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He's a great writer but not a trained philosopher, his critique of all human wisdom comes off as arrogant.
Speaking on escaping the "terrible situation in which we all find ourselves":
"The first means of escape is that of ignorance. It consists of failing to realize and to understand that life is evil and meaningless. For the most part, people in this category are women, or they are very young or very stupid men; they still have not understood the problem of life.."

He seems to be begging the question here that life is evil and meaningless, and anyone who doesn't realize this is stupid, or ignorant. This attitude pervades the first quarter of the book and disparages women and the working class while doing it.
As far as a critique of pure reason, this is not one I found any value reading, and actually found very prideful, condescending, and at times unbearable to read.

"What am I with my de­sires?”

"The re­li­gious doc­trine taught to me from child­hood dis­ap­peared in me as in oth­ers, but with this dif­fer­ence, that as from the age of fif­teen I began to read philo­soph­ical works, my re­jec­tion of the doc­trine be­came a con­scious one at a very early age. From the time I was six­teen I ceased to say my pray­ers and ceased to go to church or to fast of my own vo­li­tion. I did not be­lieve what had been taught me in child­hood but I be­lieved in some­thing. What it was I be­lieved in I could not at all have said. I be­lieved in a God, or rather I did not deny God—but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teach­ing, but what his teach­ing con­sisted in I again could not have said."


"With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, pas­sion­ate and alone, com­pletely alone when I sought good­ness. Every time I tried to ex­press my most sin­cere de­sire, which was to be mor­ally good, I met with con­tempt and ri­dicule, but as soon as I yiel­ded to low pas­sions I was praised and en­cour­aged."


"This faith in the mean­ing of po­etry and in the de­vel­op­ment of life was a re­li­gion, and I was one of its priests."

" I saw that people all taught dif­fer­ently, and by quar­rel­ling among them­selves only suc­ceeded in hid­ing their ig­nor­ance from one an­other."

"And I ceased to doubt, and be­came fully con­vinced that not all was true in the re­li­gion I had joined."

"And though I saw that among the peas­ants there was a smal­ler ad­mix­ture of the lies that re­pelled me than among the rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Church, I still saw that in the people’s be­lief also false­hood was mingled with the truth."

" I shall not seek the ex­plan­a­tion of everything. I know that the ex­plan­a­tion of everything, like the com­mence­ment of everything, must be con­cealed in in­fin­ity. But I wish to un­der­stand in a way which will bring me to what is in­ev­it­ably in­ex­plic­able. I wish to re­cog­nize any­thing that is in­ex­plic­able as be­ing so not be­cause the de­mands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can un­der­stand noth­ing), but be­cause I re­cog­nize the lim­its of my in­tel­lect. I wish to un­der­stand in such a way that everything that is in­ex­plic­able shall present it­self to me as be­ing ne­ces­sar­ily in­ex­plic­able, and not as be­ing some­thing I am un­der an ar­bit­rary ob­lig­a­tion to be­lieve.

That there is truth in the teach­ing is to me in­dubit­able, but it is also cer­tain that there is false­hood in it, and I must find what is true and what is false, and must dis­en­tangle the one from the other. I am set­ting to work upon this task. What of false­hood I have found in the teach­ing and what I have found of truth, and to what con­clu­sions I came, will form the fol­low­ing parts of this work, which if it be worth it and if any­one wants it, will prob­ably some day be prin­ted some­where."

insanüstü bir merak ve entelektüel dürüstlüğün çıktısı. inanılmaz bir beyin. insanın kafasında cevap veremediği bir soruyu umursamamayı ya da sorunun inatçılığıyla başa çıkmayı öğrenmek yerine bu kitapta anlatıldığı kadar ileri gitmeye razı olması beni çok etkiledi.

Brilliant. A key look into the mind of the legendary author.
challenging reflective medium-paced

So many typos in this edition. I’m glad i got it for 50 cents.
reflective
challenging dark emotional informative reflective slow-paced
reflective medium-paced
challenging informative medium-paced

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