If a wise philosopher can't or won't develop good writing skills and becomes infamous for being difficult to read as a...

If a wise philosopher can't or won't develop good writing skills and becomes infamous for being difficult to read as a result, but then someone comes along and condenses/rewrites his text into something much easier to understand while preserving the ideas 100%, then, other than historical curiosity, would there still be any reason to read the primary source?

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You change the text, you change the ideas. You clinical retard.

Surely there's more than one way to express an idea. The opposite suggests that it is impossible to understand a philosophical text unless you learn it by heart.

>it is impossible to understand a philosophical text
If you change the text, what you understand is a different text.

>Surely there's more than one way to express an idea.
Not for a text. Now, the author could write a different text, but you aren't content with reading something else by the same author, what you want to change is the text and the philosopher.

I don't understand, how does one express an idea? I thought we had done away with that myth a century ago.

>Not for a text.

This is baffling and boring to hear now. I'm sort of sick of memeing about this, but objectivity is not the cold, hard objectivity that we dismiss it as here regularly. It is a thing we strive towards on the basis that we do come closer to it, meaning that the cold, hard objectivity does exist, but our language, or language processes are faulty. That an idea is remoulded by another text maker doesn't mean the new text has no relation to the old idea - though it may be that your interpretation of the new text changes your access to the old idea. That you're definitely or definitely not accessing the old idea from the new text is probably impossible to know, given that your understanding is most likely akin to one more new text in relation to a cold, hard idea.

The seemingly impossible task, these fucking giant walls, all have footholds leading up and down. You can't reach the bottom or top, but you can move in either direction. You don't have to sit there holding onto a branch, drinking sweet sap forever and a day dingus.

I'm going to go against the memers in this thread and agree. You can cut down on the fluffy bullshit that many people write, either because that was convention when they were writing, or because it makes their ideas sound smarter, and it will be better (more accessible). This is no different than translating shit from Germany to English, instead just "bullshit unreadable English" to "English"

Do you not understand how language works? Why someone might choose one word over another?

if you're asking if you can just read the prolegomena, then yes, you can

>Implying translation into another language doesn't fuck with the ideas and meaning of the text
>Implying cutting massive amounts of content wouldn't be even worse
>Implying any text-cutter wouldn't subconsciously insert their own ideas into the new text

>the cold, hard objectivity does exist
Indeed, it's in the text, black on white. It's an object, it's right there.

>our language, or language processes are faulty
Sounds like a reason to stop changing the text, lest we intruduce further faults.

No, it is very, very different.

Which is why there is a business for translating philosophical works, a business for anthologies of select chapters from multiple works of the same author(s), a business for secondary sources on the author(s), a business for guides to and interpretations of particular works, but no business for rewriting canon philosophical texts for retards like you and OP.

Retards that do not see that the text is the goal, not some fucking obstacle.

>20 line run on sentence is context
Stop memeing

>translation is a bad thing
If you are going to be such a fucking memer, then the only way you can really get TRUE PHILOSOPHY is by living in the exact same time period, with the exact same culture, growing up with the exact same life experience so that the you interpret the words the philosopher writes in the same why he does. Fuck you.

>text is the goal, not an obstacle
That's where you're wrong kiddo. Language/text is just a means to share ideas, not an end, especially in philosophy.

So that account was actually slightly funny once upon a time

>implying language isn't a way of describing concepts
>implying concepts don't exist independent of spoken language

t. analytic pro

>That's where you're wrong kiddo. Language/text is just a means to share ideas, not an end, especially in philosophy.
"there is nothing outside the text because I say so and this is an absolute truth (but there are no absolute truths (which is an absolute truth (...)))"

>Language/text is just a means to share ideas, not an end, especially in philosophy.
You don't only express ideas through language, you think ideas through language. Ideas are language, there's no such thing as a non-verbal concept, only non-verbal impressions and affects, and unconscious phenomenon.

You can't

You have to realize that in order for philosophy to be valid, it must be logically correct. This means that if man wrote a book on metaphyisics, using a set of metaphors as a basis for logic. He was probably using them because it helped his argument.

Condensing the text or rewriting the text is possible. But then it no longer becomes the idea of the individual anymore, it is now a reinterpretation of what that original author said

>Language/text is just a means to share ideas
Did it ever occur to you that it is precisely because the writer is obscure that what you get in a rewriting is going to vary all the more savagely depending on the (re)writer? Your plan to get to the meaning of the text is to change text, author, and ideas. You've already been told why does nobody could make a business out of your clever stratagem so I won't repeat myself.

I'll take a memer over a retard any day of the week.

Read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

>Read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
I did. It doesn't mean he's right considering a lot of his work in it is at odds with what we know about linguistics.

