Self Help books

As for individual life, it's frankly irrelevant, once you're aware that a person only exists and is bound by the spirit and the predominant ideals of its own time. What you decide, in your subjective freedom, has as its result (together with other free subjects such as yourself) an universal object of a whole nation, and this is what is worth of studying in the first place, e.g. The Republic, Politics and so on.

You would help me by naming the thicc semen daemon

People who are cynical about self help books are just cowards afraid to self assess.
If you are a man I recommend Iron John first. Book goes into how to be a stronger version of yourself.
Another one is "King" by Elliot Hulse which goes really deep into exercise bioenergetics and touches on philosophy of being a man.
Finally I recommend "Hero with 1000 faces" as it delves deep into the "Heroes Journey" all men must go on to become the strongest version of yourself.

Don't clutter your mind with fantasy garbage unless it has practical use. Many older epics like beowulf, macbeth, dante's inferno have real life application if read correctly.

...

I want to help myself to that fine ass if you know what I mean

youtu.be/5Ch5ZCGi0PQ?t=174

Gorilla Mindset

Just do some research on Stanford and other wikis, search up random stuff and if you a certain philosopher interests you,read him!

Just do some research on Stanford and other wikis, search up random stuff and if you find a certain philosopher interests you,read him!*

Yeah but that's a pretty narrow and ideological way of looking at art. By explicitly looking for instruction you defeat the range of imagination that a work of literature and its characters can occupy. It's like doing a marxist reading of a text, it doesnt take any effort u just apply a snapchat filter of ideology. and bam class politics. Reminds me of a friend that only liked rappers that were instructional and 2deep in their lyricism. just enjoy the guwop while you can mane

>Antisthenes not before Plato
There was a Platoness that preceded Plato?

Read (order doesn't matter because it will become a jumble of important bits anyway)
Dialogues - Socrates (Bonus: read memoirs on Socrates by Xenophon and Plato)
Antigone, Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
Medea, The Bacchae - Euripedes
The Oresteia, Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus
The Frogs - Aristophanes
The Illiad - Homer
The Aenied - Virgil
The Art of Love - Ovid
Letters From a Stoic - Seneca
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
The City of God - St. Augustine
The Book of Healing - Avicenna (This book is so important that you can skip all post-Socratic thought and go straight to it)
The Prince, Discourses on Titus Livy - Machiavelli
Discourse on the Method, Meditations on First Philosophy - Descartes
Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare
Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

After this things get messy and there are a lot of paths you can take.

Plato is great, but I've always found history to be more energizing and sympathetic with fitness. Don't overlook the Romans.

Livy:
>When every man must die, all that mattered was whether he died fighting in the line, where the common chances of war often raised the vanquished and crushed the victor, or whether later on amidst the smouldering ruins of the town, dishonoured by chains and tortured with the lash, he breathed his last before the eyes of wife and children, prisoners in the enemy’s hands.

And you'll still find some philosophy in history, in the Romans, and in Roman history. It won't be as direct or cohesive as Plato, but these are not eras or genres devoid of philosophy. Often they'll be congruent with, if inferior to, fuller philosophical texts.

Polybius on greed:
>The thirst of the sufferer never ceases and is never allayed by the administration of liquids from without, unless we cure the morbid condition of the body itself, so it is impossible to satiate the greed for gain, unless we correct by reasoning the vice inherent in the soul.

Sallust on the capacity of human nature:
>But if the mind is seized by perverse desires and descends into the corruption of sloth and bodily pleasures, then for a brief time it enjoys its cravings, but when indolence has worn away strength, time and talent, then men blame the inherent weakness of human nature; each man shifts the blame for what he has created to his troubles.

reverse image search
sage
When the revolution comes all women will lift weights.

Back the fuck up with all these Greeks and shit. I've read over 100 self help books, they're almost all extremely gimmicky, however there have been a few books that have stood the test of time that are written by some of the smartest people of all time.

Letters From a Stoic by Seneca
Zen Mind: Beginner's Mind by Suzuki
Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Cicero is also very good as you can read his philosophy and his letters, to get a better idea of the man, also his speeches but they are more of a thing unto themselves as he was happy to fabricate for the masses.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Power of Habit

Seneca was a lying, venal hypocrite who could not even form a system of morals cohesive within one work and people who advise reading him for moral character can fuck off back to the 1500s.

>The Frogs - Aristophanes

any mother fucker on Veeky Forums.org/lit/ who didn't The Frogs needs to go to reddit and stay there. tbph tho i all i remember from it is the frog part in the chorus that literally goes "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax" lol

What an ironic, inadvertent confession of being a pleb yourself.

sorry dude, but "the nazi frog" is going to be in the history books, both art and politics, deal with it, cuck

>implying pepe isn't the 21st century version of a satyr play

stay trying hard, pleb

>who could not even form a system of morals cohesive within one work

This is bad how, exactly?

tfw you just ad hominem'd him with a vacuous response
please read 'on rhetoric' by plato

>'on rhetoric' by plato
>plato

damn i fucked up

FUCKING ALL OF THEM

wow really makes you think

How to Win Friends and Influence People
Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
The Power of Now

How to win friends and influence people.

