Autodidact literature

>Is it possible to teach yourself philosophy/literature at a PhD level
yeah it's honestly easy af. but you won't be writing at a PhD level.

You could ask for help, but then you wouldn't understand the intricacies of automobile mechanics, only superficial knowledge for how to deal with a specific situation.

How so?

Our blue collar friend can surely take us through all that while also demonstrating the practical side, giving us far richer knowledge than that attained through reading alone
It's a question of time. Given infinite hours you could eventually read everything there is to be read and be as well informed as any professor, given you don't have infinite time, a smart person would use shortcuts

Response time is instant, knowledge is both more diverse and more specific, connections become material and important ("ask them over in that dept bc they wrote on book on that, check this book/article/etc out"), and most importantly, they could be a confidant and true advisor. That last stage is the superlative stage of pedagogy though, the VAST majority of students don't ever experience it

Read academic writing, and write letters to different professors and authors. If even a handful of them reply, it's better than what you'd get at university.

>write letters to different professors and authors.
This is critical for a good tone. Otherwise, your writing will read like you wrote it for yourself.

There are a few renown thinkers (essentially artists and writers but still) who were basically autodidacts, or who didn't pursue long-term studies. I can't think of anyone who's still alive though. I have or had a few pretty skilled autodidacts as friends, whatever their field was. Definitely achievable.
True. You won't always remember a lot if you just binge-read a bunch of articles or books at times. I sometimes go back to my archives in discord or whatever to see what I've read or commented on with friends, usefull to see what kind of stupidities or inaccuracies I can spot in my own words a few months later but to discover that I sometimes almost forgot the things I've read back then terrifies me a little bit. I would say, to structure that a little, having a few people to talk to is useful but no sufficient, now that I'm back into studies it's clearer to me that taking a few notes, trying to make summaries, is a thing to do. I restricted myself to a limited field in studies as I could have just give up with uni and go for shit blue-collar jobs directly, because even if my main interest goes to literature and philosophy I geniunely hate the way it's teached in my country, but I'm still young, I guess you are too, we can achieve something especially if we don't expect an official and public enthronement into THE INTELLECTUALS™ which is commonly an empty and disappointing experience in the form of a diploma as Foucault pointed out.

>implying university PhD level is the highest level
>unknowingly having the value of your thinking determined by self imprisonment

No man, stay in school and listen to your parents bro. Join a frat and fuck hot babes! Get a race car and get drunk on the week ends ! Wooooooo

I find it hard to believe that their knowledge would be 'more diverse and more specific'. If I want to learn about Kant, for example, what possible knowledge could they impart to me that I can't find written down in Kant himself and in the various essays/books about him? Perhaps knowledge of the philosophical context of Kant is necessary for understanding his works; but, again, what secret knowledge could they have about this that isn't written down?
You mention book/article recommendations but is it really impossible to find these on your own?

Yes, if you spent a lifetime studying Kant you would have all the knowledge of someone who has spent a lifetime studying Kant.

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That's all I was asking. Before you seemed to be implying that the only way to study is through university.

Yeah, because that wasn't me. Where do you think all those "lifelong Kant scholars" became and remained Kant scholars? sometimes i wonder if you people are real

Did Cervantes have a university education?

Amerinigger.

>Where do you think all those "lifelong Kant scholars" became and remained Kant scholars?
I assume this is a rhetorical question? In that case you do think university education is needed to acquire PhD level understanding of philosophy, which is what the post you responded to (and seemingly agreed with) was arguing against.

ALL AUTHORS ARE AUTODIDACT. YOU CANNOT TEACH GOOD WRITING.

NO GREAT WRITER HAS EVER COME OUT OF A UNIVERSITY. THEY EITHER START MUCH EARLIER, OR ELSE DON'T GO TO UNI AT ALL.

'Literature' in universities is a big fat lie.

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From this thread I am getting the idea that one should not even read if he can't get into academic environment. So what is the right answer then? What if some of us don't have accept to academia because of money/time or something else. Should we cease to study and just accept consumerism as our virtue?

