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What goes on the reading list for the Students?

anon_xuwa said in #4188 1mo ago: received

When someone is properly enlightened and can think outside the lies of the age, we say "he's done the reading". There are some obvious candidates for what that reading is exactly; the current classics like Moldbug, Land, and BAP for example. The 20th century works of Mishima, du Berrier, Junger, and various other American and German hellenists come to mind. Scholars of civilization like Quigley, Spengler, and Stoddard seem to be "on the list". Of course Nietzsche is central. Moldbug tried to make Carlyle a thing, but it hasn't stuck that I've seen. Other 19th century masters like de Gobineau, possibly Schopenhauer, and even Goethe show up frequently in discussion.

Reading history backwards through this lens, Machievelli, Montagne, and others of the Rennaissance stand out. The classics of Rome and especially Greece have been staples for ever, but this curriculum especially emphasizes the pre-socratic works of Herclitus, Pindar, and Homer. The pre-christian and early-christian Germanic mythos is underdiscussed but unambiguously on the list. Beyond the classical West we frequently cite Confucious, ibn Khaldun, and the Vedas. Beyond these the aspiration seems to be a general hunger for knowledge of the magnificent spirits of idealized aristocracy, the aim being to draw a through line from the ancient proto-Aryan warbands, through classical history and the modern rise of European civilization, into the uncertain future.

I am no scholar, but I get a lot out of reading this tradition when I do. The intense invigorating feelings of clarity, of breaking out of the cage of accumulated bullshit and lies, of hope that what we half remember in dreams was once reality and will be again, are quite compelling. There is simply no greater pleasure in life than reading this stuff with the boys and being let in on the secrets of the world while deep behind enemy lines. And more than pleasure, I am convinced this program of reading is among the grand historical Important Works in this endless current year.

So my first question is what else you would put on the curriculum for a cohort of energetic young Students looking for the truth of the world. What specific works most powerfully express the insights and feelings necessary to any worldview that would respond to our age? What have you been reading, fellow Students?

Students? Yes. This idea from >>3760 has stuck in my head. We need networks of reading groups and active clubs of young American men who want to save their country. They will read old books, hike, lift, debate, and organize together. Nothing else could possibly be the basis of any active hope. Why not do it?

My second question is the meta question: how should we think about the nature of our studies and metapolitical activity here? Are reading groups, active clubs, and civic engagement the right model? Do we compile a formal introductory reading course, or keep it as an informal discourse of recommendation and exploration? I think we should be curating many such lists and formally reading through them with the bros, but what do you think?

referenced by: >>4201 >>4203 >>4291 >>4293 >>4294 >>4367 >>4368

When someone is prop received

jewishman said in #4197 1mo ago: received

I’m skeptical of the “obvious” list. Unless "online discussion groups" counts, these lists don't represent a distinct tradition. I'm tired of seeing scraps of disparate canons taped up together. It seems like these recommendations, separated from any canon or tradition, are pointless, without institutions to instruct them, without a sense of what the end-point of the cultivation might be. So, Mishima is invigorating. Spengler is comforting. And they've both become politically sound, apparently.

It’s sometimes occurred to me that it’s easier work getting a young, well-read progressives—or an out-and-out communist, even—to entertain reactionary ideas than it is to find a reactionary that has read a novel since their undergraduate years. The latter group might have a rap about a handful of modern works of philosophy, or criticism, or theory—but anything beyond that is unlikely. (There are some edgy literary people, it's true, but I would include them in the first group, since, even if they're into transgressive aesthetics and political performance, they have to be coaxed into the heavy stuff.)

No more lists of politically-sound books, please. Distrust anyone with a reading list they can't justify beyond delivering you from ideological danger.

So, I suppose what I'm advocating is to find and protect the intellectual tradition before you make the listicle... By this I mean, before you assemble another based book seminar, try to find some of the rapidly dwindling number of people left in this world that can actually engage with a book. Go out in the world and find people that can talk about Spengler and Heraclitus. Engage with what's left of the tradition. Go to a reading or a lecture. Read criticism and respond to it. Join some faggy book club. And work from there. That's worthwhile metapolitical activity, I think.

referenced by: >>4290 >>4367

I’m skeptical of the received

zerog said in #4198 1mo ago: received

1. I think some Buddhist teachings like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind have a place here but unfortunately the great majority have been co-opted by Progressive western Buddhists. So perhaps books like "The Way Things Are" from "politically incorrect" teachers like Lama Ole Nydhal would be better.