Now go read it.

...

Why do you want to improve yourself?

No trolling, just asking out of pure curiosity.

>Tfw even when reading older epics you spend all of your brainpower picking apart the canon and building the lore like a good little nerd instead of knowing how to take lessons

Kill me desu

/thread

what is this about?

learning how to die

It's lame truisms about HURR, FESS UP TO PAIN, DURR, PAIN IS INEVITABLE AND JUST DEAL WITH IT, from a guy who was a verified, bonerfied, chronically high on opium.

Looking to classic literature for applicable values is one thing

Defending a modern self help book is another

The meritocratic ideology that is pervasive in our current society is more or less a lie and has created an environment in which soulless paperback self help books can thrive.

>we think that anyone is able to climb the social ladder from the bottom to the top
>but why am I unable to do these things? why am I not the kind of person who can do these things?
>become depressed because you are now stuck in a paradox, wanting to be someone you are not
>read books self help to alleviate that depression, but only find that they reaffirm the paradox
OR
>do your best to follow this advice only to find out at the end of the day you are still the same person and simply doing everything right by someone else's standards does not guarantee success or hapiness

We are always told to want more, be better, reach higher, to sacrifice what it means to be ourselves to become the kind of citizen that the greater society wants us to be.

It's a strange issue because it's very grey, some really want to do better and work tirelessly towards that so who am I to say that they're wrong, but others will torture themselves endlessly for not being good enough and that is wrong

self-help books are fucking glorious, kys, ever see that article about the self-help books in dfw collection? yes, even ur pseud king read 'em

Agreed, but add other Stoic literature there as well.

>pseud king read 'em
what does this mean? my first thought was that youre talking about Trump, because apparently everyone who is into physical fitness is necessarily a trump supporter, but then I thought about it more and I realized that you're either drunk or retarded

>dfw collection? yes, even ur pseud king read 'em

what part of "dfw collection" did u not understand? the pseud king refers comrade wallace not trump, trump bashing is the pseudiest shit u can do, u don't have to like trump but "omg white ppl think they deserve jobs that pay a living wage? why can't they just be satisfied with their trustfund like me? fascists!" is just the bottom of the barrel, just kill yourself t-b-h

>nobody has posted this

1984- George Orwell
Brave New World and Island- Aldous Huxley
The Fall and The Stranger- Albert Camus
Flowers for Algernon- Daniel Keyes
A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
Stoner- John Williams
East of Eden and Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck
Siddartha and Steppenwolf- Herman Hesse
A Brief History of the Universe- Stephen Hawking

I found all of these educational and enjoyable. Some of them required a bit of effort now and then but generally pleasant reads.

Also basically anything said by Buddha.

Here's my advice, it's sort of based off Schoppy's "eternal dissatisfaction".

If you can find happiness in progress over product, then you will always be satisfied. It's not about reaching a goal, but loving the motion of just moving. Our society has this real obsession with "being" someone, something fixed and perfect. I can see why. They fill us with an idea of security where we have none. But fixed perfect things do not exist - they're either Platonic or nothing. What we are, is messy, we're Zenos arrows darting about all crazy, in endless spirals of abstracts and flux. This, generally, is seen as terrible, and we spend most of our lives avoiding this confusing sensation of self in deadening hobbies, and it explains our great attraction to simplicity, and it explains our total insatiability. Thankfully, that psychology means we are flexible, and we can bend what we like and dislike.

If you could savor the taste of hunger, you would never be hungry again. And if you could be emotionally anorexic to the point of loving this terrible condition, then you will be two things:

a) content
b) always better

It's not easy however.

>no gorgias

shit tier list m8

>Implying I made it
It's helpful nonetheless

This is the only selfhelp book you need.

David Daeda - Way of the superior man
Nathaniel Branden - Six pillars of self esteem

only two you'll ever need

Probably the only book that changed how I look at the world, Maybe including siddhartha - Hesse

Go HAM. Go Scientology.

>one size fits all
>applicable at any time in a person's life span

calm down

Why The Fall and not The Plague?

I suppose it's because The Fall represents it's solution more clearly.

Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic
Aristotle: Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics
Stoics: Epictetus' Handbook, Aurelius' Meditations, Seneca's Letters from a Stoic.

read ABOUT all these guys. there's plenty i've missed and it would be wise also to check out yale's ancient greek history and some lectures/secondary material on figures and concepts not shown above.

philosophy is both a) knowledge and b) a way of life (from Marais' History of Philosophy, which I recommend). Maybe the most important part of studying philosophy is putting it into practice. I think it was David Hume who talked about how you can argue that the external world is just a facade, and that what we perceive and what is true cannot be proved to be one and the same(see Descartes and the Skeptics for this stuff). But, he acknowledged that when you're at the pub talking with your friends, and you leave the pub, you still check both ways so you won't be struck dead by a car.

So, think of philosophy not so much as epistemological wankery, and the ejaculations of theorems that do not really matter in the big picture of human existence. It's an ongoing guidebook on how to live the good life, whatever the fuck that is.

