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>Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2? Because as Nabokov said, what a scholar one could be if one could only read
by Barrin92 1y ago
>Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2?
Because as Nabokov said, what a scholar one could be if one could only read five or six books. Real knowledge lies in depth, full exploration, individuation. Knowing five books totally, having one unique experience, is worth infinitely more than checking books of your Goodreads list.
Oppenheimer learned Sanskrit just to read the Gita. Was that "utilitarian"? No, but he didn't care, because utilitarianism is a suckers philosophy anyway. Don't try to be good by some stupid quantitative metric, try to do something interesting.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y agoOne notes that Nabokov did not in fact only read 5 or 6 books. Curious. Let's take him at face value, though. Why not read 2 classics 10 times instead of just once, then? Most every language with a writing system has at least 2 classics these days. Finnish, for example: Sinuhe egyptiläinen and Seitsemän veljestä. English: The Bible and Bart Simpson's Guide to Life. Etc. Re/ Oppenheimer, I wouldn't necessarily point at the guy who rained atomic hellfire upon Japan as someone with an especially sound moral compass, or even an interesting view on anything except how to dispense violence at scale. It is true there's a lot of violence in the Gita, so, I dunno, maybe he was just trying to read it as a self-insert fic or something. I don't think you have to be a utilitarian to say he probably did a lot of really bad things, in fact I think it helps not to be. A deontologist can at least say "I don't care if you think someone else will do it anyway, it's still bad and you shouldn't pull that lever."