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Do you guys have any interests that are too niche to be discussed online? I'm interested in ancient greece and enlightenment-era germany. Obviously there are a billion books on these topics, but you're lucky to find anyone who can discuss them. I searched discords and imageboards and reddit, but the best I found was a couple experts on Plato and Aristotle. Everybody knows about this stuff, but hardly anyone talks about it!

Big fan of plato, recreational reader of greek/roman history. Also enjoy early church theology (augustine, justin martyr). Niche isn't necessarily the word- plenty of obscure things are well-discussed online. People "learn" what is shiniest or trendiest or perceived as useful, not what actually matters. Since most of the (online) world is under the "western-athiestic-materialist-marxist" cultural sphere, you get a lot of discussions about what they think matters. Examples: - miniature painting (tabletop gaming) is clearly an obscure thing, yet I know of at least two forums dedicated to it - illegally distilling your own liquor is highly obscure, yet I know of at least one very active forum dedicated to the topic - picking and eating wild hallucinogenic mushrooms is obscure, but i know of a massive forum on it and a non-materialist example: - you can still find lots of discussion for obscure early church fathers, since certain christian denominations pay a lot of attention to them Part of it could be that philosophical discussions are not well-suited to online forums- you frequently end up "making speeches at each other" instead of actually talking. >Everybody knows about this stuff... I'm assuming the number of people who have read even 50% of plato/aristotle's combined writings is miniscule. The number of people who have read even ONE work by them, in-depth, not just skimmed as part of an intro-phil course, is probably tiny.

>>83962 there are some obscure websites that list information. The problem is you need to know already what you looking for or you wont find them over search engines. i.e. i read a history book from 17th century and found a website discussing it over using a bit of info from it. Im mentioning "old book" explicit because newer iteration scrub unfavorable details, you can find the present popular take on wikipedia but real obscure information is hard to come by.

>>83967 Big-name philosophers are popular enough that you can find plenty of old discussions. But they're unpopular enough such that if you want to discuss them yourself, odds are you'll only find a single person who can reciprocate at best. And this goes for almost all intellectual hobbies which is a big problem. Because even if you learn a bunch of things from books, that knowledge will fade rapidly from your memory unless it's applied somewhere after you learn it. You can of course invent ways to reinforce it, like by drawing Greek statues. But it's an uphill battle. As a teenager, I used to wonder why culture always moves in these waves with massive peaks/golden ages, and then basically nothing happening for centuries. It turns out that doing anything solo is incredibly difficult. It should give us tons of respect for someone like boethius knowing basically their whole environment was against them.

>>83962 Personally, the more niche my interests and passions got the more I found myself interacting with "traditional" academia (i.e comment sections of blogs by academics, mailing lists, attending online seminars, etc)

>>83962 I'm obsessed with Islamic and Chinese philosophy, Asian history, Sengoku Jidai etc. There are a handful of academic publications for the first of these but even then there aren't many places online when you can talk about any of them. I spend most of the day on archive.org fishing for books or pirating academic publications. There does seem to be a lot more content on Ancient Greece and Enlightenment Germany but not many places you can seriously discuss those eras with like minded people. Reddit and 4chin /lit/ are filled with pseuds, Guenon users, BAPtards, and other retards who've never read a book in their lives. It is like kicking dead whales down the beach not having people to talk to.

I think almost all interests are hard to find meaningful discussion for online unless you create your own group of people youve talked one on one with before. Its a lot easier in person where you can kind of compel someone to see things your way first, get eachother up to speed and then discuss differences or have a well intentioned argument second all pretty quickly.

>>83980 The problem isn't meaningful discussion. It's getting any discussion at all

>>83976 have you tried mailing professors/people in departments studying this stuff/just waltzing into a uni department ?

Visual novels helped me get interested in European culture. We put no effort in keeping our own culture alive so it's really cool to see people care about it (though lots of people care about Rome!). Sadly you realize at some point Japs kinda don't understand European stuff, so your only good option to learn about it is through books. On the plus side, you soon discover this stuff is way deeper and cooler than people think. I wonder if we'll see a revival of old culture soon...? Maybe people are getting bored of pop culture

I have some interest in classical Greece, but more as a fan of ancient scientists like Aristarchus (who understood that the Earth and other planets orbit the sun, and that stars are other suns far away) and Archimedes (who was on the verge of discovering calculus). The ancient Greek philosopher I like most is Pyrrho. I'm not too crazy about the Socrates --> Plato --> Aristotle line of philosophy, or Platonic Idealism in general, which I strongly associate with a thousand years of ignorance in the middle ages, including Ptolemy's erroneous system. As for the enlightenment, I know about and admire Bacon (!), Locke, Hobbes, Hume but I'm pretty ignorant otherwise. Who were the German enlightenment thinkers you like? My other niche interest is human prehistory, interactions with other human species, prehistoric world migrations, what led to civilizations, why civilizations collapsed, the history of science...

