What's the Veeky Forums stance on Great Books?

They're really unnecessarily difficult prose.

Watch this guy's video about great books.
youtube.com/watch?v=cXqrAQoM6d4

You mean your video?

No, the video I linked. My videos aren't relevant.

if you want to focus on reading they are good. they look like shit though.

Veeky Forums probably hates them for no discernible reason except in order to be contrarians.

I don't care what the binding or spine looks like so long as it is
1) durable
2) not completely hideous trash

Checked out some of Plato's dialogues of Great Book at local library recently. Utter shit translation.

I think it was a great endeavor, a shame it failed.
We need that knowledge. This said, it's fine if you don't read them (in the manner they deserve). It takes time, it takes work. But you can read some, see what hypes you and read that book. Also pick up the syntopicon, you can find on lib. If you want more tips on what to read, see the list on 'how to read a book', and read it since you are there.

>attacking the Jowett translation

kys pseud

>defending 150 yr old translation
Thought Veeky Forums was better than this. Great works should be re-translated every ~100 yrs to reflect language/scholarship changes. I even think the translation for Either/Or is shit because it's about 80 years old and hardly readable. Plus it's translated from an obscure language.

The Jowett translation is objectively fine.

You have to be autistic to be able to understand it with a modern linguistic frame, so if that fits your definition of fine then yeah, it's fine. I would never give someone the Jowett translation though. I'd give them Grube/Reeve or something within the last 50 years.

>translation for Either/Or
Why don't you just use Princeton's Hong translations? I have a hard time believing they'll be outmoded anytime soon.

I keep seeing that view on Veeky Forums, for some reason older translations are seen as better. Islam threads always recommend the Pickthall Quran despite it being 88 years old and with a strong Ahmadi influence. The KJV or Douay-Rheims are always recommended in Christianity threads despite being hundreds of years old and having terribly outdated textual sources.

>KJV
You're on the Veeky Forums board; the KJV is recommended because Tyndale's prose has had an incredible influence on following literature, unmatched by all save Shakespeare.

The NRSV is recommended for ecumenical study purposes often enough, but the KJV has the highest literary significance of any Biblical translation.

>Princeton's Hong
I want to but I picked up a used copy of Swenson's for cheap and they don't have the Hong translations at my local library and they are expensive unfortunately. When I get around to going through all of Kierkegaard I'll probably get them though.
I'm against the KJV shilling. Not only is the manuscript it's based on utter garbage, the translation isn't very good (ie accurate for purposes of doctrine) either. Read NRSV to understand what the Bible actually says.

Can't recommend Hong enough — they allow Kierkegaard's wit (really, every inflection of his emotion) to shine through unmuddied.

If you have an e-reader, LibGen has most (if not all) of the ePubs for Hong. If you don't have an e-reader, it's a worthwhile investment that quickly pays for itself tenfold.

I do have one. Thanks, I'll check that out.

Volume 1: archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.150395

Volume 2 and 3: archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.547448 archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.460726

Vol 1 lays out function, vol 2-3 are the index and the rest are reference material. They were meant to be used as study material. Modern version would be web based version, kind of like wiki for ideas, with links to classics.

>open video
>"Jordan Peterson"
maybe not

Pretty good, I own and have read the whole set.

This. Those fucking Jews flew too close to the sun buy crowding the spine with a brand advertisement rather than accentuating the actual contents of the book, letting the whole aesthetic appeal (the only appeal) of the series go to shit. Not only do they look bad, but it makes it difficult to organize and find the volume you're looking for, completely defeating the purpose of labeling the spine. 0/10.

I know an accomplished professor who has these strewn about his house in disarray. I once picked on of them up and read it. It was good, but that is the extent of my experience with them.