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Fellwenner posted:What do you mean by canon? Are we talking philosophy and the like or fiction as well? I think that the Bible is probably the only work in this canon that I've read. I've had The Anatomy of Melancholy on my to read list for ages and have just ordered it, despite the blank Genrally people mean the books that are essentially indispensable to WESTERN LITERATURE. Some people have stuff like The BIble, Shakespeare, Dante + whatever else is a really big name and call that the canon, whereas others have huge exhaustive lists. Harold Bloom's big list of things is for the most part just fiction literature + then occasionally Greek philosophers, but I find that weird because there;s so much philosophy + science that has had a huge impact on everything that vcame after it. Basically the idea of an actual homogeneous Western Canon is sort of stupid, but it makes for a nice reading list.
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Feb 14, 2015 15:14
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I gave at the page count.
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Stravinsky posted:The only thing certain is that the bible is definitely apart of it. The western canon is The Bible, The Jewish Bible, and The Arab Bible.
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Feb 14, 2015 15:15
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Yeah but stuff like Hegel, Schopenhauer, Principia, etc etc etc had such massive effects on all thought following them that it's pretty difficult to disentangle them. Saying you should read Nietzsche because he's a sort of literary philosopher but not Kant because he doesn't make stories he just writes what he believes seems a bit weird to me
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Feb 14, 2015 16:36
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anilEhilated posted:Yeah, but imagine if they had won and the thing would force its way into public eye. A probably better example - Das Kapital and its interpretations have for good or bad shaped the history and literature of the entire 20th century, yet it's a book few will have read nowadays. There;s a difference between "has inspired people to do certain things" and "has shaped currents of western thought". The Bible has directly inspired people to do both bad and good things, but those aren't what matter in terms of its place in the canon, what matters is the direct infuence the thought + writing behind it has had on everything after. Thoughts rather than actions I guess. CestMoi fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Feb 15, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 20:15
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Also those hypothetical books haven't inspired anything yet. The WESTERN CANON is a thing that we can look at now and say that much of what is thought and written now today can be traced back through various lines to these specific books, it's a product of our thoughts in the present. If someone ends up forming a cult based on the Dresden Files that takes over the world and everyone is forced to read it in school then those people will say "everything that is written now is hugely influenced by the Dresden Files and it is part of our canon" but currently it isn't part of our canon on account of its bad and hasn't inspired anyone to write anything worthwhile.
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Feb 15, 2015 20:22
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But there are philosophers!! Nietzsche is on there, Plato is on there, Aquinas is on there. Bloom's drawn the line in a very weird way, and I think that's sort of indicative of the problem with actually trying to write a western canon. You have to draw the line somewhwre so you don't end up including literally everything ever made, but anywhere you draw the line is weird and arbitrary and you leave a lot of perfectly fantastic and incredibly important stuff stranded on the other side
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Feb 17, 2015 09:05
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That's what I've been saying this whole time!!!!
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Feb 17, 2015 17:31
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FactsAreUseless posted:Wait, what's that, all of literature is an ongoing conversation on great works and their effects upon the reader, just like everything in any living culture ever? This , but for video games.
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Feb 18, 2015 12:41
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Stravinsky posted:It is on the level of grievance as well as the celebration and derision of virtual worlds that GTA V and "Bleeding Edge" breathe the same air. And bounce on a puff of the zeitgeist. I'm not going to read this, but thank you.
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Feb 18, 2015 15:15
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FactsAreUseless posted:Seriously though can we talk about Bioshock: Infinite in this thread? Duhhh can I talk about one of the foremost works of wetsern creative philosophy in this thread????
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Feb 18, 2015 15:17
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