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Originally Posted by Skuj

There's some wonderful posts here amongst the silliness, and I'm slowly digesting them. (And my new books.) Thanks.



Um, I had a gift certificate to a major book store, after 2hrs of wandering about the Art and History sections, I was a) stumped and b) out of time, so on the way out something made me stop at Philosophy. The Russell book seemed interesting, so I looked him up in the Philosophy distionary, and I just said "fuck it" and bought both.

Well, ok....that's not "it" completely.....in University there was a Philosophy class that I was in (as a mandatory Arts elective), and the teacher + subject always fascinated me. Plato et al wrote such incredibly thoughtful works literally thousands of years ago, and that fact always blew me away. Now I really genuinely do want to delve into this. And the good posts in this thread really are impressive....I have so much to learn from you learned people, hahaha.....

And, I'm having a mid-life crisis, plus a lot of stress in my life right now.

You are sorry you asked, I know.

ha ha, im not sorry at all-- on the contrary, this brings the discussion to a more concrete level.

re: lots of stress, i'd recommend the existentialists, camus in particular (the myth of sisyphus FTW). what to do in the face of absurdity, etc. another not-so-heavy and easy to read book would be viktor frankl's "man's search for meaning", which came out of his experiences at auschwitz. it's not academic philosophy but it's great shit.

another book i love for stressful times is not exactly "philosophy" but a great novel-- solzhyenitzin's (not sure of spelling) "a day in the life of ivan denisovich". brilliant fucking book.

hm, see, i'm more of a literature person than philosophy. but back to you:

re: mid-life crisis. before you start fucking strange women and getting diseases and involving yourself in acrimonious custody battles, read plato's symposium and/or phaedrus. it's not a cure-all but you might get some good ideas. these two are available online if you already burned through your gift card.

then again, perhaps i'm misreading the meaning of 'mid-life crisis" into its stereotypical interpretation and you just want to learn something new and i'm shitting, as the expression goes, outside the can (sorry, it's translated).

i remember reading bertrand russell ages ago but it was if i recall some kind of social commentary, nothing heavy. random note: the man apparently fucked around a lot in spite of having horrible halitosis. i guess those are the rewards of intellectual celebrity. anyway, enjoy your book.