Kevin's Watch

Going to attempt to take on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I recently finished Noam Chomsky's Government In the Future as well as Nietzsche's The Antichrist.

Anyone else reading any philosophy books?

I'm reading The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Llama. One thing though, what is his name? I mean, his parents didn't name him Dalai Llama, did they?

Tenzin Gyatso (Tibetan: བསྟན་འཛིན་རྒྱ་མཚོ་; Wylie: Bstan-'dzin Rgya-mtsho; Lhasa dialect IPA: [tɛ̃ʦĩ ɟaʦo]) (born 6 July 1935) is the fourteenth and current Dalai Lama. As such, he is often referred to in Western media simply as the Dalai Lama, without any qualifiers.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

I gotta check Wikipedia more. That's been bothering me for years.

Going to be rereading The Way of the Peaceful Warrior soon, after watching the movie version, Peaceful Warrior twice. That's philosophy enough for me...

I"ve been reading sections of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, The Way Things Are.

I've never read anything by the big names in philosophy. *shrug* I've never much had the urge. But I love things like Illusions, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Godel, Escher, Bach..., The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Sophie's World, etc.

Hey a little Plato, Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, Galbrian or Thomas Huxley never hurt anybody, ok well Nietzsche may have... Which reminds me that I'm long overdue for a re-watch of Mindwalk with Liv Ullman, Sam Waterson and John Heard...amazing concepts and ways of looking at where we are and how we got there--the entire "time" discussion and the DeCartes stuff is truly mindblowing.

I'd go as far as to say that if you liked Godel, Escher, Bach... you'd really get into this film!

Always found Kant painful myself. Poor man could barely write a coherent paragraph, German is not a fun language, and the translations really cause suffering in terms of readability. He's a stickler for definitions, and he adheres strictly to them.

(Normally I like this...I'm pretty keen on accurate definition myself, but if you miss or forget the precise way he defined something, then you can get lost when he uses that precise definition to support an argument. For it all to make sense, you have to accept his definitions.)

Been a long time since I've read anything really philosophical. I think I've mentioned elsewhere what a lazy reader I've become.

Closest in recent time was a reread of Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which, to be completely honest, I now think is a bit over-rated. *shrug*

Illusions remains one of my all time favourites.

--A

Plato's Republic. Like a bible to me, this book has always brought a feeling of peace for me, for reasons I can't really explain.

-B

Plato makes me feel that way too, there is just something about the way he thinks that makes it so much easier to understand than contemporary philosophy.

Avatar,

You are right. Reading Kant makes me want to kill myself.

I've been meaning to read The Sickness Unto Death (Kierkegaard) for almost 2 years, but so far I've been too lazy... This topic just reminded me. Maybe I should start that sometime this month.

Lord Mhoram wrote:You are right. Reading Kant makes me want to kill myself.

You Kant do that!

Yeah, I'm more familiar with his Critique of Practical Reason but the net effect is the same.

--A

I really enjoyed Zen and the Art, for two reasons: One, I love what it says about the idea of a qualitative judgement that occurs pre sensory interpretation, and I relate to the past self/present self conflict that also involves memory loss.
I'm reading TEXTBOOKS FOR FUN.
Right now it's The Theory of Knowledge, an epistomology textbook.

I read the Tao Te Ching, the main Taoism text. Also reading "The Way of Chuang Tzu," as translated by Thomas Merton. Very nice rendering of the text; has an earthy, peaceful quality.

I also have the Discourses of Epictetus, as well as Xenophon's Conversations of Socrates. Supposed to be more historical than Plato's account.

I've read part of Tao Te Ching, LF. I did however read all of Analects. Check that one out.

Lord Foul wrote:

I read the Tao Te Ching, the main Taoism text.

This is a big favourite of mine. Like the Chronicles, it has paradox at it's heart, and I just love a good paradox!

The Tao Te Ching never ceases to amaze me, and I return to it often. No matter what insights I glean from life due to my own experiences, every time I read it it seems to present me with new depths and new things to think deeply about.

Apparently it's the 2nd most translated work of all time, next to the Bible...