>>83985 Ancient scientists are cool. For some reason they go totally ignored. >what led to civilizations, why civilizations collapsed Check out Brooks Adams 'The Law of Civilization and Decay'. >which I strongly associate with a thousand years of ignorance in the middle ages, including Ptolemy's erroneous system That's an oversimplification. People in the Middle Ages were constantly chipping away at the Aristotelian system, almost as soon as it was rediscovered. Ptolemy's system was also really, really accurate for the most part. >Who were the German enlightenment thinkers you like? All of them pretty much. The Enlightenment was an international phenomenon, but like many events in world history, it reached its 'purest' form in Germany. There was always a faint notion of what the Enlightenment should lead to in England and France, but thanks to Germans being how they are (and to the levity of Frederick the Great), they realized these conclusions far earlier and rushed to bring them about, which brought us Kant. The significance of Kantian philosophy is that he managed the incredible: To kill off metaphysics, while also declaring grounds for the existence of God at the same time. Metaphysics was a perennial thorn in everyone's side because it was allegedly joined at the hip to the sciences, but while material sciences gave humble and consistent results, metaphysics allowed you to make insane claims like Spinoza or Hume did and people had to take them seriously. When Leibniz claimed this world is the best of all possible worlds, people had to interpret this as a scientific result, it wasn't like some stoner hippie thought. Naturally this style of proof drew a lot of hatred, but it couldn't die because then rational theology would also die, and we'd lose our logical evidence for God. This is the dilemma Kant solved. To better answer your question, I admire guys like Goethe and Humboldt too. Because at the time, they believed every discipline in learning and knowledge should feed into one another and share a common ethos. Chemistry is not separate from Mathematics is not separate from the Arts is not separate from Logic. All in all, it was a time of optimism. They believed Idealism was a rational basis for both religion and the mechanical world. Unfortunately, by the 1860s they realized that you cannot use reason as a solid ground for faith. And so their faith diminished and they became pessimists. Germany was once a highly spiritual land; now it was a highly political one. I find all that interesting

>Germany was once a highly spiritual land; now it was a highly political one. I find all that interesting Germans tend to have something about then that one might describe as righteousness. I take the homo community as example. I put my pp somewhere, thats it. Americans or others, when i talk to them do not make such a thing of it, or gender politics. So far all Germans i have talked with are the biggest users who rub it into everyone's face. They make a cult of it, i get the assumption its simply to feel righteous about something. The same concept applies to spirituality or politics, you can all be very righteous and make a cult of it, just like putting pp somewhere. This is my observation, things usually vary, yet by my view it correlates highly.

>>84012 The habit of Germans is to take everything to its logical extreme. This isn't because they're extremists by nature, but because the clarity and precision of their language gives them a false sense of certainty of their ideas. Listen to how they talk and enunciate the verbs and nouns of each sentence. It has the feel of needle precision. It can really produce a shocking amount of confidence

>>84013 There is something distinct about me, because for years i talk to people online in English and find much more joy in these conversations. They are more light hearthed and easy going. Im Austrian myself, thus speak german natively, but i carry over alot of the ways how English speaking people express themselves. I.e. not overly harsh, or with a needle of precision. That does not mean im un-percise, but more laid back in contrast. I cant quite say what other people who are german think but its different for sure when encountering interaction. What makes me wounder is how the germans may change their approach to communication, while language can guide, it does not mean -by the example of me- that one has to speak in its manner. Id be nice if germans had a more laid back approach to expression. They would also loose alot of bad stigma.

>>84013 > but because the clarity and precision of their language gives them a false sense of certainty of their ideas This is true. But I wouldn't say it's a "false sense of certainty of their ideas". I've often heard the expression that "the one and only appropriate language to do philosophy is German, and specifically Bavarian[?] German". I'm not 100% sure about the Bavarian thing (might be misremembering), but either way, I don't think it's a coincidence that German-speaking nations have produced so many ground-breaking philosophers.

>>84057 Hmm, I've noticed Austrians doing it too though. Austrians and Germans are way way more similar than Germans and Danes or other northern euros >>84075 That's just admitting my bias to be honest. For all we know German truly is the best language for precise and logical thinking, nothing can be done with science or philosophy that can't be expressed in German. I only say false because I believe we can't be certain about any ideas.

There are 115 Nobel laureates from Germany and 137 from the UK (the top two outside the USA), so I'd say German and English are both pretty good languages for precise thinking. It might be relevant that English is a Germanic language?

>>84089 You all are supposing too much importance upon language; language is important but it is defined by who uses it more than it defines its user. Teach a bunch of Congolese German and they'll remain Congolese, and probably speak a peculiar German. Hitler talks about this.

>>84092 Hitler was a diseased, drug-addicted psychopath. Nothing he said carries any weight with sane people.

>>84093 >nothing he said carries any weight with sane people well lucky me we're on lainchan where there are no sane people bwuahahahahaa present day present time!

My niche interest is random people around me who glow red in my vision and we become friends and i spend all my time with them for a few months or years. No one online gives a Fuc k about that they think your a freak, they dont care. or on this awful board they think you want to be this persons girlfried or boyfriend and try to give you some epic advice from their cum stained isolation tank when you just want to talk about this person you think is really cool. i cant namedrop someone from my life no one wants to talk about that. im not complaining but I just want you to think about it or I want you to think about having a conversation with me about this insane looking roach I fished out of my sink today the next time you say your interest in "plato's dialogues" is niche and you cant find anyone to talk to about it online . if ive heard about it its not niche , next.

>>84118 Please tell us more about this roach it sounds insane

>>84118 Post a picture of the roach please

>>84118 I also would like to know the circumstances of the insane looking roach. What kind of emotions got released inside your mind? Were there any kind of bond between you and the roach?

>>84092 This, to an extent. Lack of a precise language will 100% hold you back. Having a precise language will not magically make you smarter. >>84093 C L A M P E D