People that hate on Stoics for being proto-self-helpers are missing maybe that most important topic in philosophy: what is the good life? Whether it's isolated asceticism or vile hedonism, these are the questions discussed by philosophers. Socrates really was the first philosopher to discuss HUMAN affairs, i.e. how to best live one's life, instead of the explanations of nature and the heavens by Thales etc. It's also the reason we say pre-Socratic, as it implies a massive turning point in human thought.

so, start with the greeks. the Apology will give you:
>a justification of philosophy and free-thought
>a critique and celebration of democracy
>a masterful use of rhetoric and persuasion
>an ability to think for yourself despite biases and pre-conceptions
>an ability to stand for and argue for what you believe is right
>probably more confidence in expression and the formation of ideas

you'll get smart, and intellectually humble.

What book will help that man face ?

>Plato
>Aristotle
>STOICISM
Pleb the post. Even your image name reveals you are a pseud for not recognizing Laocoön. Start with The Greeks means reading the tragedies not philosophy.

>that most important topic in philosophy: what is the good life?

Fuck you, I hope you die. People like you are the reason philosophy is in such bad shape.

Just busted a nut. Thanks for the pic user.

bestofinsta.org/profile/bribaebee

Start with the Greeks means reading Homer first.

telling someone who's asking about self-help books to read the stoics is perfectly reasonable is it not? i strongly, strongly doubt they're going to tackle a life's work of reading homer, aeschylus, sophocles, etc. in earnest when they could just read some lines of epictetus between sets at the gym and get something more immediately helpful.

read this: chesterton.org/the-revival-of-philosophy-why/

are you sincerely saying that someone interested in philosophy shouldn't read plato, aristotle, and the stoics? do you realize what you're saying? or are you so assured of your regurgitation of weak ideas that are not your own that you don't see the obvious? nearly every university's philosophy syllabus starts with the Apology, works through Plato and Aristotle's body of works, and proceeds to the Hellenists, Stoics, etc.

what is the purpose of philosophy if not to live a fulfilled, thoughtful life? to discover meaning?

My disagreement is not the philosopher you suggested but with the purpose of your suggestion.

You're trying to teach him the philosophy of academia. There are more lessons in stories than pedagogy. What is more inspiring; Greek myths about men competing with gods or what some boy lover thinks about women's dentistry.

cheers

This is currently the best self help, self improvement resource on the planet youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQCfQy9Yg2y8fi5cI8HYUUct

Is this good?

Finished with Gilgamesh/Iliad/Odyssey. What should I read next?

Gorgias is covered in that First Philosophers book.

>I think it was David Hume who talked about how you can argue that the external world is just a facade, and that what we perceive and what is true cannot be proved to be one and the same(see Descartes and the Skeptics for this stuff).
>David Hume

I think you mean Gorgias

>antigone
did someone say pic related?

It's probably better to start with D'Aulaires' Greek Myths so you have some idea what the fuck Homer is talking about

He was fascinated by self-help books, and Joyce liked fat farting asses, and none of that will necessarily prevent a person from writing a good book. So what's your issue?

since the life advice thread got deleted just let me say this: don't let anyone trick u into doing a stem degree or taking a career in tech, programming is the lamest shit ever foisted on mankind...do a business degree, business bachelors, followed by MBA, don't touch STEM, business men all tell u that u should do STEM so they have a study stream of nerds to exploit... don't fall for their tricks, study business like they do...programming may seem fun now but it is a truly horrible way to live

Reading this I couldn't help but laugh, some people would literally kill for a complete work of Plato's written in a straightforward non-dialectic treatise

Do both so you can sell your own means of production.

It's my favourite book. Your argument is like arguing not to take a drunk persons advice on drinking. If he says to drink, look at him and ask yourself if that's who you want to be. If he advises not to drink, then he may be warning you not to fall into the trap. He's gone one way and realised the end was ugly. Why are you so narrow minded as to not realise he's saving you time. Time is all we have ladies and gentleman.

Right now I'm reading Letters from a Stoic again. "You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind."

Been reading his letters over and over each day, and a new one each day. As well as writing notes which I'm going to order one day under subheadings such as "friendship".

I'm looking through this book to make a collection of books I can read over and over to aid me in life.

Just because Marcus Aurelius was an emporer and said to (paraphrasing) accept your lot in life. Which can understandably be thought of as convenient. Actually makes sense; let's say you had a manual labour job you were thrust into. (either from family or situations outside of your control) Rather than complain and seek for a comfier job, you should first look at the interesting things about the job instead of just the bad things. Another way of saying, "the grass is greener on the other side."

I'll leave you with my daily allowance for today:)

"After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge."

I bet a large portion of people who complain about women and failed marriages did the opposite of that ^^.

Amen, brother. I was doing a tech graduation purely on sys analisis/dev, I had always seen programming as interesting and fun, but halfway through it, I couldn't stand it anymore. Switched to a graduation that has a bit of programming but its main focus is business and a bit of IT, like data treatment and analises and I am loving it. Made a few courses with free certificate on business and administration, soon I will try my luck on finding an intership.

>Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Elaborate.