What is the most difficult #nonfiction or #academic #book you have ever #read? What made the #book so difficult for you? Would you #recommend others #read that #book?
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@bibliolater @reading @bookstodon
Also sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
I could not make heads or tails of it. Its way of thinking was unpenetrable to me. At first I thought it was because of my limited understanding of the German language. So I tried a translation. Didn't help.
And what is yours?
@MarianHellema @reading @bookstodon Thank you for asking. I have found Heidegger and Kant's works challenging.
@Rhube @MarianHellema @reading @bookstodon I was going to mention Hegel as well but thought the list would be too long.
@bibliolater @MarianHellema @reading @bookstodon it's kind of fascinating, because he was writing under heavy censorship and trying to obscure some of his rlmeaning from the authorities. But even so...
@Rhube @bibliolater @MarianHellema @reading @bookstodon
During my semester abroad in Canada, we read Nietzsche's Genealogie der Moral (iirc) in English, which was confusing to many, as the translator did not elaborate the crucial semantic derivation of Schuld from schulden (again, iirc) - which is totally lost in English (debt/to owe).
Almost as confusing as commonly pronouncing [Hannah] Arendt like Ayn Rand. Took me a couple of weeks to figure that out. That was really odd.
@smagnussen @Rhube @bibliolater @reading @bookstodon
Maybe I should blame the translation then :) But frankly, it had more to do with my lack of philosophical bagage.
And I promise I'll never mispronounce Arendt, haha!
@Rhube @bibliolater @reading @bookstodon
That's a good story, a German preferring the translation to the original! But I might be better off with Peter Singer for Hegel.
I tried some Heidegger, long time ago. To an uninitiated like me, some of his language seemed totally non-sensical. Depending on my mood he made me laugh out loud or very annoyed. Maybe I should find some "Heidegger for dummies"....
@MarianHellema @bibliolater @reading @bookstodon Well, it's just the truth, not really a story.
Yes, of course, I didn't mean to imply you made it up!
@bibliolater @MarianHellema @reading @bookstodon when I was doing my PhD another grad was German and she said she preferred to read Kant in English because it was even harder in German - at least with the translation someone had already tried to work out the meaning of the words.
But for me, Kant was nothing to Hegel. My lowest marks of my undergrad were for the Hegel course. I needed Peter Singer's Very Short Introduction to Hegel to explain it to me 🤣