You are correct. It's really really depressing. I was raised on classical literature then fell into online right circles after I left home and the amount of disgust and rage I felt at their retarded butchery of the pre-christian literature I loved is hard to convey. The Web (specifically, not the Internet) and the iPhone were huge mistakes. People listen to 5 minute videos that summarize three blog posts that summarize the opinions of their dumbass authors on the actual work in question and then think they understand said work.

At least it motivates me to actually read more. I'm working on re reading fear and trembling (long overdue, I missed a lot the first time and I forgot how wonderful it is) and actually reading Leviathan since I skipped most of it in highschool.

>>25208027
exactly.

read the communist manifesto

>>25208027
>I'm never trusting anything anyone says again. I'm only reading primary sources.
Correct attitude.

And it's not just that you should read primary sources; you should read them IN FULL. I've noticed over and over again that popular soundbites don't do the author justice.

First example off the top of my head:

Lots of people like to laugh at Edward Bulwer-Lytton for the "dark & stormy night" opening. Now, some people also know that he happened to say "The pen is mightier than the sword."

OK, they think, he did at least say that too. But even knowing that, you might reasonably think, "Well, that's a bit platitudinous. Sorry, but the pen isn't always mightner than the sword."

But then suppose you read what the guy actually wrote:

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."

Very different. He's saying, a great ruler will enforce civilized values, so you don't just get "might makes right", the way you do in a state of nature. It's almost the opposite of the platitudinous meaning most people remember.

>>25208061
>"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."
Holy shit lol that's so much better
I hate midwits who parrot things without verifying them

>>25208027
He does write more about Christianity towards the end of volume 1, anon. The perception that he firmly believed Christianity caused the fall of rome isn't something people just made up.
It sounds like you've picked up from somewhere that he wrote what was essentially an anti-christian axe-grinding polemic interpretation of Roman history instead of what he actually wrote which was an earnest but ultimately off-base attempt at an explanation for the fall of the Roman empire.

>>25208027
I noticed this with the Bible too. 90% of what people talk about are the first 50 pages of the Old and New testaments.
As for Gibbon, agreed. He does talk a little about how Christianity is a more passive worldview not focused on the material realities, but it's one of many factors and it's not even presented as a total negative, where popular understanding would have him presenting it as a civilization wide suicide. If you want to see Gibbon actually mad about something, wait till the very end where he spends a few pages bitching about the fucking Italians constantly going to war with each other and destroying old Roman architecture.

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>>You accuse all people of making half-formed opinions of books they've never read
>>You haven't even made it halfway through the book, yet you have magically formed the correct opinion
Retard

>>25208027
>i will only read primary sources
>reading secondary source

bro

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Criticism of Gibbon comes from spergy e-tradcaths seething at based Gibbon's work despite it being a foundational work of history.

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>>25208027
>be me
>read volume 1
>jubilant that I still have 2,500 pages left to read
>still me
>now on volume 6
>realise it will all be over soon
>ywn read Gibbon for the first time again

>>25208027
This became apparent to me when I read Schopenhauer. Everyone only ever brings up his depressive and anti-woman stuff but never his metaphysics or aesthetics. Another example is about a year ago there was a thread here on lit about Robinson Crusoe where, approximately 30 posts in, nobody in the thread knew that there were other human characters in the book besides Crusoe. You have to remember that only, generously, 10% of people actually read and of that 10%, 9% only read YA slop and smut. Whenever anyone tells you they read ask them a few surface-level questions and you’ll pick up pretty quickly if they’re lying. However, sometimes you’ll find yourself in the company of a bunch of people playing pretend in which case you can wallflower and listen, laughing or crying as you see fit.

>>25208027
Based. Your observations should always come first anyway. You honestly are making Edward Gibbon sound interesting; I might buy his book. I recently bought some stuff from Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, and was wanting to get back into reading, and I keep hearing about Gibbon and his history book, I might buy.

>>25208027
It's retarded too because gibbon was like one of the first people to do a full dive to a semi complete history of rome.
So like if anyone would have a correct opinion on it i imagine it would be the guy who went through like 99% of the sources.

