Philosophy vs literature

Which one makes you wiser? a better person? offers more penetrating insights into the human condition?

>the Greeks, Kant, schoppy, Hume, popper
>Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, borges, calvino, Pynchon, dfw

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=EaDh0BVLxpo
youtube.com/watch?v=JBBySRcLFHc
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

literature was a joke that got out of hand desu

>no third pill
>no psychoanalysis

>a better person
Well geez "better person" isn't defined here, but this will surely depend on the person and the philosophy or literature in question. It could be some idiot reading Rand and becoming a ridiculous, bitter real life Scrooge McDuck for all we know.

I guess philosophy is more dangerous, for starters, as you may very well go totally astray. With literature, it is a bit harder to find anything that could make one a "worse person" - well, I guess nurturing depressive tendencies is pretty easy.
But philo is also probably the way to go if you want "insights into the human condition".

>implying psychoanalysis isn't basically philosophy at this point
At least Freud and Lacan. Anyway, it is a bit hard to work with that stuff without also using philosophy - the guys themselves wrote plenty on it, even if in very critical a tone.

Third pill is a Zizek meme. I agree with u tho boi

>thinking the Greeks only wrote philosophy
>not including the Greeks in literature

Literature > Philosophy

Lit will make you a better thinker and writer. Philosophy is simply endless attempts at "mind-fuckery" and practically anything in a relative standard.

However, Religion > Literature > Philosophy. It's more than just a study at this point, it's a way of life and purpose of existence.

>inb4 fedoras and their neil degrassi-science touting

youtube.com/watch?v=EaDh0BVLxpo

I agree. I think Literature is much better to gave you insight on how to become a better person rather than philosophy.

For you see, in literature you are given an example of moral lesson which put inside of a context. It gives you a conditional situation that enables you to sympathize there.

But philosophy is different. You can't take the lesson in philosophy right away. Most of the time you need to consult it with other person and most often learn about the history of the writer to understand fully what they're trying to convey.

I would say literature taught you though living a thousand lives. But philosophy showed you inside of a mind of philosopher and their arguments on something.

that kind of reddit empiricism shit isn't really common on this board. me personally, I don't have much of an interest in finding a purpose in life, so religion isn't that attractive to me. I also don't have an interest in making fun of people for it or treating it as if it's an important issue in my life.

its all literature.

>better person
it depends on the way you read it.
more to the point, it depends on how prone you are to self-pity.


>at this point
did previous generations treat it more like a study?
than we do now?
at this... point?

None of those makes you wise. Not one bit.

from that list, Schopenhauer

I find that rationalizing my inability/unwillingness to read widely really helps with gaining the wisdoms.

If you can't derive all of philosophy from your observations in nature then you need to leave.

Well, that's crazy!

religion is just ideology though. it's no different from philosophy

Literature.

Literary plebs are generally better than normal people, Philosophy plebs on the other hand are just assholes.

youtube.com/watch?v=JBBySRcLFHc

>tfw i'm a literary pleb and i'm worse than most people

When will this board stop regurgitating the fucking Shakespeare meme?

His plots literally have as much depth as the runner up for some shitty local teen's writing competition. Shakespearefags try to find meaning, subtlty and nuance where there isn't any.

>Hurrdur my name is julat my pussy is wet
>hurrdur my name is roman my dick is horny
>Hurr love defeat society
>hurr tragick def

>Implying you can separate religion and philosophy

Nietzsche said god was dead.

>his plots
>teen writing
youve got it the wrong way around m8

>penetrating insights into the human condition

That's such a meaningless catch-phrase.

If you're going to disparage Shakespeare you need to do better than that.

Also,
>reading for plot

Shakespeare is literally plot, with flowers.

This board shows that both philofags and litfags can be cancerous when their entitled opinions are uninformed, but I find litfags more palatable because they are driven by passion and not a desperate need to prove how they are better than everyone else.

You suck.

Could you be any more of a pleb?

Well kill yourself.

Hume

Pyrrho

Why not combine both. You listed some examples already.

Borges, of course
DFW did have an entire book about Wittgenstein
Dante made use of theologian's speculation on the structure of the heavenly spheres
Goethe is the poet-novelist-scientist, and Elective Affinities aimed to combine those genres
Shakespeare grabbed a bunch of stuff from Montaigne and poetified it

Beyond that, some of Wallace Steven's poetry also reaches close to a philosophical doctrine transformed into verse.

Kierkegaard had no problems writing an entire fictional 'Seducer's Diary' to help outline the 'aesthetic' part of his philosophy.

Umberto Eco's books are all practical applications of his philosophy.

Greg Egan also uses the latest developments in quantum physics to conceive of new systems.

Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice is an exploration of information theory as well as the foibles of humanity.

I'm sure some guy will come up with a fantasy novel that finds a way to turn Kant's system into a magic system.

The point is, such demarcations are bloody stupid.

yes.

seconding Greg Egan there, that shit blows my mind!

