What do you think?
Rate this book
Encyclopedie van de domheid #1
De encyclopedie van de domheid
Dutch
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
13 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 23, 2016
"Hepimiz deli doğarız, bazılarımız öyle kalır." Beckett sözünün aptallık versiyonu diyebiliriz. Aptallık delilik gibi prim yapmadığı için de hepimiz aptallığımızın doğamız olduğunu reddeder, sürekli gizlemeye ya da kaçmaya çalışırız. Sadece gülmek için, güldürmek için aptallığı kullananların zekası olduğunu düşünürüz. Biri bize gizlemeye çalıştığımız yaramızı gösteriyor gibi bakamayız bir türlü. İnsanların aptallıklarıyla dahi barışık olması aktarımını yapan güzel bir kitap..
March 7, 2016
Eh.
Vicdan düzeltmesi; aslında Eh'den daha iyiydi.
Vicdan düzeltmesi; aslında Eh'den daha iyiydi.
May 24, 2018
While most reviews here of this book are pretty negative, i am fascinated by this work and very eager to read more about the subject and read more by van Boxsel. Recommend!
September 28, 2014
A brilliant, civilized and comic investigation of stupidity. One of my favorite observations so far – by way of Musil: stupidity is not a lack of intelligence but a lack of feeling. Every page sparkles with insight and wit.
(Btw, I'm reading the British edition published by Reaktion Books - and it's one beautifully-printed paperback. The American edition on Amazon looks... stupid.)
(Btw, I'm reading the British edition published by Reaktion Books - and it's one beautifully-printed paperback. The American edition on Amazon looks... stupid.)
April 16, 2020
Not a rundown of things and topics deemed to be stupid. But more of an analysis of the different meaning of stupidity (a.o. humans being the only being that can act against its own self-interest), the uses of stupidity and the good side of stupidity.
November 2, 2013
It's definitely a book which can make you think, if you want to think. Some weaker points and sometimes you might end up wanting for me consistency. But this is a book about stupidity, after all...
June 20, 2019
Labai prastas lietuviškas vertimas - nerekomenduoju.
July 28, 2021
Life's too precious to finish this book.
Taking this book at face value, one may find some humor in dunking morning coffee cake in these instances or stories of stupidity deceitfully called "encyclopedia" (=a type of reference work or compendium holding a comprehensive summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge, quoted from Wikipedia). But it completely fails this purpose because it turns into a tractatus on stupidity.
I find the core idea of it wrong: it claims stupidity is hypostatic, it is not the opposite of anything, but rather an independent substance, or whatever. It asserts intelligence is an attempt turned-out-well at exploring stupidity - a few pages later, it postulates the same about culture, undermining the whole claim that stupidity could have any hypostatic function or role as a driver in civilization or culture. Why? Because indirectly equating culture to intelligence is the whole idea this book fights against, isn't it? Isn't culture a sort of an interaction between intelligence and stupidity (and other stuff I'm assuming this author considers to be hypostatic), isn't it the very history of intelligence's trying to understand stupidity? Perhaps the other way around could work: stupidity as a successful (and hence unsuccessful) attempt at exploring the inexplorable intelligence...
Obviously the world is wrong, and culture is trying to make sense of it (an idea wonderfully explored by Russian theologian Andrey Kurayev in his essay Culture as a Pearl). But if stupidity is not the opposite of intelligence (or any materialization of the Good), then there's no tension, hence nothing to drive this exploration called culture.
By claiming - let's call it - ontological independence for stupidity, he paradoxically affirms pluralism and relativism, which I can't accept, for the reason just explained. But he can't, either (and he doesn't see it), because relativism lacks dialectics, and all those fine independent substances such as intelligence and stupidity can well exist without causing any culture-generating tension.
He says the antidote of stupidity should not be sought in wisdom, but in the dialectics which is characteristic of stupidity. Now this is where it's all wrong. There's nothing dialectic in stupidity because that would mean stupidity could accommodate any inherent sense and seeking of sense, hence it would no longer be stupidity. It's precisely this dialectics he fails to prove, and precisely by endowing stupidity with Being.