2. The big challenge is leadership, getting people together, and identifying shared purpose. What is the purpose of such organization beyond encouraging engagement with old texts and exercise? What does it mean to "save their country"? The old American men's clubs like the Elks, Eagles, etc. devolved in to men's drinking clubs and now just drinking clubs for everyone.

Something I would like to see is a men's only combat sports club. An actual gymnasium. I believe this sort of environment would naturally lead to sorts of intellectual pursuits you are describing. However, doing this publicly is basically illegal thanks to the Civil Rights Act. So you'd have to operate underground, which is makes financial operations challenging. But if you already have an audience then there's no problem! Get BAP on the phone and tell him to stop worry about forums and establish Club Tropical Excellent California!

referenced by: >>4201 >>4203 >>4293

1. I think some Budd received

anon_mepu said in #4201 1mo ago: received

>>4198

Addressing the point of the gymnasium, this was posted here months ago but is about an embodied philosophy: https://im1776.com/2024/11/23/virtue-of-cruelty/

>>4188

I don’t think it is necessarily about what books you read, although the single most important contribution of the new reactionary Right is that there has been a renewed interest in reading old books. The problem I see is that young men, who in good faith try to read these, they simply don’t get it. Firstly because they don’t have the training (yes you need training to properly parse texts) and secondly because the way they absorb knowledge is broken. They live as virtual entities with no real grounding besides LARPing. It’s not really their fault, no one has really tried to give them shape and if the base material is good you might get some kind of improvement but by and large it lands hollow because it’s disconnected from a larger world. The canon or whatnot shines as an aid to navigating a fascinating and cruel world, if you’re not in it, then there is no value. The text above addresses that.

As for a general programme for ‘based’ young men, I’m trying to get this off the ground in my own town. Lots of smart, talented kids, not necessarily explicitly right wing, who would benefit from not being crushed by the long house. I just don’t know how to gauge the level of engagement I can ask. Or even where to start. My MMA gym is full of really great young guys but they’re not the types to read Homer. The types who read Homer wouldn’t end up at my MMA gym.

referenced by: >>4202 >>4204

Addressing the point received

anon_cawo said in #4202 1mo ago: received

>>4201

You can put up a paper asking for email signups.

Could these students, although willing, be like the natural slaves of Aristotle: unable to parse and understand reality without someone mediating it for them? People who live in abstractions and words rather than reality are like this, and I'm not convinced it's possible for them to escape.

When you meet a guy that gets it, he usually speaks a completely different language. Of the guys who socially get it, an even smaller percentage understand technology. Getting independent men to work together and speak the same language and agree is the hard part, but if you can do that you have a core to build upon.

Getting the followers is the easy part.

You can put up a pap received

anon_qyfi said in #4203 1mo ago: received

>>4188

What is the Boot Camp version of this list? If you could get a young man to read just 3 books for maximum effect, which would you choose?

Specialization and deeper reading to follow. Presumably Bronze Age Mindset makes the cut.

What is the best book or near-book-length summary of "Cremieux threads"/Sailer/io? Once upon a time it was The Bell Curve, but there's a lot of new and better science since then. Is there an updated successor? Either way, this is a critical entry on the list. To approach the truth you first have to break someone out of the Big Lie.

The Students must be grounded in reality and clean epistemics. We can have some esoteric poetry on the list, but the core curriculum is about ground truth. The fact that ground truth is so at odds with orthodoxy--that our dominant power ideology is built around some easily falsifiable claims, not unlike Catholic Geocentrism a few centuries ago--will be exciting and radicalizing to the men we're looking for.

>>4198

> Something I would like to see is a men's only combat sports club [...]

A fighting gym called "CTE"? Lol

> What is the purpose of such organization beyond encouraging engagement with old texts and exercise? What does it mean to "save their country"? The old American men's clubs like the Elks, Eagles, etc. devolved in to men's drinking clubs [...]

This is exactly the right question.

What is the Boot Cam received

zerog said in #4204 1mo ago: received

>>4201
This essay is interesting but confused with nomenclature. There is no virtue in cruelty. Violence need not be cruel, it is often a necessary act of powerful protection. Lama Shang was a Buddhist military commander who took his students to battle and gave blessings to his enemy as he slaughtered them. He protected both his people from harm and his opponents from committing harmful acts.

