Now reading...

[Holy Ghost]

On 6/14/2025 at 12:56 PM, Pim said:

Kant could be tough but Hegel is definitely more complicated. I read in Dutch and I think reading it in another language than my first will make it even more complicated 😉 but I don’t mind. Just means I will get slower trough it and leave it aside on those evenings when I am tired or unfocused. Got his biography for those evenings which is very fun to read and gives his other book more context.

Can't agree more when it comes to translations. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time is a pinnacle example. This translation, which Heidegger did not assist the translaters is notoriously misunderstood because Heidegger wrote in this extinct German dialaect, which comfounded a translation for nearly 30 years, when this translation was finished in 1960:

 

Finally in the 1970's shortly before his death in 1976, Heidegger assisted Joan Stambaugh to retranslate Being and Time in what I believe is the definitive edition.

 

[Niko]

a colleague of mine can claim that three of his four grandparents took at least one course from Heidegger himself in Freiburg around 1930... I sympathize very much with his grandma who replaced the course with a course about (iirc) French cathedrals after a few weeks because the latter course was more fun... my late dad had a lifelong struggle with the obscure language that's still commonly used in the humanities in Germany... I have many childhood memories of him complaining about the way people said things in faculty meetings etc...  and, somehow, that preference for a simple and clear style in scientific writing has stayed with me... to the point where my tolerance for convoluted sentences and fancy words is pretty low... certainly far too low to appreciate Heidegger... 

In the 1830s, Heinrich Heine wrote a nice history of German philosophy up to Kant and Hegel... iirc, his diagnosis is something along the lines of: Kant would have wanted to express himself clearly but lacked the ability... and then generations of followers copied his obscure writing style as if it was part of the message... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zur_Geschichte_der_Religion_und_Philosophie_in_Deutschland

[gvopedz]

19 hours ago, Holy Ghost said:

...is a juggernaut. Like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I had to live with this book for years (under the direction of Tom Rockmore no less!) to truly understand what is being said. Like Kant, Peirce, Aristotle, Heidegger, Husserl, I had to live with Hegel, to understand Hegel.

If you want to read Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit, I suggest that you also read (or first read) Robert C. Solomon's In the Spirit of Hegel.  https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Hegel-Robert-C-Solomon/dp/0195036506

[GA Russell]

I was able to guess nearly everything about this one.

I guess after reading enough Ross MacDonald stories, you can spot the clues.

[ghost of miles]

I'm just about to embark on one of Macdonald's novels in the set that Library of America devoted to him.

Currently finishing this:

... and about to start this:

[jlhoots]

John Grisham: The Whistler

[ejp626]

Just finished The Leopard.  Will try to get around to watching the movie very soon.

Just under halfway through Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Also midway through Richler's St. Urbain's Horseman.

[felser]

1 hour ago, ejp626 said:

Just under halfway through Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

I have that Didion book on my (literal) short stack of titles to read next, along with The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers.  Here's what I'm currently reading (I normally have a Marcus book and a Peterson book working, along with whatever else I am reading).

 

Edited 4 hours ago by felser