Like any bold theory (I have a problem with seeking meaning using the means of philosophy, sorry), it works only if the premises it is based on are correct.
But making sense is not its purpose, and it blatantly states this. The only purpose this book can have is to make fun of the readers who try to make any sense of it: whoever does not realize this is stupid. Whoever DOES realize it and is upset because of it, again, is stupid. What about those who do realize it's only fancy-schmancy bamboozling, but make fun of it or find it - stupid?... Are they, too, successfully embraced in the fantastic dance of stupidity? Absurd!
Taking this book at face value, one may find some humor in dunking morning coffee cake in these instances or stories of stupidity deceitfully called "encyclopedia" (=a type of reference work or compendium holding a comprehensive summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge, quoted from Wikipedia). But it completely fails this purpose because it turns into a tractatus on stupidity.
I find the core idea of it wrong: it claims stupidity is hypostatic, it is not the opposite of anything, but rather an independent substance, or whatever. It asserts intelligence is an attempt turned-out-well at exploring stupidity - a few pages later, it postulates the same about culture, undermining the whole claim that stupidity could have any hypostatic function or role as a driver in civilization or culture. Why? Because indirectly equating culture to intelligence is the whole idea this book fights against, isn't it? Isn't culture a sort of an interaction between intelligence and stupidity (and other stuff I'm assuming this author considers to be hypostatic), isn't it the very history of intelligence's trying to understand stupidity? Perhaps the other way around could work: stupidity as a successful (and hence unsuccessful) attempt at exploring the inexplorable intelligence...
Obviously the world is wrong, and culture is trying to make sense of it (an idea wonderfully explored by Russian theologian Andrey Kurayev in his essay Culture as a Pearl). But if stupidity is not the opposite of intelligence (or any materialization of the Good), then there's no tension, hence nothing to drive this exploration called culture.
By claiming - let's call it - ontological independence for stupidity, he paradoxically affirms pluralism and relativism, which I can't accept, for the reason just explained. But he can't, either (and he doesn't see it), because relativism lacks dialectics, and all those fine independent substances such as intelligence and stupidity can well exist without causing any culture-generating tension.
He says the antidote of stupidity should not be sought in wisdom, but in the dialectics which is characteristic of stupidity. Now this is where it's all wrong. There's nothing dialectic in stupidity because that would mean stupidity could accommodate any inherent sense and seeking of sense, hence it would no longer be stupidity. It's precisely this dialectics he fails to prove, and precisely by endowing stupidity with Being.
Like any bold theory (I have a problem with seeking meaning using the means of philosophy, sorry), it works only if the premises it is based on are correct.
But making sense is not its purpose, and it blatantly states this. The only purpose this book can have is to make fun of the readers who try to make any sense of it: whoever does not realize this is stupid. Whoever DOES realize it and is upset because of it, again, is stupid. What about those who do realize it's only fancy-schmancy bamboozling, but make fun of it or find it - stupid?... Are they, too, successfully embraced in the fantastic dance of stupidity? Absurd!
May 15, 2021
Perhaps I lack the intelligence to understand my own stupidity. I will not stop to pursue knowledge and become more dumb then ever before. This book however is not helping to recognize my faillings and it could have been so good. As it states it is a useless litany and strangely the writer, a most erudite man, is also very vain about showing of how well versed he is. Perhaps unintentional but he does not appeal to common folk like me. To me there is no focus and it is not clear to me what this is. That however he is honest about. There is no purpose to this book.......
May 10, 2020
Spėju, bet galimai šios knygos tikslas - pasijuokti iš tavęs, jeigu bandai pagauti kokią nors prasmę, nes čia jos tiesiog neatrasi arba ieškodamas pasijusi kvailu. Šią knygą lengva tiesiog numesti šalin, tačiau aš stengiuosi duoti šansą visada. Deja, nepaisant keletos įdomesnių dalių link pabaigos, pasirodė itin nuvilianti ir labai sausa.
September 21, 2022
Who can blame Boxsel for the shortcomings of his Encyclopaedia? Sometimes it does lack some density and reads like a collection of sparse witty notes. Some sections, however, offer dense, compact and, of course, 'pataphysical overviews of our immense collective futility. Beautifully illustrated.