I understand you can't get a mentor but still. Is it really necessary to be trying to be the very best like noone ever was? I have no idea about writing or literature path but I self study philosophy all the time and there are many great materials that helps you improve in areas like writing arguments, analysing.. Although I must say it is a lot harder because all the material I can get is in english and it is limiting me. I would rather have english mentor irl to teach me than phd lit or phil mentor desu. It's not like you are going to be the next Nietzsche or Kant and you probably won't contribute to anything and desu I don't know why would you want that, most of those writings are unimportant labor work.

Just accept never being phd level. You wont be phd level and you dont need to be one because without that paper you wouldnt be doing any phd work anyway.

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>It's not as if university professors have exclusive access to hidden texts that grant them wisdom
They do, desu. At least at my uni, a good part of our syllabi are composed of very specific articles published in all sorts of scientific magazines that I'd never come across on my own. I'd even say that professors, if they know their shit, are better than Google, because you can ask them maximally specific questions and have dialogues that Google can't provide you with (to illustrate, I recently discussed with profs we choices made in one specific translation of a Russian poem, and how does Gilgamesh fit into Bakhtin's understanding of the epic and the novel).
I see many people around here being deeply clueless in where and what to read to actually learn about literature beyond Yea Forumscore shit. It's a waste of talent, really. It is possible to learn to phd level on your own, but without guidance nobody seems to be interested in doing it.

>quicker
tHIS ITS ABOUT IT BEING AS FAST AS POSSIBLE GOTTA GO FAST QUANTITY OVER QUALITY. SPEEDREAD THE CANON.

>lit
>talent

there was never any talent here

>teachers are only usful to go fass! I know howa go fass, stoobid teacher

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Yes there was and is. It's just wasted. Don't tell me this place is less talented than the wankers and women that form a larger part of the student body.

I farded an shidded mysef
BOOM added to the canon as much as a student could dream

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I was playing retarded. I am sure you are right although there is no point. It is not about talent. It is about money and connections and if you have talent you may become known for something you express. Otherwise you may end up stacking shelves and be more talented than your whole town. Wasting talent is nonsense. I had to learn this later in my life that it matters not and may even be detrimental unless you are lucky and end up in a place where a person of power thinks you have talent and get you opportunities for some reason. What is even a talent? Is it high IQ or creativity or both, knowing how to do something really well fast? or something uniquely intruiging ?

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Pretty much. IQ is correlated strongly with success. Take the biological determinism pill and kill yourself.

>It's not as if university professors have exclusive access to hidden texts that grant them wisdom. Are they not reading the same books as everyone else?
You do understand that academic publications are usually only available through expensive database services and that professors spend their time reading, writing, and teaching from these right? The publications will always have the newest information and are very difficult to read because of how academics write.
They don't read what the plebs read.

>It is not about talent. It is about money and connections and if you have talent you may become known for something you express
That's the thing - on this pragmatic level they don't have access to the means of fully realizing and expressing their talent, to even have the possibility of succeeding in that area. Instead they become a mass of Dostoyevsky's little underground people and impotent dreamers, or just wander away in some other direction.
>What is even a talent? Is it high IQ or creativity or both, knowing how to do something really well fast? or something uniquely intruiging ?
The talent that I see in Yea Forums is an obsessive, studious and ambitious approach to literature. Creativity is perhaps not higher than that of actual uni students, but at least it is nobler. I think that a wanky and tasteless pseudoclassical poem is more valuable than Rupikaurian political/self-help vomit, because it aspires to something greater.

Your post makes no sense and is not even correct.

So talent is a certain kind of internalized and realized worldview that is based on specific kind of developed personality? It is like talent is just the right looking at things, a perspective and realisation of this perspective. Although I think one must possess a unique perspective because he will end up regurgitating what was already done or just end up doing intellectual labor instead of creative work.

What is the right answer then? What should the underground dreamer do? Is the underground dreamer even of someone of any worth or just a potential for academia work?

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based

Actually reading authors will put you a few steps ahead of most philosophy students. They're usually forced to read selections and their teachers can only cover philosophers in a superficial way since there's not enough to cover anyone extensively. It is a rare student who actually takes the time and reads Plato multiple times.

