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I was recently reminded how much I fucking hate Plato's Republic (media.piefed.social)

submitted 5 days ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historymemes@piefed.social

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[–] umbrellacloud@leminal.space 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Oh man Plato's Republic takes me back. So hard to get past the first ten pages. I had Plato's Republic and Das Kapital next to my nightstand because I had insomnia. Put me right to sleep, my eyelids would get heavy after a few paragraphs every time. Edit: I had Infinite Jest for the same reason. I initially bought it to pretend to be smart, which is the only reason anyone has ever purchased Infinite Jest, but I kept it due to insomnia.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I've still never managed to finish Das Kapital. Unlike the Republic, I feel like it's going somewhere worthwhile, but Christ, Marx's dryest work by far.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

A lot of that (not all) is translation woes. I'll exemplify it with an early excerpt.

[DE] Die Ware ist zunächst ein äußerer Gegenstand, ein Ding, das durch seine Eigenschaften menschliche Bedürfnisse irgendeiner Art befriedigt. Die Natur dieser Bedürfnisse, ob sie z.B. dem Magen oder der Phantasie entspringen, ändert nichts an der Sache.

[EN #1] A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.

[EN #2] To start, a commodity is something external to us human beings, that satisfies our desires, due to its properties. The nature of those desires makes no difference, whether they come from the body, the mind, or from elsewhere.

Guess which is the "canonical" translation, made by someone trying to be obsessively accurate with shit that doesn't matter (like discourse markers). And guess which was made by some rather low-quality translator in five whole minutes.

[–] umbrellacloud@leminal.space 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

He had a way of making simple concepts complicated, very sleep-inducing.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

His other works aren't riveting, but they are at least readable. But the man made a deal with the fucking sandman to write Das Kapital, I swear.

[–] umbrellacloud@leminal.space 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No, that's Engels, when he's readable, Engels is always on the cover too.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I mean, Critique of the Gotha Program was readable, and I'm pretty sure that was just Marx.

[–] umbrellacloud@leminal.space 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The only part that woke me up was the part where Marx uses the concept of publicly available free hookers to insult somebody's wife. Edit: Oh shit, no, that's the Manifesto, that was Engels probably.