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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 30, 2010 at 11:49 pm
(This post was last modified: October 30, 2010 at 11:51 pm by The Skeptic.)
(October 30, 2010 at 11:40 pm)Jonah Wrote: Welcome to the forum, Brandon! While I am not fortunate to know German, I do read literature from German authors on occasion (mainly Nietzsche at the moment). Do you have any good suggestions for German literature?
I used to be a voracious reader of Nietzsche, and I still am interested in him and respect him. I found that I largely disagree with his conclusions on morality and epistemology, as well as his occasional disregard of the sciences. However on an existential level and as a critic of religion, he's a fantastic read. He also comes across as a social darwinist, and it's easy to see how his philosophy was manipulated by his sister for her Nazi reasons ( though, for the record, he's defended the Jews several times in his writings).
If you want more philosophy, check out Schopenhauer. He was an influence on the early Nietzsche. He's also very pessimistic. He was a peculiar man, he was paranoid and slept with a weapon under his pillow, (sadly) a misogynist ( his essay "On Women" is a pain to read). Because of his pessimistic attitude, he never had any students take his classes, so they all took Hegel's classes who taught at the same university which lead Schopenhauer to despise Hegel. He's a peculiar man to study if nothing else. His pessimistic essays will make you live up to the facts of life, and The World as Will and Representation is an improvement on Kant's philosophy, and also foreshadows many of Freud and Darwin's ideas. I suggest starting off with the book "Essays and Aphorisms".
For fiction, I already recommended Kafka. If you are into mythology, check out a translation of Das Nibelungenlied ( I have a German original with a parallel translation to the original dialect it was written in ). It inspired Richard Wagner's operas. I haven't read them myself ( but i've been meaning to ), but I have heard great things about Herman Hesse.
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 1:03 am
(October 30, 2010 at 11:12 pm)The Skeptic Wrote: (October 30, 2010 at 11:01 pm)Zen Badger Wrote: I thought the book was crap. It was written like a movie. And the movie wasn't great either.
If you want good comedy fiction try Terry Pratchett, Friggin' brilliant!
P.s hi.....
I couldn't help notice a similarity to National Treasure. I liked the book because of that. I know it was written poorly, but it was written in a way that was a quick read. Like I said, i'm not a big fan of fiction. I do enjoy Franz Kafka though. He's a fantastic writer, especially if you are fortunate enough to understand the original German There's an almost Schopenhauer-ian element to the stories. For anyone that likes Edgar Allan Poe, you would enjoy Kafka and you can find English translations fairly cheap.
If you like science, you should try some real science fiction, such as anything by Greg Bear, or Dan Simmons.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 3:56 am
(October 31, 2010 at 1:03 am)orogenicman Wrote: If you like science, you should try some real science fiction, such as anything by Greg Bear, or Dan Simmons.
Stephen Baxter is also very good, though he can be a bit depressing.
Ian M banks I would also recommend.
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If you're not supposed to ride faster than your guardian angel can fly then mine had better get a bloody SR-71.
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 9:05 am
(October 30, 2010 at 11:49 pm)The Skeptic Wrote: (October 30, 2010 at 11:40 pm)Jonah Wrote: Welcome to the forum, Brandon! While I am not fortunate to know German, I do read literature from German authors on occasion (mainly Nietzsche at the moment). Do you have any good suggestions for German literature?
I used to be a voracious reader of Nietzsche, and I still am interested in him and respect him. I found that I largely disagree with his conclusions on morality and epistemology, as well as his occasional disregard of the sciences. However on an existential level and as a critic of religion, he's a fantastic read. He also comes across as a social darwinist, and it's easy to see how his philosophy was manipulated by his sister for her Nazi reasons ( though, for the record, he's defended the Jews several times in his writings).
If you want more philosophy, check out Schopenhauer. He was an influence on the early Nietzsche. He's also very pessimistic. He was a peculiar man, he was paranoid and slept with a weapon under his pillow, (sadly) a misogynist ( his essay "On Women" is a pain to read). Because of his pessimistic attitude, he never had any students take his classes, so they all took Hegel's classes who taught at the same university which lead Schopenhauer to despise Hegel. He's a peculiar man to study if nothing else. His pessimistic essays will make you live up to the facts of life, and The World as Will and Representation is an improvement on Kant's philosophy, and also foreshadows many of Freud and Darwin's ideas. I suggest starting off with the book "Essays and Aphorisms".
For fiction, I already recommended Kafka. If you are into mythology, check out a translation of Das Nibelungenlied ( I have a German original with a parallel translation to the original dialect it was written in ). It inspired Richard Wagner's operas. I haven't read them myself ( but i've been meaning to ), but I have heard great things about Herman Hesse.
I've heard of Kafka, but I didn't know about Schopenhauer. Thanks for the suggestions! 
"If your god has to make peace with me in my final hour when he has my whole lifetime to prove his existence to me...do you think I should bother?"
"But the happiness of an atheist is neither the vacuous enjoyment of a fool, nor the short-lived pleasure of a rogue. It is rather the expression of a disposition that has ceased to torture itself with foolish fancies, or perplex itself with useless beliefs." - Chapman Cohen
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 11:17 am
just saying hi, although the topic already changed to philosophy. philosophy is good.
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Hot shit, another Lew Black fan! 
Welcome, from the worn, flogging end of the Bible Belt!
Seems to me that's where parents always screw up nowadays...fill a house with books, teach a kid to read before indoctrination really starts...then you're fucked. Now I see where I'll get all my philosophy reading suggestions.
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 4:50 pm
(October 31, 2010 at 4:08 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: Hot shit, another Lew Black fan!
Welcome, from the worn, flogging end of the Bible Belt!
Seems to me that's where parents always screw up nowadays...fill a house with books, teach a kid to read before indoctrination really starts...then you're fucked. Now I see where I'll get all my philosophy reading suggestions.
You're also in the Bible Belt? I'm in upstate South Carolina. I swear that churches come in neighborhoods here. I probably wouldn't even know about evolution were I not obsessive in my own scientific research, as high school biology kindly skips over the grandest theory science has ever known, and the one organizing factor that makes the rest of biology make sense. Go figure, right? I sometimes wonder if I am really from here (technically I am from North Carolina). Northerners don't think I sound southern. I've been asked if I was from Pennsylvania or Boston many times.
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RE: Hello, My name is Brandon
October 31, 2010 at 5:47 pm
there are four churches on my mile run circuit alone in my area.
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