Being a good sparring partner is a compassionate and joyful act, not microdosing cruelty. If you microdose cruelty while sparring then you need to be warned and kicked out of the gym.

Torturing and flaying prisoners alive is cruel and stupid. Clan life outside of civilization is, almost by definition, largely cruel and stupid.

This essay is intere received

anon_jyja said in #4289 4w ago: received

I have been thinking about precisely this question; here's the draft curriculum I put together. Comments welcome: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z4YZyT5CS1wIl1iNk-wgs37VakywZ1421XH-Ia1rFjI/edit?usp=sharing

I have been thinking received

db said in #4290 4w ago: received

>>4197
I believe this post has it right - start with people, not dead trees. If the books offer value, turn to them at the moment that they are practically relevant. It's certainly good for everyone to have a broad understanding of the landscape of wisdom out there. If the book lists serve any value at all, it is to provide that high level view. It's also good to have a decentralized coverage of that landscape in depth by having one person read one book and share their thoughts back with a group. But I don't see much value in everyone deeply studying a phd level reading list when there are practical steps available that would move things forward faster.

I believe this post received

prime said in #4293 4w ago: received

>>4188
I think Fear and Trembling would be a good go to. Easy enough to be digestible for students new to philosophy and existentialism.

It would be very good to keep things informal, and even at that this shouldn’t be labeled a book club. It should be labeled a youth club that gives young adults places to interact with others and do meaningful things instead of just play video games/drink alcohol. I think that if things are kept more informal it’ll hook a larger group of young guys into reading if done correctly.

>>4198
This anon knows what’s up. Anyways if it’s primarily underground it’ll add a lot more mystique to the place too.

I think Fear and Tre received

anon_xupy said in #4294 4w ago: received

>>4188
Just on the books point, I would say that Democracy in America is a necessary read, and one that doesn’t require any training to understand. If you’re not american, you should read it to understand America. If you are American, you should read it in order to grasp how the water you are swimming in differs from the world default. You should also read it to become a fuller citizen of the country. I know a lot of people on here (including me to some extent) are palladium-adjacent and that often comes with more skepticism towards the ideals of the founding than is common on the mainstream right, but I still think it is a necessary read that illuminates a lot.

If you are a reactionary interested in the fall of the European aristocracy and the rise of communism in all its forms, you should read Reflections on the Revolution in France. It’s not necessary reading but it also kind of serves as a mirror image to Democracy in America. Two types of Democracy.

referenced by: >>4296

Just on the books po received

anon_newu said in #4296 4w ago: received

>>4294

Democracy and Reflections are literally the two central classics of conservatism. These are extremely basic! The problem is that people either 1) don't read or 2) read works that don't matter or require lot of background that they don't understand. Reading four really central works truly in depth is better than reading sixteen peripheral works without context which is better than reading sixty-four without understanding.

referenced by: >>4305

Democracy and Reflec received

anon_xupy said in #4305 4w ago: received

>>4296

Reflections is indeed basic in the sense that everybody learns about it, and it is the basis of the original tory intellectual tradition. But, perhaps for that same reason (it’s seen as “vanilla”), I don’t often see reactionaries comment on it or discuss it. The roots of modern conservatism are tangled up with the reactionary tradition, in europe at least. Burke is not too distant from de Maistre.

I don’t view Democracy as central to modern conservatism at all. Certainly not in europe, but not really in america either. It’s fundamentally a foreign, vaguely liberal, perspective on america. Most of what it writes about is stuff that conservatism has failed to conserve. That same stuff (local voluntary civic orgs for example) was viewed at the time as closer to the ideals of revolutionary france than to british conservatism or french reactionaries. America is fundamentally not a super conservative, nor reactionary, country. But Cthulu swims fast, now Jeffersonian america would be seen as unbelievably right wing.

But generally I agree with your point. People talk too much about needing to read a broad “western canon” that no one person is really properly trained to understand. A couple important books capture the heart and soul of a given issue or intellectual lineage. I think Democracy is one of those books. Thucydides maybe not so much.

referenced by: >>4318

Reflections is indee received

anon_guga said in #4318 4w ago: received

>>4305
I also think Democracy deserves its spot--but Thucydides too.