The private language argument is some non sequitur bullshit

>are language, there's no such thing as a non-verbal concept, only non-verbal impressions and affects, and unconscious phenomenon.

"there's no such thing as a non-verbal concept, only those things that are non-verbal concepts"

But why is the difference important?

I mean if you want to psychoanalyze Descartes or pretend that Marcus Aurelius is your friend then sure, the primary text is crucial.
But if your goal is to realize some kind of truth or wisdom, and said truth or wisdom is contained just as much in Substitute Kant Product from Concentrate as it is in Real Kant, but the former takes you 50 fewer hours to read and understand then why not?

You're basically saying that if the ring of Gyges had been the bracelet of Gyges then the argument would have been different. That is absurd.

No secondary sources told me that at the very center of an argument for the existence of an unmoved mover, found in Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Λ, was a theory of desire, meaning not only he does the typical Greek thing and conflate Good and Beauty, which is nothing new, but that even for Logic Man desire, beauty and even pleasure keep the universe running.

You have to engage with the shit and find out yourself what it (the text) can tell you; subtracting or adding to the text only does violence to it, and silences the words of the author.

>Substitute Kant Product from Concentrate
It's called Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics for the Critique of Pure Reason, and Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals for the Critique of Practical Reason, by Kant himself.

Other than that you have prefaces and introductions written by the authors themselves, usually simpler (Being and Time being a famous exception), because before pdf papers were, writers understood readers typically stop at the abstract.

But should you ever want more:
>the text is the goal, not some fucking obstacle

There are philosophers who are difficult to understand because the ideas they are trying to convey are limited by language itself, such as Heidegger

Contemporary linguistics is chock full of crypto-Cartesian presuppositions about what it takes to use and understand language.

This means the concept of grokking something is impossible since fully understanding means being able to assimilate and paraphrase, but you only allow for regurgitating

Not him, but the ideas and the method used to get to them are the goal, not the text itself. I don't read Philosophy for the fucking prose

...

Or maybe you just need to stop being so delusional about "fully understanding" things when even specialized scholars and other authorized personnel can't agree over what's in the text, particularly when obscure, difficult, contradictory philosophical works are involved and you don't even speak their languages.

>the ideas and the method used to get to them
Which are in this one text, not in some other.

>subtracting or adding to the text only does violence to it, and silences the words of the author

>I don't read Philosophy for the fucking prose
Me neither. And when I read a philosopher I read the fucking philosopher, not some other.

So you don't read translations then?

They don't print the original text on the left side, in your country?

I disagree, I believe that feelings are the basis for ideas. Unless some neuroscientist is wasting their time in this thread and can link to research showing otherwise, I believe it is a fallacy to link ideas and language.

Amazon search "BookCaps"
Looks like you don't even know what exists lmao. Looks like you're both retard and a memer at this point.

>No secondary sources told me that at the very center of an argument for the existence of an unmoved mover, found in Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Λ, was a theory of desire, meaning not only he does the typical Greek thing and conflate Good and Beauty, which is nothing new, but that even for Logic Man desire, beauty and even pleasure keep the universe running.

Well now such a source exists :^)

twitter.com/dril/status/247222360309121024?lang=en

if there is any truth to a text it should be able to be reformulated

>not for a text
>what is symbolism

text is the last thing A CONCEPT should be preferentially conveyed through, fucking hell.

underrated jek

Oh. Never fucking mind then

there isn't, in the text there is only words
what you wrote down came from your head not the text

not an answer

what if the original text has typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors-- does fixing them change the meaning? what about changing the typeface, the font, the page size, or the cover?

you do think in words, but there's more to it than that
people can react to something much faster than they can form words about what they're doing
people who have not acquired language (because of being deaf, isolated, etc.) are also able to think, albeit in a much reduced way, and if they're old enough then upon acquiring language can describe how their thought process worked before they had language
furthermore, two people can have the same idea despite knowing languages that don't share any syntactical, grammatical, or phonological features
there is more to an idea than the words used to express it-- or rather, there's more to a concept, or a thought, which should be the final and prime example: English is full of words that mean functionally the same exact thing, especially in certain circumstances, and to discount them as not meaning the same thing is to undermine what English is, which would surely spell changes for your conception of what ideas are

you're supporting his argument though because you're kind of psychoanalyzing Aristotle, which is secondary to knowing what the fuck he was saying in the first place
granted, *why* he said it is important, but it should come after *what* he said

>Ideas are language, there's no such thing as a non-verbal concept
What a load of garbage.

>>the cold, hard objectivity does exist
>Indeed, it's in the text, black on white. It's an object, it's right there.

Is this such a purposeful misreading that I'm suppose to slowly realise you're just Derrida baiting, cause you're bad at it. And considering it's Derrida, that just seems like something only an intelligent person would do. Therefore, considering how much you missed my point, I'm just going to assume you can't reason yet, you haven't developed that part of your brain.