Permutation City is crazy and I felt like I could easily identify with the characters

I need both, poetry too.

Usually I go:
>Fiction
>Fiction
>Philosophy/poetry

neither

And by disagreeing with him you are engaging in philosophy

I prefer literature, feeling matters far more to me than reason ever could.

Philosophy is just a subcategory of fiction with narratives that take themselves overly serious.

Non-fiction doesn't exist.

Kierk's philosophy rings like poetry to me. Calling finding meaning within nihilism like "building castles on nothing...fencing with imaginary partners" really hit me. His line on anxiety always soothes me as well:

"Anxiety is the dizzying heights of freedom."

Not to mention: "When the tyrant dies, his reign is over. When the matyr dies, his reign begins."

All chilling sentences that move forward a philosophical argument. Hell, Sartre's plays are another great example, and I just know Camus's Priest in The Plague is a dialogue of sorts between him and Kierks. More generally, this shit in trends and literature is really shaped by that internal conversation authors have which each other. I think literature is a further, morphing language of philosophy really. What Witty did with his syntax was like Joyc'es Finnegan's Wake.

It's not, penetrating = phallus = knowledge and understanding. It's a statement of phallogocentrism.

yawn.

If you want wisdom,read history

I loveto you user :)

So you cite a single higly idiosyncratic thinker who wasn't around for the first two millena of Western philosophy as evidence that religion and philosophy are separate subjects, ignoring Augustine, Aquinas and the rest of the medieval philosophers, Plotinus, Averroes, and Maimonides? Maybe if you didn't have such a low opinion of philosophy, you would have learned from it how to construct an argument.

>Kierkegaard
Have you heard about The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts.

Scifi book that came out this year all about the manipulation of Kant's categories. Really good, maybe his best work.

Stupid question. Both have different aims and methods. It's comparing apples and oranges. Also, the two do not mutually exclude eachother. Literature can be philosophical (Dostoevsky) and philosophy can be literary (Plato), to give two obvious examples.

As a side note, I expect to see lots of posts in this thread trashing philosophy. Most, if not all, of these people have read little to no philosophy and understand none of it.

Certain Celebrity's Tweets

Perhaps a Language of Birds ?

>better person

1. Philosophy is an approach.
2. Literature is a medium.
3. Action fulfills them both.

Spooks are Semiotics

>better person
Sure is spooky in here.

But philosophy isn't a translation of the good book for atheists despite what so many people seem to think. And neither is literature. Read enough of the good stuff in either discipline and it will change you, just not in the way that people who don't read imagine it will.

Fuck off

Probably right.

Glad you didn't realize this was a competition, because I am already so far ahead of you.

Dumb opinions.

>Apples to oranges
>Not mutually exclusive
You need to get some of that analytic dick.

Only sane person in this thread.

>Which one makes you wiser? a better person? offers more penetrating insights into the human condition?

I'll start by calling out what seem like a widely held belief in both philosophical and literary circles.

Remember when Kant said the human mind in one sphere of its cognition is called upon to ask questions blah blah blah.

Well, surely you must have realized that, unless you're aiming at a very particular audience (hence Kant's constant brushing off of radical skeptics in favor of actual, what were at the time, scientists developing metaphysics along with other philosophical individuals) "human reason" tends to be pretty different from person to person.

>Which one makes you wiser?
I assume you perceive wisdom as increasing with knowledge and knowledge being a kind of extreme belief (I like to think of it a la David Chalmers), there isn't much common ground as to what is certain and what is not which is why different people will think you as wise or unwise regardless of your mix of phil/lit readings. If you're considering academics, certain departments will consider you wiser for sticking to philosophy and these are the kind that would usually hold philosophers including Kripke, Quine, Wittgenstein and Russell in high regard, in so far as they are conceived to be interesting (these are also usually the kind of folk who have a very low opinion of Hegel, and would see the emphasis on Greeks in this board as stupidly heavy). On the other side of the spectrum considering philosophers who enjoy Hegel and the Greeks, among others, you will usually find them supporting a mix of philosophy and literature, although the emphasis would still be on philosophy, note that some of them would find that distinction irrelevant even.
Outside of academia, or more broadly, outside of "intellectual" hobbyists, the general population will perceive you as wise regardless of your lit/phil mix, in so far as you need to talk to them though, phil will probably go a longer way in terms of being able to present convincing arguments.

>a better person?
Depends on the kind of person you are, try out everything and see for yourself. I'll assume better means happier and doesn't depend on people perceiving you as wise or "well-read".
Personally I'd say Zen Buddhism and Stoicism were good reads for this, for me. Literature was less effective.
In general I'd imagine most people finding that literature helped them be a "better person" though.

>offers more penetrating insights into the human condition?
Depends on your reasoning once again. I'd imagine a consensus being that philosophy helps with this though.

>The point is, such demarcations are bloody stupid.
I don't understand how something that doesn't think can be stupid