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0 pointsbeaconstudios6y ago0 comments

I'm on the back end of Zarathustra at the moment, hence moving onto something a bit stronger. I tend to flick between different books by any given author in order to assimilate their ideas, so I might add Birth of Tragedy at the same time - thank for the recommendation. I'd like to get through all of Nietzsche's key writing in the next couple of years.

I've thought about reading Schopenhauer as I understand he's a great complement to Nietzsche's work - I'll see where I get to with Nietzsche first. Camus is somewhat related as an absurdist compared to Nietzsche/Schopenhauer's existentialism, but a bit more optimistic about the possibility of meaning.

I'm tempted to dig into Plato as the problem of universals is a philosophical topic that I value greatly, and his theory of forms is basically its origin story.

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0kl6y ago· 2 in thread

I heavily recommend the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Republic, and Phaedrus (in particular) - it’s said all of philosophy is a footnote on Plato until Nietzsche. I think only a summary of Schopenhauer (like a penguin selection or something) is all that’s needed - he moves past Schopenhauer pretty quickly.

I enjoyed Camus due to it being an attempt to move beyond Nietzsche and offer something more digestible, but I never moved past the Nietzsche/Plato combo for my personal philosophies (with a heavy dash of stoicism)

Re forms: I find that Plato’s forms are one of the most used mental models I engage with - especially working with software.

beaconstudiosOP6y ago

Thanks for the suggestion - I'll add Plato's works to my list. I tried to get into Republic when I was a bit younger but couldn't digest it at the time, but I wasn't very familiar with philosophy (or reading dry books in general) at the time so it would be worth another go round.

I'm roughly familiar with Camus' ideas as presented in the Myth of Sisyphus, and I like the idea that one can make the fight against suffering the source of meaning - it resonates with my understanding of the role of dukkha in the four noble truths in Buddhism. I personally use a mix of Zen Buddhism and stoicism, which seems very similar to you.

The main mental models I use day-to-day are those derived from systems theory, and I believe that patterns of emergence and recursion described by systems theory are the underlying mechanism that brings about abstract properties. I believe I have a copy of "The Human Use of Human Beings" by Norbert Wiener on the way for Christmas, which is meant to be a great book on the topic of cybernetics which is essentially a sub-category of systems theory.

0kl6y ago

That does sound very similar. I know that in my interpretation Camus is one of the possible outcomes of Nietzsche's thoughts, and that his thoughts afford for many... I think that is something that resonated with me - that _my_ philosophy does not need to be yours, but that we can still find some common ground to survive with one another.

Do you have good recommendations for Zen Buddhism and systems theories?

I have touched on both, but never got deep enough to know what are the main works I should be working off of.

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