>a reason to stop changing the text, lest we introduce further faults.

Holy shit, are you baiting? That's not even something I believe Derrida would say, and I haven't read much of him.

The interpretations of a text are not infinite in all matters. If you attack this, I'll know you're baiting.

You could probably get 90% of it but reading the original text it dependent on interpretation (which is affected by a lot of things, the obvious one being the time that one is born into). When you rewrite it, you simply write down your understanding, not only warping the text but potentially destroying very important (though perhaps obscure) details. You are not the same mind that committed the text.

>it
is

He () is mostly right but it's not so absolute. Language is the lens, the surfacing vehicle of conceptualisation and internal patterns of thought. Take colour for example, a different language may have more or less distinct "colours". This doesn't remove what you physically see or alter the amount of colours you can conceive but it changes the way you think about what you see. As well as the general internal processing of what you see.

The labels become fused with the concepts, they become nearly the same thing. Which means the way the labels are structured, their aesthetic, changes and how they come about, are important to what the concepts are - and how we think about those concepts.

means you have to make an effort to penetrate through the defences without which he would be instatly
condemned to death you faggot

>Amazon search "BookCaps"
Concerning the philosophers, I found secondary sources exposing some philosophies, as well as translations (of the Apology, Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Analects). Re-read: Those are within the businesses I mentioned, not rewritings.

Either you know this isn't what OP is looking for, which would explain why you told me and not OP, or you're being the usual retard. Perhaps both.

>what is symbolism
user's eisegesis of a text. You can insert all the interpretive keys you want. Does the keyhole change?

>what you wrote down came from your head not the text
The book is not inside your head, it's an object. In the event a book is inside your cranium, I recommend a CT scan.

>what if the original text has typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors-- does fixing them change the meaning?
I should remind you of "deliberate typographical errors" used as different signifiers, so yes, even those matter. See also McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage, différance, and you're waifu being a slut.

>what about changing the typeface, the font, the page size, or the cover?
Pic related is literature according to futurism. They too matter.

>you're kind of psychoanalyzing Aristotle
But he wrote about desire and pleasure all by himself. This is no Freudian eisegesis, the man couldn't be more explicit if he tried. You can also go to the Nicomachean Ethics and see how frequently he speaks of beauty and the pleasure thereof. And that the youth need to be educated so that pleasure goes in a certain way. I want you to see the text for yourself. Personally I don't think Aristotle and Freud met, and that it is more likely that the latter read the former.

>I haven't read much of him.
It shows.

>The interpretations of a text are not infinite in all matters.
But they damn well become infinite if you start replacing shit left and right.

>stop changing the text

>The book is not inside your head
I never said or implied that it is. lrn 2 reed pl0x

You first, that you think you can read things other than words.

Philosophy is a lot like music.
The ideas are mainly the melody.
Most of the time any instrument can play the notes and bring forth a beautiful melody.
But if you play a symphony with the wrong instruments the music fails.

The notes are the idea of a philosophy, only the original author has the original notes in his mind, sometimes, like Hegel, the wrong instruments was used (for the original text itself). Some thinkers are terrible composers.

>you think you can read things other than words
I never said or implied that. lrn 2 reed pl0x

>You have to realize that in order for philosophy to be valid, it must be logically correct.
>logic
>correct
fukin lmao

He means internally consistent

>internally consistent
still fukin lmao

So, OP essentially says that pic related is just as fine as the original. It's easier to understand! And the sad thing is, to many people, it is.

"good writing skills" is a presupposition that mainly reflects more the reality that the western canon is incomprehensibly long and all philosophers in the tradition are fundamentally reacting to previous philosophers themselves.

look at your language used, op. the text is, in your words, the way to the "idea", which is not the case. instead the text is created in the moment of its interpretation. this is literary theory 101.

the use of 'idea' in this thread is just bad.

why are you posting old man derrida, literally privileging his presence while you're inconsistent with your language, implying the text is the philosopher.
>Me neither. And when I read a philosopher I read the fucking philosopher, not some other.

A few hermeneutic circles later, after I managed to lrn 2 reed it, seems you were referring to my comment on Metaphysics Book Λ, if that is the case:
>he wrote about desire and pleasure all by himself. This is no Freudian eisegesis, the man couldn't be more explicit if he tried. You can also go to the Nicomachean Ethics and see how frequently he speaks of beauty and the pleasure thereof. And that the youth need to be educated so that pleasure goes in a certain way. I want you to see the text for yourself. Personally I don't think Aristotle and Freud met, and that it is more likely that the latter read the former.
Otherwise, show everyone ITT where I'm wrong after you lrn 2 rite, pl0x.

>the author could write a different text, but you aren't content with reading something else by the same author, what you want to change is the text and the philosopher