I mean look, is the point of these reading lists to provide potted answers or is it to train minds? Thucydides does not provide potted answers. But reading him carefully, pondering as one goes, forces one to confront some of the biggest questions very directly. (It also provides the historical context without which all of the BAP stuff makes no sense).

I also think Democra received

anon_guga said in #4319 4w ago: received

Here are some of the things I would suggest:

For thinking about thinking:

* Lippmann, PUBLIC OPINION, esp. chapter I.
* Sperber and Mercier, ENIGMA OF REASON
*Slezkine, HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT, chapters II-III.

For how power actually works:

*Caro, POWER BROKER or THE PATH TO POWER
[Caro has liberal sensibilities, but a pretty unflinching commitment to detailing how the sausage is actually made, what sort of nexus between money, elite networks, state power, and public opinion is needed to accomplish anything; he is a Machiavel for the modern age).

On winning and losing + violence:

*Schelling, ARMS AND INFLUENCE, chs. 1-4 (for slightly more formal, see STRATEGIES OF CONFLICT)
*Clausewitz, ON WAR, esp. ch. 1
*Boyd, PATTERNS OF CONFLICT (there are multiple explanations of Boyd's theories outside of those slides; just pick one).
Thucydides, PELOPONNESEAN WAR

Here are some of the received

phaedrus said in #4367 2w ago: received

>>4188
IMO talking about doing the reading mixes up two distinct issues. First, there's ideological education, which one can get from either reading explicitly right-wing books or by simply reading some more apolitical classics with a correct hermeneutic slant. Secondly, and less visibly, having "done the reading" can be used to refer to someone who's read the basic works of the Western tradition, aka the "canon."

So, when someone on Twitter talks about reading Machiavelli as a right-wing project, that could either refer to a course of reading a smattering of "based" authors (BAP, Machiavelli, Hitler, Mishima, Jünger, etc.) or engaging in a study of Western political theory (Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Polybius, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, etc.)

In my personal opinion, it's a mistake to go too hard into the "based" list without a firm grounding in the Western tradition. This can kind of suck because, especially for those of us with attention spans fried by social media, it's genuinely difficult to get a good education in the classics of the Western canon outside of the university environment. However, if you're trying to read many of these classic works without already having a framework within which you can situate historical context, references, and undertones within the works, then I think it's just going to be a very unrewarding project of study. These books were written for audiences deeply familiar with the entirety of Western history and the Western intellectual tradition up to the author's time period, and it's hard to get a good exegesis without that knowledge.

>>4197
I believe that this is somewhat to the point that jewishman is making, namely that individual works shorn from their intellectual contexts and read for ideological purposes are not going to facilitate the development of a well-formed mind. (to be continued...)

referenced by: >>4368

IMO talking about do received

phaedrus said in #4368 2w ago: received

>>4367
Circling back to OP >>4188, we ought to think about what the point of reading is for our guys. One reason to read books in the year 2025 is to better understand the social and political situation that we're in and gain intellectual frameworks that can allow one to navigate said situation adeptly and successfully. Another reason is the pursuit of genuine truth, gnosis. Aristotle says in the opening to the Metaphysics that all men desire by nature to know, and the fulfillment of this desire is a noble goal. A third reason to read is for the purposes of cultivating oneself as a human being. This is the traditional purpose of education, and in my view, it is the most important. To be an elite requires a number of characteristics, but a deep understanding of human nature and the nature of human affairs is certainly one of those required traits.

With all this in mind, I would advise reading lists to be tailored to the specific needs of the student at hand. The student relatively unacquainted with the Western intellectual tradition as a whole, or with any other equivalent tradition, will need a general intellectual education, at least in the basics, before diving into more polemical right-wing works. Students who are already deeply familiar with the history of political philosophy can get a great deal of benefit from some of the classic critics of the liberal-democratic mainstream, but might be even better served by reading some of the more extreme authors who can counterbalance the moderation inculcated by a standard academic education.

As a final point, it is vitally important not to neglect fiction, poetry, and the arts in general as a component of one's education. A right-wing political education counts for nothing if one is not also a wise and well-turned-out human being.

