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What's the most radical book you've read?

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Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#31

Post by usgroup »

rramadass wrote: post #24

For me it was Jack London's fiction The Sea-Wolf. I was/am interested in philosophical ideas/frameworks but the simple direct materialistic philosophy espoused by Wolf Larsen in the above book made me question everything i had read. Here are the relevant excerpts : https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1jqpar/what_book_sin... We are mere "Animals" with a far more complex social structure than any other species whic…

Nihilism strikes me as a very specific commitment. There is a difference between "there is no meaning", and "we don't know the meaning", or a myriad other recall/precision related questions such as "can we know the meaning", "is one of the following candidates potentially the meaning", and so on.

I can see why for practical reasons some may lean into it, but I don't see it being epistemologically well founded.

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#32

Post by rramadass »

usgroup wrote: post #31
rramadass wrote: post #24

For me it was Jack London's fiction The Sea-Wolf. I was/am interested in philosophical ideas/frameworks but the simple direct materialistic philosophy espoused by Wolf Larsen in the above book made me question everything i had read. Here are the relevant excerpts : https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1jqpar/what_book_sin... We are mere "Animals" with a far more complex social structure than any other species whic…

Nihilism strikes me as a very specific commitment. There is a difference between "there is no meaning", and "we don't know the meaning", or a myriad other recall/precision related questions such as "can we know the meaning", "is one of the following candidates potentially the meaning", and so on. I can see why for practical reasons some may lean into it, but I don't see it being epistemologically well founded.

You have to give up your preconceptions and "think outside the box" as it were. Think of Nihilism as the canvas background against which you paint your chosen philosophy/religion/beliefs. Life "objectively" (i.e. from outside in) is meaningless (applying Occam's razor) but lived "experientially and subjectively" craves meaning. You have to keep both these distinct and separate viewpoints simultaneously in mind while treading your own path. Modern Science has so advanced our objective understanding of the world and ourselves that we can no longer cling to beliefs from the past unconditionally (eg. organized religion) without validating and re-interpreting them in the current context.

Here some of the Hindu schools of philosophy are of great help since many(eg. Carvaka/Samkhya/Yoga/Buddhism/etc.) don't subscribe to the idea of a omniscient "God" but merely construct a experiential worldview based on perception and inference. It is like a mathematical formal system with concepts/symbols/rules/etc.

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#33

Post by unnamed76ri »

Suppafly wrote: post #14
unnamed76ri wrote: post #3

The most radical book I’ve read is the Bible. But dramatically different…Discover of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane perhaps. I don’t agree with everything she wrote but she had some interesting ideas.

[flagged]

1. Direct relationship with God as noted by another comment 2. Rules for treatment of slaves at a time when slaves had no rights anywhere 3. Paul’s writings on women learning which sound backwards today would have been radical at the time

Just to name a few.

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#34

Post by usgroup »

rramadass wrote: post #32
usgroup wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nihilism strikes me as a very specific commitment. There is a difference between "there is no meaning", and "we don't know the meaning", or a myriad other recall/precision related questions such as "can we know the meaning", "is one of the following candidates potentially the meaning", and so on. I can see why for practical reasons some may lean into it, but I don't see it being epistemologically well founded.

You have to give up your preconceptions and "think outside the box" as it were. Think of Nihilism as the canvas background against which you paint your chosen philosophy/religion/beliefs. Life "objectively" (i.e. from outside in) is meaningless (applying Occam's razor) but lived "experientially and subjectively" craves meaning. You have to keep both these distinct and separate viewpoints simultaneously in mind while…

I think that "life is objectively meaningless" is an unfounded statement. You should start by proving that to be true. I also think it preferentially loads words like "objective" and "existence". It also doesn't correspond to any common sense meaning of the word "meaning", since a servile dog's life is meaningful, a doctor's life is meaningful, and so on, in normal speech.

If you mean to say something like "all existence is objectively meaningless, and it is not objectively 'better' than nothingness", then it becomes another statement you need to usefully prove in order to go on with your argument.

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#35

Post by nonrandomstring »

By that definition of "radical": painful and difficult to read, but yielding enormous positive transformation, then for me Aldous Huxley's "Heaven and Hell" (which contains "Doors of Perceptions"), Erich Fromm's "To Have or to Be", Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" and his "The Myth of the Machine". YMMV, but for me all of these were "radical" in challenging my purely rational, instrumental, and I think very limited ideas of knowledge, technology and "progress" that I held as a younger scientist/engineer.

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#36

Post by unrestifarian »

Second Nietzsche - Beyond Good & Evil + Thus Spake Zarathustra.

TPZ is really a poetic/mock religious text version of BG&E.

The first few chapters of BG&E ask the question: why we humans seek knowledge at all? What drives the will to knowledge. . .feelings? A question most scientists never even think to ask. . but that seems the most radical question of all (as in getting to the 'root' of it all).

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#38

Post by rramadass »

usgroup wrote: post #34
rramadass wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to give up your preconceptions and "think outside the box" as it were. Think of Nihilism as the canvas background against which you paint your chosen philosophy/religion/beliefs. Life "objectively" (i.e. from outside in) is meaningless (applying Occam's razor) but lived "experientially and subjectively" craves meaning. You have to keep both these distinct and separate viewpoints simultaneously in mind while…

I think that "life is objectively meaningless" is an unfounded statement. You should start by proving that to be true. I also think it preferentially loads words like "objective" and "existence". It also doesn't correspond to any common sense meaning of the word "meaning", since a servile dog's life is meaningful, a doctor's life is meaningful, and so on, in normal speech. If you mean to say something like "all exist…

There is nothing to "prove" here. I mentioned "Occam's Razor" to imply that among competing hypotheses the one with the fewest entities/assumptions is to be preferred. Here that is "life is objectively meaningless" over other competing hypotheses. There is also some inferential reasoning/evidence here since we know that from the pov of the objective Universe our existence on this planet makes not an iota of difference to its functioning i.e. our species could disappear and beyond some local disturbances the Universe will continue its course. That is why i also used the phrase "from the outside in". Note also that the word "Life" is used here in the sense of objective "Existence" since the pov is from external.

The usage (without quibbling too much) of the word "meaning/meaninglessness" is in the commonly understood sense of "purpose/calling/life-objective/etc.". All these are human-defined and therefore "subjective" as life is experienced and lived. There are numerous ways of doing this as is evidenced by the various schools of philosophies/religions/cults/groups etc.

The two viewpoints i.e. 1) Objective view of Life/Existence from the "outside in" vs. 2) Subjective Experiential "inside out" view of Life need to be carefully disambiguated in one's mind.

Re: What's the most radical book you've read?

#39

Post by rramadass »

leobg wrote: post #15

Almost every book by Nietzsche. For example: Thus Spoke Zarathustra The Gay Science Human All Too Human

> Human All Too Human : A Book for Free Spirits to give its full name

For some reason i don't often see this book mentioned. Perhaps i am biased (this was my introduction to Nietzsche) but i have always found this to be more nuanced, incisive, insightful and less polemical than his other works. Also the fact that it is basically a set of aphorisms (of varying para lengths) on very many topics means that you can read it from any page for short periods of time and still find something of value.

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