August 12, 2018
Έξυπνο και ψαγμένο, σε βαθμό που κάποια πράγματα δεν είσαι 100% σίγουρος ότι τα αντιλαμβάνεσαι σωστά.
April 4, 2020
Sevgili çevirmen, çevirisi için epey emek harcadığını yazmış. Bir sonraki çevirisi için daha çok harcamalı.
March 30, 2021
Difficile de comprendre la trame. Beaucoup d'éruditon dont je n'ai retenu que quelques brides.
April 27, 2011
van Boxsel wrote a non-book. By his own rules, it is a stupid book.
The self-defeating treatise is a stunt common to academics who enjoy snorting behind their hands; Wittgenstein pulled the exact same crap with the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, for example.
This book is so gobsmackingly brilliant. You know that thing Eco was trying to do with "Foucault's Pendulum", the one where he dumps exponentially more and more information on top of you until you are forced to admit that yes, okay, pattern-matching can be too much of a good thing and yes, okay, it is quite arbitrary?
van Boxsel plucks patterns from the air. He compares apples with oranges and it results in, for example, a treatise on the historical implications of agricultural development in the Americas, with a slight whiff of apples and oranges wafting from the paper.
I'm quite happy to admit I'm entirely outsmarted and outclassed by "The Encyclopedia of Stupidity". But van Boxsel trounces me with such jovial, well-meaning wit that I enjoy every word.
The self-defeating treatise is a stunt common to academics who enjoy snorting behind their hands; Wittgenstein pulled the exact same crap with the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, for example.
This book is so gobsmackingly brilliant. You know that thing Eco was trying to do with "Foucault's Pendulum", the one where he dumps exponentially more and more information on top of you until you are forced to admit that yes, okay, pattern-matching can be too much of a good thing and yes, okay, it is quite arbitrary?
van Boxsel plucks patterns from the air. He compares apples with oranges and it results in, for example, a treatise on the historical implications of agricultural development in the Americas, with a slight whiff of apples and oranges wafting from the paper.
I'm quite happy to admit I'm entirely outsmarted and outclassed by "The Encyclopedia of Stupidity". But van Boxsel trounces me with such jovial, well-meaning wit that I enjoy every word.
January 17, 2010
Tyhmyyden ensyklopedia on yksi tyyliltään ja sisällöltään erikoisemmista kirjoista joita olen lukenut. Aiheiden irrelevanttius toisiinsa, kuvitus ja koko perinteisen maailmankuvan selälleen vääntävä sanoma jätti lähtemättömän vaikutuksen. Teksti ei ole kuitenkaan mitään kevyttä, joten suosittelen varaamaan aikaa sekä lukemiseen että kirjassa esitettyjen aiheiden miettimiseen. Ei kerta- tai rantalukemiseksi tarkoitettu.
January 24, 2010
This turned out to be disappointing. It did not live up to the promise of the title and premise. There were a few essays or parts of essays that had some spark and humor. Most of it came across as dull and dry--a bit too much like the esoteric scholarly works it seemed to be mocking. Perhaps something was lost in the translation from Dutch.
March 31, 2016
Great read - easy, funny and original. The book compiles reflexions on stupidity, little tales of stupidity, and more thorough analyses of the concept that are very interesting and unusual. Lovely, fun illustrations.
March 2, 2009
The book that tries to be more philosophical version of Darwin Awards. I didn't even finish it. Books on Darwin Awards are more fun.
Want to read
June 15, 2009This has been on my shelf for years. How is it that I haven't read it yet??
December 10, 2013
Kitap tam bir 'vırvırı vırvırı...' Öyle sürüp gidiyor. Yine de içinde güldüren, düşündüren bir takım açıklamalar var tabi.
November 20, 2013
interesting subject
starts fine but doesnt continue that well
starts fine but doesnt continue that well
Read
April 13, 2017dnf
Want to read
July 20, 2017Ich habe ein Buch bei BookCrossing.com registriert!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14586717
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14586717
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews