads; and because they're so goddamn powerful (every branch of mathematics, at its rudiments, is described in terms of sets) the implications are endless. It's always best to just constantly refer back to them whenever you come across a new set-theoretic topic.
Zeph: Despite being in a continental department, I know absolutely nothing about continental philosophy if not only because I'm not entirely interested in the issues it's concerned with. However, I know that Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari is considered a classic of the style, and is heavily in the vein of Nietzsche.
As for analytic philosophy, there's the great triumvirate of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (his compilation of Ontological Relativity and related essays is also essential and very much along the lines of the aforementioned Wittgenstein work, and Sellar's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Wittgenstein's book is wide-reaching in its scope of topics; but central to the whole thing is his treatment of language, which is, in many ways, a microcosm of the entire analytic movement. Quine's classic essay attacks the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths that was made popular by Kant, but has its origins in Leibniz (see: Monadology, propositions 33 and 36). Sellar's essay is by far the most obscure of the three, and in my opinion the most difficult. However, it's ultimately rewarding because you see him (elegantly) criticize notions from both the continental side (phenomenology) and the analytic side (sense-data theories) that resulted in some rather nebulous epistemological assumptions regarding perception and knowledge.
Other than those works, I know that Cythraul is a fan of Moore's Principia Ethica. I haven't managed to get around to it yet, but it's widely considered a classic work of early analytic philosophy, so get to it. Also, make a point to just explore the intellectual climate of early 20th century mathematics and science, if not only through encyclopedic resources like Wikipedia. Guys like Turing, Church, and Godel made it one hell of an interesting time.
Zeph: Despite being in a continental department, I know absolutely nothing about continental philosophy if not only because I'm not entirely interested in the issues it's concerned with. However, I know that Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari is considered a classic of the style, and is heavily in the vein of Nietzsche.
As for analytic philosophy, there's the great triumvirate of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (his compilation of Ontological Relativity and related essays is also essential and very much along the lines of the aforementioned Wittgenstein work, and Sellar's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Wittgenstein's book is wide-reaching in its scope of topics; but central to the whole thing is his treatment of language, which is, in many ways, a microcosm of the entire analytic movement. Quine's classic essay attacks the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths that was made popular by Kant, but has its origins in Leibniz (see: Monadology, propositions 33 and 36). Sellar's essay is by far the most obscure of the three, and in my opinion the most difficult. However, it's ultimately rewarding because you see him (elegantly) criticize notions from both the continental side (phenomenology) and the analytic side (sense-data theories) that resulted in some rather nebulous epistemological assumptions regarding perception and knowledge.
Other than those works, I know that Cythraul is a fan of Moore's Principia Ethica. I haven't managed to get around to it yet, but it's widely considered a classic work of early analytic philosophy, so get to it. Also, make a point to just explore the intellectual climate of early 20th century mathematics and science, if not only through encyclopedic resources like Wikipedia. Guys like Turing, Church, and Godel made it one hell of an interesting time.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I want to read more analytic philosophy. The closest I've come is Wittgenstein and some Hubert Dreyfus (who, for an analytic, sure has a big crush on Heidegger). I need to get more familiar with the terminology, as you said.
The continental tradition, in contrast to the analytic, is skeptical of the natural sciences, the notion of the subject, and just general "common sense." I suppose this is partially why some of the writings seem unintelligible. Furthermore, the continental tradition has its own terminology that is fucking difficult (Hegel's dialectic, Marx's commodity fetishism and reification, Freud's ego, id, and superego, Lacan's Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary, etc.); it can be very hard to ascertain the meaning of certain texts without properly understanding these terms, which, unfortunately, very few scholars truly do.
I actually think Foucault is one of the best figures in the continental tradition to read, because his work is, for the most part, very straightforward and easy to digest.
The continental tradition, in contrast to the analytic, is skeptical of the natural sciences, the notion of the subject, and just general "common sense." I suppose this is partially why some of the writings seem unintelligible. Furthermore, the continental tradition has its own terminology that is fucking difficult (Hegel's dialectic, Marx's commodity fetishism and reification, Freud's ego, id, and superego, Lacan's Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary, etc.); it can be very hard to ascertain the meaning of certain texts without properly understanding these terms, which, unfortunately, very few scholars truly do.
I actually think Foucault is one of the best figures in the continental tradition to read, because his work is, for the most part, very straightforward and easy to digest.
