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What are we all reading rn and how do we feel about it?
Incel by ARX-Han, finished this. pretty good and a good example of an "online" novel. review incoming Taipei by Tao Lin, enjoying it so far and not understanding the hate it inspires Thus Spake Zaruthustra, not sure what to make of it Zhou Enlai: A Life by Chen Jian, comprehensive and full of information but not exactly engaging writing
Currently reading/studying an introductory overview of Hegel that is very thorough - it will probably be the first review I write on this site since it's very fresh in my mind. I like it quite a bit, but think that there could've been clearer expository prose. The most interesting thing I've learned is how fascinating Hegel's Philosophy of Religion is. Hegel is presented as arguing that the idea of God in Christianity as a transcendental divine figure, is actually at odds with the ethos of Christianity itself. He refers to the moment of Jesus dying on the cross as an example of a necessary self-negation of this traditional notion of God. Since God is the embodiment of dialectical reason ("the Idea") in the world, if God is to embody the spirit of love - God as Jesus must die and renounce its previous claim to other-worldiness. Since God is dialectical reason at work through everything, God must become known through itself - which requires the community of believers (humans) who achieve this self-conscious knowledge. And just as God renounced itself (on the cross), the point of divine love and the point of Jesus is that we humans are also to self-surrender our clinging to life. We're to admit that we're not fully sustained by ourselves but by God/dialectical reason at work in the world. And paradoxically - by learning to accept our finite lives and renounce our wayward desires, we no longer become fearful of death and thus actually find the freedom to live in a way unconstrained by such anxiety. (In other words, Hegel seems to "naturalise" God as basically being reason at work in the world. On this interpretation, it's neither a spiritual substrate working through history, nor the classic divine God. It seems that Hegel effectively reads Christianity metaphorically.) It also seems to me that this conception of God, freedom and the human community runs through American Pragmatism (community), the Existentialists (freedom) and even in leftwing religious figures...
Marvin Cohen's The Self-Defined Friend. Great concept, good execution thus far.
The Red and the Black. Pretty good, but slow going so far. Really takes its time.
Just finished Michael Parenti's To Kill a Nation. It is a fantastic breakdown on how Yugoslavia was systematically destroyed by NATO.