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Too many to name. Any Russian lit namely Dostoevsky (superfulous man please ), Gogol, Pushkin, anything by Freud, Faulkners "As I Lay Dying" I could go on and on.
I find the question difficult to answer. In my experience, every book offers stimulation... offering insights into existence... bricks, if you will. . .
They're all equally stimulating. . .
This was the very thing I was trying to say in my earlier post. I find everything I read 'stimulating' -- perhaps it is the very act of reading that is stimulating? The difference is in how much stimulation, but I have had a hard time wrapping my head around that, as I did when the question was presented as to the 5 best books I had ever read. I no sooner come up with a title, than what it pales in comparison to another, and then that one to another, and so on. . . until I am at a total loss to even approach the question.
I have thought about this question quite a bit over the weeks since the thread started. While I would like to say that those books written by brilliant philosophers and big-thinkers stimulate me the most, I cannot.
To me, the most stimulating books have been the ones with a message no matter how subtle or blaring it may be. Books that teach me something about life and the lives of others who have conquered great hardship, obstacles, abuse, or loss always stimulate me to the point of living the book for weeks or months.
One such book off the top of my head was a recent forum Book Club selection, A Thousand Splendid Suns. It had nothing to do with the talent of the author, although I do enjoy his style, nothing to the general subject - like in the new Afghanistan. It was the fact that I learned for the first time in an emotional, in-the-gut way what living in a culture so far removed from our own must truly be like.
It gives one an entirely different perspective than reading the newspaper or watching Charley Gibson every night could ever convey. I have a different facet of myself as a result of this enlightening book - and so many others like it.
Hit me with something I didn't know before, something to wake me up to the world, something to make me a better individual. I'll read it.
philosophical texts usually do the trick if you don't care about the literary aspect of a work. Hegel, schopenhauer, kierkegaard, nietzsche (although you might want a reader/guide to have with you because it's really easy to misinterpret him and think you understand...but he will definately make you think), kant, *leibniz, *spinoza, heidegger, sartre, even dostoevsky and tolstoy, kafka, aristotle's nichomachean ethics, all of plato is worth your time, descarte's meditations...there's a lot we haven't read...
good things to think about:
what is their definition of soul? note that the soul does not have to be immaterial (like in the case of nietzsche)
Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is a thought experiment meant for the slave morality type or the nihilist, or both? Who is the tight rope walker (what does it symbolize?) why are nietzsche's overmen courageous (eagle) rather than wise (serpent)? why is the overman the dancer? how can a free spirit create values when he knows that there is no real meaning inherent in them? what does nietzsche mean by 'the world is only justified as aesthetic phenomenon?' how does a master morality differ from a slave morality? Could only a master morality exist?
how does heidegger use the question of being to get to the question of meaning? what is the difference between the 'who' and the 'what'?
what is aristotle's proud man/virtuous man? how does it differ from nietzsche's overman?
.....
there's a lot of good questions that arise from philo
maybe kundera (not too stimulating but still stimulating)
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), Gogol, Pushkin, anything by Freud, Faulkners "As I Lay Dying" I could go on and on.