>>25208027
>the "things people always mention/cite/say" are from the first 50 fucking pages of the first volume. I'm never trusting anything anyone says again. I'm only reading primary sources.

100% true, this is generally true even at the scholarly level. I went to a meeting of academics recently and honestly nobody had read what we were supposed to be discussing, nobody had the first clue what any of the authors were talking about. Honestly I may as well have just posted on /lit/ all day instead.

>>25208027
Yes this is completely accurate. I have been reading philosophy for 10 years now and every single philosopher has been more interesting than others made him sound and has had only the dimmest, or even no connection with the standard take. You have to read for yourself, never trust summarizes. Frankly some of the random autistic effort posts I have seen here have been more accurate than what ‘everyone knows’ about a given philosopher.

>>25208027
Test.

>>25208027
Thanks for reminding me to read the English enlightenment authors.

>>25208027
Are you any good at math? If so, you will be shocked at how much you've been lied to about modern physics, really science in general, by people who don't understand the subject and are simply repeating what someone else who doesn't understand it told them once

>>25208027
true Nietzsche talks about this

>bro wtf why hasnt he talked much about christianity?
>anyway im only one volume in and havnt even gotten t othe part where Christianity becomes prominent in the discussion

kek are you fucking retarded? why would you make this thread

>>25211668
child’s reading comprehension, not even worth explaining it to you since you won’t learn unless you figure it out yourself

>>25211255
I have found that it's either this or the opposite. Most of the enlightenment era philosophers I read I found to be a bore of antiquated or self-evident ideas (Hobbes, Locke), or that their ideas were more interesting than much of their writing (Spinoza, Rousseau). But also works that I actually did like, such as Plato's Republic (among other works) or Machiavelli's The Prince, they're about much more than what is often discussed. Many works get summed up to a single thesis point when that does a disservice to such works.
A part of this is why Hegel interests me so much, as that kind of simple explanation or thesis for his works doesn't usually exist (other than the thesis-antithesis-synthesis fallacy or Geist idea) as he's deemed to be "too complicated" for general explanation. I read a bit of Faith and Knowledge, currently reading Philosophy of History then getting into PoS with some secondary works attached to it, hoping not to be disappointed (although after reading Kant and Schelling I don't have super high hopes)

>>25208027
>Every time I get around to actually reading some famous author, I immediately realize that 99% of what I've heard about him is meme shit from people who never actually read him.
Go outside and talk to real people, not 4jizz

>>25211183
I very much dislike when Don Quixote is mentioned and people go “haha the windmills” when that is a very early chapter and not a particularly funny or interesting one compared to what comes later.

>>25211963
test

>>25208027
I jate people even more that read the first hundred pages of a book and think they can then make an over generalization concerning the whole book which they haven’t fucking read yet!
Stfu and finish reading before posting about it.

>>25208419
LMAO, this was exactly what I was thinking.

Praetorian Guard were the original zogbots, the Christians were trying to build parallel powers to escape the constant cycle of faggot emperors (except Titus/Julian/Hadrian) that kept circulating, and there’s a conspicuous chunk missing in modern texts/audio where he talks about the jews.

Rome collapsed for the same reasons all countries do, a delusion that an executive/legislative branch of government can coexist while completely ignoring their constituents. The Romans grew apathetic, and were more than happy to watch it all burn.

>>25210812
>You have to remember that only, generously, 10% of people actually read and of that 10%, 9% only read YA slop and smut.
I would wager the % of people reading classics on this board is even lower than 10%. Take a look any time a goodreads thread is made at the number of books this board reads. It's abysmal. It'll be halfway through the year and people will post showing they've read 6 books, or like 20 with half of them being YA science fiction shit.
If you're someone who actually reads a lot (or just classics/philosophy) you'll quickly realize how dogshit this board is.
Honestly, take any /lit/ top 100 yearly chart, and I'd guess only 1% of board users have read even half of what's on it. There's a reason why it's the same two dozen threads repeated ad nauseam anymore.

>>25210812
to be fair, robinson crusoe is an extremely boring story. I had to drop it like 2/3s through out of sheer boredom. I had an old child version of the book which I read decades ago and it was much more fun due to being so much shorter and "to the point".