Enquiry is a very short book, but the Treatise is not. I certainly couldn’t read it in an hour. The edition I have is about 300 pages long. Anyway, I agree that Hume is awesome. I think, though, that most what is of greatest value in his work (empiricism, the problem of induction, instrumental rationality, ethical anti-rationalism) is probably already part of the collective memeset at LW, in more sophisticated guise. So I’m not sure it would be worth it for the average LWer without a genuine interest in the history of philosophy to work their way through Hume.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, I think a lot of people here could learn a lot from.
I misremembered the length of Treatise. I agree that Hume will just tell you things that you probably already know if you visit this site. So people should read Nietzsche instead. Very good point.
To people who want to read Nietzsche: note that every secondary author except Giles Deleuze is probably misinterpreting Nietzsche’s work. Also note that Giles Deleuze uses Nietzsche like a historical sock puppet so that he can get his rhizomatic message of anticapitalism across. Deleuze is the best that I’ve found, but even his stuff is very selective. I didn’t do this personally, but I’ve often heard it repeated that new readers of Nietzsche should start with The Gay Science. That might be the best place to start.
The best parts of Nietzsche are the ones that no one seems to know about. The dangers of the safety of the “Last Man” is awesome. The parts where he talks about being a lion and recreating value is awesome. All of Zarasthustra is awesome. Twilight of the Idols is hilarious at times. The “pop culture” Nietzsche is nothing like the one in his actual books.
It helps to remember that Nietzsche was basically a Christian who found out that God was dead who then got incredibly sad and nihilistic and then worked his way through it by realizing his past and current ignorance, and becoming very critical of Christian ideals and he then found new and objective ideals to work for, and became awesome. He’s anti Christian, but he doesn’t criticize literally everything about them and they share some common ground. He hates them, but he also hates his past self. He also managed to fix his past self, and his books are meant to try to fix other people as well. He does feel empathy, he’s still human.
Also, he’s not responsible for the Nazis. That was his stupid evil sister’s fault.
He hates Schopenhauer, maybe reading Schopenhauer should be done before reading Nietzsche. Not sure.
Agreed both that Hume is awesome, and that most of his valuable insights are incorporated already in our memeset. If you want a clear, easy and fast to read version of the proto-form of that memeset from 300 years ago, there is nothing better than his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Spinoza has also many early insights, complementary to Hume’s (roughly, you could say that Hume anticipates LW’s epistemology and metaethics, and Spinoza anticipates LW’s naturalistic metaphysics and computationalist philosophy of mind) but Spinoza is more difficult to read casually with profit because of his outdated terminology (e.g. “God” instead of “the Universe”) and his tiresome pretense of deducing everything from self-evident principles.
Enquiry is a very short book, but the Treatise is not. I certainly couldn’t read it in an hour. The edition I have is about 300 pages long. Anyway, I agree that Hume is awesome. I think, though, that most what is of greatest value in his work (empiricism, the problem of induction, instrumental rationality, ethical anti-rationalism) is probably already part of the collective memeset at LW, in more sophisticated guise. So I’m not sure it would be worth it for the average LWer without a genuine interest in the history of philosophy to work their way through Hume.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, I think a lot of people here could learn a lot from.
I misremembered the length of Treatise. I agree that Hume will just tell you things that you probably already know if you visit this site. So people should read Nietzsche instead. Very good point.
To people who want to read Nietzsche: note that every secondary author except Giles Deleuze is probably misinterpreting Nietzsche’s work. Also note that Giles Deleuze uses Nietzsche like a historical sock puppet so that he can get his rhizomatic message of anticapitalism across. Deleuze is the best that I’ve found, but even his stuff is very selective. I didn’t do this personally, but I’ve often heard it repeated that new readers of Nietzsche should start with The Gay Science. That might be the best place to start.
The best parts of Nietzsche are the ones that no one seems to know about. The dangers of the safety of the “Last Man” is awesome. The parts where he talks about being a lion and recreating value is awesome. All of Zarasthustra is awesome. Twilight of the Idols is hilarious at times. The “pop culture” Nietzsche is nothing like the one in his actual books.
It helps to remember that Nietzsche was basically a Christian who found out that God was dead who then got incredibly sad and nihilistic and then worked his way through it by realizing his past and current ignorance, and becoming very critical of Christian ideals and he then found new and objective ideals to work for, and became awesome. He’s anti Christian, but he doesn’t criticize literally everything about them and they share some common ground. He hates them, but he also hates his past self. He also managed to fix his past self, and his books are meant to try to fix other people as well. He does feel empathy, he’s still human.
Also, he’s not responsible for the Nazis. That was his stupid evil sister’s fault.
He hates Schopenhauer, maybe reading Schopenhauer should be done before reading Nietzsche. Not sure.
Agreed both that Hume is awesome, and that most of his valuable insights are incorporated already in our memeset. If you want a clear, easy and fast to read version of the proto-form of that memeset from 300 years ago, there is nothing better than his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Spinoza has also many early insights, complementary to Hume’s (roughly, you could say that Hume anticipates LW’s epistemology and metaethics, and Spinoza anticipates LW’s naturalistic metaphysics and computationalist philosophy of mind) but Spinoza is more difficult to read casually with profit because of his outdated terminology (e.g. “God” instead of “the Universe”) and his tiresome pretense of deducing everything from self-evident principles.