[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 43 KB, 300x219, rene-descartes.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10788590 No.10788590 [Reply] [Original]

The single best way to get into western philosophy is to read some textbooks on ancient and medieval philosophy, then jump right to the 17th century with Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. Everybody gets discouraged if he's told to read everything by the Greeks, this is not recommended, and Plato & Aristotle are best enjoyed later on with some moderns under your belt. Descartes' works are immediately acessible and demonstrate the agenda of future philosophy.
Something like Copleston's volumes are particularly recommended to give you that late scholastic background that 17th century thinkers had back then, you can comprehend what they're refuting without reading tomes of medieval Aristotelianism.
Once reaching Kant and Hegel however, a more detailed study of the ancients is probably useful.
Come up with a better study plan if you can.

>> No.10788904

nvm philosophy, start with literature

begin with gilgamesh
then homer obviously, iliad and odyssey
sophocles - oedipus and antigone
and then some virgil and ovid, aeneid and metamorphoses

don quixote

dante - the divine comedy
shakespeare - hamlet
milton - paradise lost
goethe - faust

aight thats the essantials i guess, add some brothers karamazov, moby dick and the bible, we re good to go.

read these books and papers/articles/analyses about them, you have to research/learn about philosophy anyway

>> No.10788917

>implying you need anything other than Plato

>> No.10788924
File: 121 KB, 515x513, St Paul.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10788924

>>10788904
>gilgamesh

Total meme, you do realize it had to be reconstructed in the 19th century and was practically lost to history before them.
Giving such a silly curiosity primacy over the three millenia of uninterupted homeric tradition is disgusting

>> No.10788975

>>10788924
lol its the perfect start for any classical literature study because of its themes; outside vs inside, man vs nature/gods, civilization v savagery and all that. like anything on that list, reading papers about that books is always more interesting than the books itself so i recommend you to do that

>> No.10789412

>>10788975
>implying any product of western civilization needs a "perfect" starting point
Those themes are part of our day to day lives, if you've heard any heroic tale you've heard some shade of The Illiad, or Gilgamesh if you want to get all faggy about it. Reading papers about books is always more interesting than the books themselves if you're a brainlet.