"Rare student" level =/= PhD level

You don't even need to properly study the major philosophers to become a master. I remember Gregory Sadler talking about how what separated him from other students is that he would actually read the primary texts while other people took the examination multiple times until they got lucky with the questions.

PhD level =/= meaningful understanding

I have trouble understanding how a board which posts Foucault frequently can have serious threads about ADHD and education simultaneously

Because you dumb. With your attitude you are never going to taste the metaphysical transcendental cunny.

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To spend a lifetime studying Kant you'd pretty much have to have tenure at a university, so yes, you would have to study at university first and work your way up through academia

No, do not even bother. Just find some girl and show her your cocken.

there is no reason to compare yourself wi fradulent institutions. Decide on a goal, achieve it and move on

Philosophy and literature might be the only subjects where this is true because neither require the institutional funding necessary to do work at say, the STEM PhD level. Pure math would be another.

You have to take everything people say here with a grain of salt. They might be biased and suffering from sunk-cost fallacy. Keep in mind that most grad programs in the humanities cost money as well as time (whereas for STEM they usually pay you) so if they've gone through one they have a compelling reason to justify the cost they've incurred.

The truth is that you can contact professors and many of them will be willing to discuss these things with you even if you're not a student (and half the time they won't even be able to tell the difference) so long as you don't come off as completely idiotic. It's also true that many of these grad programs are not very good pedagogically--they don't follow well established principles of learning (see some of Sanjoy Mahajan's lectures on the subject, he talks about STEM but the principles can apply to the humanities as well). All they do is provide deadlines which force you to work. But if you have some self-discipline, you can do it yourself.

Ultimately though I think your whole perspective is skewed from the start. "PhD level" is a completely arbitrary distinction. A PhD means you completed a PhD program, it does not necessarily imply mastery. Framing it in that way makes you sound like someone trying to achieve a high score in a video game, a number, or an accolade you can flaunt in front of other people. Are you interested in publishing in academic journals? If so, then you must go through an institution. If not, then why is the PhD level even relevant?

No, you must indebt yourself for half your adult life

>physically show you how stuff worked
>philosophy

It is possible, but 99% of people on this board:
a) Lack the drive to achieve anything near a Bsc level of understanding
b) Lack the knowledge of how to truly go about it (hurr just read every work of phil in order bro, that's all you need hurrrr)

Exactly this. Retarded analogy from the start

It's not really the question asked. At a PhD level you have not studied Kant or whatever your whole life but only a few years and neither did you receive a perfect transmission from a teacher or even spent that much time with one. The university process exists for efficiency and accreditation. But with sufficient cognitive ability, time and drive it's not difficult to aquire that level of knowledge in a similar time span. Thing is you won't be able to earn money with it, then again that is also true for quite a few PhDs.

Read some dissertations. It's a very specialized discipline. Do you want to write like that? Why? Who's your audience?

Yeah haha teachers don't need to be physically near you to in order to better manage your instruction!
Fuckin retard

>"PhD level" is a completely arbitrary distinction.
Isn't a PhD the highest academic degree you can hold? I thought it was akin to saying 'how can I play basketball at an NBA level'.
>Framing it in that way makes you sound like someone trying to achieve a high score in a video game, a number, or an accolade you can flaunt in front of other people
If that was the case I would pursue an actual PhD. All I'm interested in is understanding these subjects at the highest level possible.

