Alt Text
Show parent replies
honestly i think a lot of authors deserve a second visit from me (or third, fourth, fifth...)
i've often expressed frustration with the limitations i find in those i consider roughly my allies, but still refused to take my enemies seriously.
despite espousing something akin to "kill the great men of history, but don't forget to pillage their corpses" and generally being opposed to the anti-intellectual tendencies of The Left, i still think there was some moral reluctance on my end to allow myself to be swallowed by the text
and i don't think that was entirely misguided, like maybe at that stage of underdevelopment it was necessary for me to be obstinate. in any case i don't judge myself for it, but i think i'm ready to start wandering a little more.
it's kind of a weird grab-bag of influences but i think the process of becoming acquainted with stirner, nietzsche, n0thanky0u, and most significantly geuss were really the ones who had the most influence on me loosening that restriction.
i'll also note that the process of becoming acquainted was a lingering one, and it was one where i had to take their influence and live a lot more life before it foregrounded itself
stirner was an important step towards the relinquishing of influence that did not serve me, nietzsche was one of the first authors i took very seriously that clearly had Bad Views TM, n0 was ambiguous for a while and required repeated exposure to understand his shtick, and that intermediate time
where i didn't have the comforting reassurance and had to sit with the ambiguity while being intently interested was an important emotional moment. and geuss really demonstrated practically how to go about engaging with these authors by example.
he took influence from a host of sources, illustrated how supposedly more similar thinkers were actually disastrous and worse than the supposed alternative (ex. rawls // nozick),
the shocking ways to find value in unexpected places, and how to tease out something meaningful from those who are held in high regard but regularly superficially engaged with, and the inversions and appropriations you can make out of dead-ends.
ooh i should add machiavelli to this list, i took an entire course dedicated exclusively him and it was probably one of the only courses that i think actually attempted a more serious reading. even if you approached tepidly, spending so much time familiarizing yourself with one work of one
individual (crucially it was fairly meticulously contextualized before and during!), you sort of can't refrain from enaging