Circling back to OP received

phaedrus said in #4369 2w ago: received

With all that said, here are some of my recommendations:
>homer
>pindar
>genesis, exodus, job, ecclesiastes
>herodotus
>thucydides
>PLATO
>ARISTOTLE
>aeschylus, sophocles, euripides
>plutarch
>livy
>vergil
>aurelius
>cicero
>caesar
>gospels, take your pick
>maimonides (if you're really that into it)
>AQUINAS, at least in part
>MACHIAVELLI, especially the Discourses on Livy
>bacon
>hobbes
>descartes
>locke

>leibniz
>berkeley (extremely underrated mindfuck)
>HUME
>burke
>de maistre
>rousseau
>KANT
>HEGEL
>tocqueville
>schopenhauer
>emerson
>kierkegaard
>marx
>thoreau
>NIETZSCHE
>FREUD
>dewey (marginal)
>WITTGENSTEIN
>HEIDEGGER (essential)
>junger
>hitler
>hayek, just an essay or two
>arendt (The Human Condition is slept on)
>evola
>camus (not to be taken seriously, however)
>macintyre
>BAP

I'm sure I'm forgetting some good authors, but once you've read these guys you'll have the lay of the land and can branch off into more niche areas.

referenced by: >>4372 >>4374

With all that said, received

xenophon said in #4372 2w ago: received

>>4369
> here are some of my recommendations:

Good list, but it already trends a bit long, so it's especially important to weed out the fluff. For a core list, I would eliminate:

- Dewey
- Arendt
- Camus

Good list, but it al received

anon_fipa said in #4374 1w ago: received

I read some of these in high school and even less after. I've wanted to read more, but haven't made the commitment. I started reading Mortimer J. Adler's A SYNOPTICON with some ideas that feel interesting. I read Love last night, and the essay resonated. Maybe eventually I'll be pulled to a specific author or work, but this feels like a sustainable starting point to familiarize myself with the classics. Sharing in case anyone else is in a similar situation to me, wanting to dip their toe into something like >>4369.

A SYNOPTICON is Volumes 2-3 of the 52 Volume GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD series here: https://archive.org/details/encyclopaediabritannicagreatbooksofthewesternworld

The great ideas below, each with a 5-10 page essage introducing them and extensive references from the classics on each: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, Love, Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, World.

referenced by: >>4376

I read some of these received

egon said in #4376 1w ago: received

>>4374

What a lede.

Brittanica published this series in 1952. We know there will be no "return" to the surface trappings of that time. England will not be 99% white, the West will not be supermajority weekly-Church-going Christian, and Eva Vlardiblaard will not twirl around your kitchen barefoot wearing a daisy print dress.

But there will still be a revival of the spirit. The future will be the future. The future will be alien. But the future belongs to the confident, to a worthy successor proud to continue the Great Conversation. We will have a proud civilization again. And as it has many times before, the Civilization of Dialogue in it's glorious mess and complexity will prevail over its enemies: the various factions that would prefer a simpler world of enforced ideology. Gnon gives victory only to those with love for the fight.

referenced by: >>4381

What a lede.... received

anon_newu said in #4381 8d ago: received

>>4376

>And as it has many times before, the Civilization of Dialogue in it's glorious mess and complexity will prevail over its enemies: the various factions that would prefer a simpler world of enforced ideology.

Is this a liberal forum, for liberals? In the marketplace of ideas sometimes you need to institute price controls. Maybe that's Zohar Mamdani Third World Totalitarian Communist Islamist Socialism or something but we live in a world that has precious few of kunley_drukpa's beloved 130+IQ Anglos. The West did not win by being a "glorious mess" of ideologies, if anything it won in spite of that. Political centralization does not mandate dogmatic centralization (ancient Rome before Christianity) and vice versa (Italian City-States, where it is true Guelphs and Ghibellines existed but nearly everything else was exactly the same). Prussoid "Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey" is actually the dark mirror and deficient reverse of the coin to which dogmatism about dogma and nothing else is the obverse. What you are describing is an enervated "la clase discutidora" which is why this was published in 1952 after all that was left for modern civilization to do was die.

referenced by: >>4389

Is this a liberal fo received

phaedrus said in #4389 7d ago: received

>>4381
>Italian City-States, where it is true Guelphs and Ghibellines existed but nearly everything else was exactly the same

Are you saying there was no diversity of thought in early Renaissance Italy? This seems like a risible claim.

Are you saying there received

anon_newu said in #4392 7d ago: received

>4389

There was diversity of thought, and the people who disagreed with each other were enemies, not discussion partners. Schmittian pluralism

There was diversity received

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