as a former philosophy major, yes it is entirely possible but you will need to enjoy reading 6-8 hours a day or turgid, empty prose from meandering mentally ill men of dead eras that mostly leads nowhere. Still it is worth your time if you are not paying for it nor planning on making it your vocation. After some time away from that arena of thought the philosophy majors I was in class with who impressed me the most were typically Nietzscheans, Math double majors or people who had a strong interest in the western literary canon, the least impressive being the computer science-analytic faggots (not because I disagreed but purely the lack of creativity or command over language and using it as an alternative means to abstraction away from the routes of visualization and emotional intuition disgusted me), and the people who intended to go into politics, business, law and journalistic professions. All this said you should still consider gating your intake of the subject just because it tends to waste too much energy in establishing different stages of maturity compared to mathematics or the sciences and you'd be better served just doing anything else, even if that means falling behind in your studies a little.
Philosophy is one of the 5 highest iq undergraduate degrees, it is not for the stupid or the low in openness. Lacking knowledge will harm a high potential prospective student but its not actually what curtails serious grasp on the subject but really people who cannot attain to high enough levels of abstract thought using mostly verbal, analogic and logical-symbolic methods to do so. Some people are just fucking brainlets, witless and shouldn't engage with things that will make them more confused than they were before caring about their ignorance.

>Lack the knowledge of how to truly go about it
Any help for your buds on lit?

>Read a philosophers directly written work
>Let it sit and reflect on it for a while
>read the now 10,000 books written about said philosopher
Lol university is useless, absolutely useless. If you seriously have to give me database access as a viable reason to study anything not stem in university than you are proving yourself wrong. I literally just look up experts in said topics I'm reading about and then read their work they are all forced to publish. What a complete joke the university system is in the age of the internet. If there's still something I cannot access I can just buy a year long pass to the Stanford library for like $75 LMAO
The only reason you should be in a modern university is to aquire job accreditation, or to fuck 18 year old thots
When I was studying medieval Italian architecture, I would just email professors teaching in ivy league schools asking questions that I needed. Being forced to learn things and be in a certain building at a certain time and finishing arbitrary busywork kills any passion I have for whatever I'm studying. I have zero desire to attach myself to some academic role for social validation

>university is useless, absolutely useless
>viable reason to study anything not stem
A) You're clearly afraid of the campus atmosphere B) you just said that it's viable for studying STEM C) the only reason that you see STEM as more valid is because you're too stupid to notice that you're bad at and unschooled in the humanities as well, and D) This is going to go over your head because of your aforementioned retardation. I love this boars

yea buddy I'm so intimidated by fucking universities in 2019, what a joke. Have fun wasting your time, I'm sure such a great mind like yourself needs a tenured old hag to assign them books and a routine in order to learn shit that's literally available to anyone who lives in a western country. I'll bet my left nut if nobody around you will ever know you study the humanities you wouldn't even touch it. I'll say it again, if you're in university and not studying stem, than you are a status chasing milquetoast psued. You understand the predicament of humanities being useless in every way in modern capitalism for uncreative individuals so you cope with this realization by hoping to aquire social capital, becoming "educated" to separate yourself from the unwashed masses because you know 100% financially you're in the exact same position

>campus atmosphere
wow such a distinguished environment, how can anyone compete without submerging themselves into this well of knowledge. You can just smell the wiff of big brains walking around the English lit building

The point, you stupid 21-year-old, is that one of these days you're going to die. Therefore every moment you spend is precious, and the faster you can (wholly) learn something, the more you can know before you die. Don't forget that seconds are as precious as hours.

Have any of the autodidactfags itt actually got a paper past peer review? If you have, then fair enough, if you haven't, then shut the fuck up. Show me the money

What the fuck is the point of 'submiting papers'? Philosophy as known in western universities and tradition, a practice learned to eventually contribute towards it's progress, is over. You learn philosophy to never write another philosophy paper. It's an aesthetic craft at this point, it's only use beyond enjoyment is of reference, rhetoric, and historical study. It's funny because contemporary philosophy deems the act of philosophy and 'peer review' as absurd, as seen published in their acedemic journal. It's a schizoid like, pathological mind disease. To answer your question though, I contribute to a certain historical study without ever studying it in university. The act of historiography is easy to pick up by anyone with free time and interest

That's a no then? Not a single publication in a peer reviewed journal?

Nobody reads academic papers, least of all in philosophy of all fucking fields. Maybe if you're famous in your field. But everybody else is just writing for credentials because they have to. "Publish or perish." If you're an autodidact why would you be trying to publish shitty article #10,001 pretending to add something to the world's understanding of Kant? You don't need to shit out pointless papers every year to keep your non-tenure track associate professor job. Also where the hell is this concept coming from that having a PhD means you are anything other than a midwit who fucked up his life and made one of the dumbest career choices possible?

