Originally posted by belgianfreakahh... your right, I said The Silmarillian, The Hobbit & Unfinished tales because most people consider them part of LOTR, and each book is split in two, thanks for pointing that out
I thought LOTR was 6 books in its own right, just grouped into the 3 you mention, with The Silmarillian, The Hobbit & Unfinished tales were just other stories that were set middle earth & therefore link in to a larger or lesser extent.
And I haven't raed it so I don't know - where do the short stories fit in?
I agree with Raccoon Man. The creators of that list need to be converted into surfboards with steamrollers 😉. Jane Austen does not belong on there any more than soap opera trash on television. I'd say "Crime and Punishment" is the best on there. Here's my pathetic contribution to the reductionistis practice of making lists (in no particular order, no restrictions on genre or presentation). This list just reflects my tastes, and what I consider influential, but people might find some of these interesting, so I feel justified in taking up space:
1. The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
2. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
4. Lila, Robert Pirsig
5. Pensees, Blaise Pascal
6. The Plague, Albert Camus
7. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
8. The Odyssey, Homer (I haven't read it in Greek, so maybe I'm not qualified)
9. The Elements, Euclid (ditto about the Greek bit)
10. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
12. A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift
13. The Rubiyat, Omar Khayyam
14. Das Kapital, Karl Marx
15. 1984, George Orwell
16. Demian, Hermann Hesse
17. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Throught the Looking-Glass, Chalres Lutwidge Dodgson
19. The Bible, Koran, Torah, Book of J, etc.
20. Moby-Dick, or the Whale, Hermann Melville
21. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
22. In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka
....
Originally posted by royalchickenWittgenstein, really? I think he's perhaps the worst thing to happen to philosophy in the past 100 years.
I agree with Raccoon Man. The creators of that list need to be converted into surfboards with steamrollers 😉. Jane Austen does not belong on there any more than soap opera trash on television. I'd say "Crime and Punishment" is the best on there. Here's my pathetic contribution to the reductionistis practice of making lists (in no particular ord ...[text shortened]... Hermann Melville
21. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
22. In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka
....
Never read it. In that vein, what about "The Wealth of Nations" and its spinoffs? I personally restricted my list to things that would generally be classified as "literature" or "Philosophy", if such reductionistic distinctions actually make sense (some of mine stretch these boundaries). Expanding, I would include many others.
I don't know any legends. I read the Tractatus about 2 years ago, and the first lines "The world is everything that is the case..." prompted me to put down the Tractatus and read Robert Stoll's "Set Theory and Logic". Two months later, I resumed.
Basically, his attempts at constructing a logically airtight system of thought seems a noble undertaking. Like Russell and Whitehead before him, and Leibniz before them, he is trying to axiomatize and abstract thought. Further, I think that he succeeds in some measure up to about Section 5 (I think this is the one-it's been a while). Somewhere in there, I believe he runs into a problem conflicting with an idea Goedel laid down in his famous paper (the only Goedel I have read). I'll see if I can find my notes on the subject and answer you more clearly.
In short, the lucidity and the vastness of the undertaking were my main reasons for finding it interesting, although I also found the conclusions somewhat suspect, particularly the idea encapsulated in the last line, which, incidentally, is the profile of a player here called ubergoober: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
This, I think, is a phonetic mistranslation, and Uncle Ludwig was actually talking about the best way to combat hunger: "Whereof one has no wheat, thereof one must eat silage." 😉
I've been rereading certain parts of the Tractatus. Other than a few omissions (for example, his conception of "number" is not suitable for dealing with transfinites), and other problems, it looks quite attractive in many aspects. Why do you say Wittgenstein is such a detriment to philosophy? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts in greater detail.
Originally posted by royalchickenA consequence of the tractatus is that logical truths are nonsense, they are literally neither true nor false. This is, I think, a reductio of his whole project. Additionally, the study of metaphysics and ethics is relegated to the trash bin. The problems of what constitutes the good, and of the nature of reality are alleged to arise from a misuse of language. This gives rise to the arrogant claim that the last 2000+ years of philsophical speculations on these issues was without progress (how could there be progress, when all the assertions in these domains are without sense?). But this is clearly wrong, progress has been made. Contrast the paternalistic political philosophies of the middle-ages to the social contract of the enlightenment. Clearly the latter more cloasely accords with our intuitions about the just use of power, as well as providing the ideological foundations for democratic forms of government. But on Wittgenstein's view, it makes no sense to talk about one form of government being just and another unjust, these ethical notions are, after all, without sense. Wittgenstein's work has lead many modern philosophers to claim that the hard problems of philosophy aren't really problems at all, that once we get our use of language in order, these problems are dissolved. But, of course, his whole project rests on the same types of claims he himself rejects. To say that the world consists of everything that is the case, and that a state of affairis consists in the relation between basic objects is to engage in metaphysics. To claim that a picture theory of meaing is correct is to claim that our words instantiate the property of referring, and this is to speculate on their nature. But to speculate on the nature of our words is itself to engage in metaphysics. Wittgenstein claims that the tractatus is like a ladder, once you climb it, it ought to be tossed aside. This is a telling metaphor, because if you take the tractatus seriously you are literally left without a ground to stand on. There are no foundations for your knowledge, and no account can be offered concerning why any of your claims are epistemically justified. Wittgenstein himself couldn't justify the claims he makes in the tractatus without going beyond what he claims is legitmate speech. The whole project is just wrong-headed (except fot the truth-tables, which are bitchin', and of great use in intro logic classes). Consider those truth tables: obviously the construction of a truth table relies on the principle of bivalence. Every proposition is either true or false. Why not both? Why not neither? No answer can be given from within the bounds of the tractatus for this principle. This is another instance of the principles of logic being without sense. But this certainly doesn't seem right.
I've been rereading certain parts of the Tractatus. Other than a few omissions (for example, his conception of "number" is not suitable for dealing with transfinites), and other problems, it looks quite attractive in many aspects. ...[text shortened]... ophy? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts in greater detail.