Judith Butler, to take just one example, has dozens of publications.
What evidence do you have that you have an understanding of a topic on par with an academic like her? Where are your citations? Where is the acclaim from people in your field that you truly are an expert?
There is an old Jewish joke about the Jewish boy who fails medical school, and sends off for one of those fake mail order diplomas instead. 'It's very good,' his mother says, 'to me you are a doctor. But are you a doctor to the other doctors?'

>evidence
Autodidacts don't care about accolades and accreditions, otherwise they would pursue degrees that come with certificates. The question was whether it is possible to gain a similar level of understanding through an autodidactic process, not whether this will come with social validation in the form of a doctorate.

You can. Keyword is "can".

Why would you expect anyone in the private sphere to publish in academic journals? It costs a lot of money just get your paper looked at, let alone published.

Unless you actually plan on creating something with your university education in humanities enjoy being the next Husserl scholar

Am I trying to learn and understand philosophy or become the world's most renowned "expert" on philosophy? Those are two different things and the OP asked about the former. You're steeped in credentialism: we're not talking about medicine (a field that involves not just theory but practice). We're talking about a field that is pure theory. You don't have to practice philosophy over and over to get it right. You aren't doing surgery, you're doing a subjective thing and whether you can even learn it from someone else depends on whether they actually know it (impossible to tell without already being well read because it's easy to use jargon to pretend you're actually saying something when you aren't - "philosophers" do this all the time). You're confusing your field for one with objective knowledge, objective results, and that has a technical and physical component (surgery, diagnosis) that is a skill and can actually be taught to someone. There is no objective way to be "good at philosophy" which is why you're so obsessed with the credentials.

he who has a why can bear almost any how

> the faster you can (wholly) learn something, the more you can know before you die.
Do you like being retarded? This is how you become retarded.

>PhD
>high-level understanding
LOL

>The act of historiography is easy to pick up
Skimmer spotted

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if you're never tested about your own understanding, it's very hard to know when you've reached a phd level understanding. Honestly, why would you go through all the trouble if you don't even plan on doing anything with it? go to university or just read up on whatever you feel like for your own use.

This. If you read the first and second Critiques, even translated, you've probably engaged more with Kant than many Ph.Ds. The system of higher education functions to bring the student to a level of "acceptable" (i.e. marketable) understanding as quickly as possible. If you're lucky, you might have an eccentric professor who cares more about knowledge than appearing to be knowledgeable, but if you're not in an Ivy or somewhere comparable you'll probably never experience this. Connections are the only reason to get a degree.

Get a job of any kind in any field that isn't completely useless like philosophy, then when you've got some cash and spare time just read what you wanna read.
I'm currently doing biochem lab tech, completely unrelated, but it'll keep me alive while I do other stuff.

Imagine being a "student" who needs a "professor" in order to have a "PhD".
LOL this is so embarrassing, only low IQ retards do this.

Imagine spending six years of your life joining a glorified Ponzi scheme and listening to some other victim of the Ponzi scheme convince you that Judith Butler is a "philosopher" and that the six years were actually worth it because now you're way better than the other Starbucks employees who weren't certified by the Ponzi scheme to truly understand philosophy.

It’s easier than you think it is, but almost no one does the reading, thinking, and occasional consulting with people who can help you. As I’m sure has been noted in this thread, grad school for lit is filled with people who are smart and good at taking tests, but not usually well read, even past the MA.

>what is libgen

You can teach yourself literature. You just need to pay the bills and be really good at writing. Then you need to piss everyone off and side with the Nazis.

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There is no royal road to philosophy, brainlet

Most major philosophers weren't philosophers by trade, they just rolled into it.

University education is detrimental to a real understanding of philosophy.

The experience of someone that allready traveled the road You wish to travel goes beyond the sterile notionism You can acquire through the web.
As long as he is pure of intent and doesn't just want to indottrinate you into his cult; see: