/lit/ - Literature

Greeks with the start

>>12408782
Start
WITH
THE
GREEKS

Please don't start with this shit. Read a text book or Wikipedia

The very first thing you're gonna want to do is learn Greek and German. Then you can start reading Wikipedia articles.

Protip: DON'T start with the greeks/read linearly. Jump around and read lots of wikipedia articles read lots of different thinkers.

>>12408819
To add on: you don’t have to read all of a book because they say the most important things in the first few pages.

>>12408782
Read general info about various philosophical concepts that interest you, then find literature about those philosophies. Its hard to help you if you don't already have an idea of what philosophy you want to learn about

>>12408828
To be fair you don't really need to read the book, just the prologue written by the modern scholar. All the important ideas are coherently and succinctly exposed right there.

>>12408782
start with the greeks is a meme

when you actually learn even a small amount of philosophy you will be bitterly disappointed with /lit/

I’d start with the Nubiyans if I were you

>>12408782
Philosophy Graduate here.

Dont start with the Greeks unless you have someone to help you pick out the philosophical issues and engage with them.

I would recommend starting books for now such as

50 Philosophy ideas you really ough to know

or any on the oxford introducing series, or the graphic introducing's on any thinkers or topics associated deeply with philosophy./

I found this really useful in my first year and i bet you will find them useful as an independent researcher :)

Good luck bro-beans

>>12408782
I don’t really think a lot on Wikipedia is super useful if you want to actually get into it.

I’d start with a history, probably A Brief History of Philosophy by Anthony Kenny. If you want some more biographical information the ‘90 minute’ series on the great philosophers is decent casual listening.

Otherwise, you really do just need to read original texts. The two starting points which you can choose from is the four dialogue sequence of the trial of Socrates by Plato, or meditations on first philosophy by Descartes.

Once you’ve read that post again for the next step.

>>12408797
>>12408818
>>12408819
These. ALWAYS start with Wikipedia.

>>12408797
>>12408818
>>12408819
samefag

>start with the Greeks

What a S H I T may may

Start with the hindus

>>12409187
There's a poster for each reply here you fucking dunce

>>12408782
Dumb tourist.

>>12409775
>he doesn't have a gorillion proxies to samefag with
can we fucking QUIT IT with this gay-ass amateur hour

>>12408782
How often do you read non-philosophy books/works? Often I've found that good literary fiction which touches on a subject contains nearly as much philosophical insight as directly reading the philosopher themselves. If you're looking for seriously approaching the classical works from a scholarly perspective, starting with Greek Mythology and the major Greek thinkers will be very helpful to you, though there are plenty who can be read without more than a cursory understanding of the Greeks. Nietzsche for example references the Greeks often, and while being directly familiar with the Greek mythology and Platonic/Aristotlean thought will help you, it isn't 100% necessary to read and enjoy his works aside from Zarathustra.

>>12408782
nice taste in music

>>12409898
Please don't give advice about fields you know nothing about

>>12409918
I'm not pretending to be some authority on philosophy, I'm just saying that reading a text book or a related work of fiction before diving into Plato's dialogues isn't a terrible idea. Not everything is so linear that there nothing can be learned from reading in the wrong order. Nobody is going to kill you for reading the pre-Socratics after reading Kierkegaard or something.

Historyofphilosophy.net podcasts it pretty quick

Well I stopped after Late Antiquities

>>12408782
Every problem has a history.

>>12409942
>I'm not pretending to be some authority on philosophy
That's exactly what I'm saying. I wouldn't give someone advice on how to best learn German unless I've gone through the process myself. Specially when you recommend to read literary fiction and greek mythology (both meritory in their own right, don't get me wrong) in order to learn about philosophy.

>>12409187
Look at the times separating the posts

>>12409949
Where did you start?

>>12409986
So let me get this straight, you actually believe that there is nothing to be gained in terms of understanding philosophy by learning the myths and understanding the literary works which inspired the philosophers? I think someone who doesn't necessarily have previous knowledge of a certain school of thought can learn quite a lot about it by reading the fiction related to it. The number of people who first began to be interested in philosophy after reading Satre or Kafka or Camus is pretty staggering, probably a majority of people who begin to read philosophy. He asked where to start, not where to get everything, and I think finding a work of literary fiction which touches on philosophical ideas can be a great place to start.

>>12408849
This. A lot of the philosophy posts here usually can be understood by reading the first parts of wikipedia pages. Though I would be lying if I said there are no worthwhile posts here.

>>12410024
>So let me get this straight, you actually believe that there is nothing to be gained in terms of understanding philosophy by learning the myths and understanding the literary works which inspired the philosophers?
Of course not, and I often use literature and myths to teach to my students. What I'm disputing is that this is a good way to learn philosophy. If you want to learn urban planning, reading The Invisible Cities may be interesting and stimulating, but it is a rather poor suggestion to start with. The only way to learn philosophy is to read primary sources and secondary texts. You can play around with material that inspired philosophers but in no way are do these books contain nearly as much philosophical insight as directly reading the philosopher themselves.

>>12410085
But Plato heavily references the Iliad and the Odyssey so maybe reading those texts is necessary to understanding Plato's philosophy? I'm not entirely sure though since my edition of Plato's works explains these references.

>>12410085
Again, I'm not saying to not read the philosophers, I'm just saying that reading a novel containing a bit of the core ideas of a certain school of thought in a compelling narrative can be a good way to begin learning about that way of thinking. I don't see anything wrong with reading the Homeric epics before reading Plato, in fact I think it's fundamentally necessary for most people to have a narrative structure that they can relate ideas to.

>>12410101
Of course reading Homer will help you with those references, but a good edition will help you bridge that gap at least in part, and definitely enough to undersand the relevance and significance of said reference. If you want to understand Plato and his philosophy you'll be much better off reading a secondary source right next to his dialogues than reading the homeric corpus instead. A good secondary source (which is also a philosophical text) will make you engage with the text in new ways, open you up to the philosophical ideas exposed in the dialogue and their relevance in the previous and future philosophical discourse. If you want to learn about the classical world then by all means read Homer because he's the educator of all Greece as Plato himself acknowledges, but then we're talking about history or philology which are very different from philosophy

Case in point: look up the syllabus of any of the most respected universities that teach philosophy. You will find Plato in all of them but won't find Homer in any.

>>12410132
>Again, I'm not saying to not read the philosophers, I'm just saying that reading a novel containing a bit of the core ideas of a certain school of thought in a compelling narrative can be a good way to begin learning about that way of thinking
No, you said that
>Often I've found that good literary fiction which touches on a subject contains nearly as much philosophical insight as directly reading the philosopher themselves

And I think that "having a narrative structure to relate ideas to" is an awful way to do philosophy. Have you even read Plato? How and why do you need to superimpose platonism on top of the Illiad is beyond me, specially as Plato already makes up his own myths to explain his own philosophy.

>>12408782
Extremely high quality and easy introduction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6BishaQ4rc
https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philosophy
Warning: this is in no way a balanced or centrist take and I don't want it to be.

>>12410218
I miss the days when randfags used to get laughed out of threads desu

>>12410228
More reddit interlopers lurking and among the jannies. Cry more about faggot.

*about it

>>12408840
>>12408828
How would you be learning then? The whole book is an attempt by a philosopher to explain the argument by which he bases his opinions, if you don't at least understand the argument your just jotting down others opinions withou actually exercisisng your own thought at all.

>>12408782
by stopping listening to bad music

>>12408782
Surprised that this never gets posted on /lit/ desu, very useful

https://plato.stanford.edu/

>>12410376
anon...

>not starting with Critique of Pure Reason
It's like you people want to fail

>>12408782
Become my pupil.

>>12408782
Read.

>>12408782
philosophy doesn't make you to getting qt gf
It's useless so don't do it

>>12408849
>>12410042
And yet, disappointingly, /lit/ is the best place on the internet to discuss philosophy.

>>12408858
wrong, follow the guide. sure skim wikis and get a general overview guide book, but dont think even 5% of your total reading should be from anything but the primary sources

lest you become forever corrupted with the false lens of modernity, hobbling your progress up the thousand steps to the spheres

when we say start with the greeks, we mean pic related plus a bunch of other poetic and presocratic shit and dont forget the yale lectures and getting your friends to act out scenes from the iliad and really just really really trying to become as much of an ancient greek as you can in the process

>>12410681
It's like YOU want them to fail. That shit is way too tall an order to start with.

>>12410010
With the Greeks of course. Episode one

It’s not just a meme

>>12410780
Critique is by all means the foundation of principal metaphysics. The complexity doesn't matter, if anything Kant's writings act as a perfect pseud filter - if you're not willing to put up with it and persevere, you shouldn't be studying philosophy anyway.

>>12408782
Read introductions, read philosophers and the corresponding reader's companion book, read commentaries of their work, read articles, look up on youtube or other platforms for courses/conferences about them

>>12408792
i laughed

>>12408818
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Read stanford encyclopedia articles if you must but never wiki

>>12410532
hownew.ru?

>>12410768
>but dont think even 5% of your total reading should be from anything but the primary sources
Reading Herodotus and Thucydides without first reading a secondary source on Classical Greece is dumb desu, half of it doesn't make sense without context

>>12408782
My favorite philosophy podcast answered just this question, you're in luck
He recommended WT Jone's
A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
Spans 5 volumes

>>12410996
>letting one man shape your entire understanding of the field
Is this intellectual cuckoldry?

>>12410763
absolutely not true you complete retard. outside of a small subset of empirical philosophers

>>12408782
There's no right way to do it. If you want to do it then do it, simple as that. It's not like it's hard to find. Have your own little journey. Everything you read will lead you to other things, and the things that stand out as interesting to you are leading you on the path that best suits your mind.

>>12411023
Are you retarded? This is a history of philosophy series appropriate for the layman. Which is exactly what OP is requesting and he obviously wants a starting point you ass.
Or were you referring to having a favorite philosophy podcsst?

>>12410996
it's an expensive book. salty I bought it for a class and never made use for it.

>>12411023
It's actually done pretty well. It goes without saying that it's not a substitute for firsthand study. The book doesn't presume to accomplish that. It's just overview. I remember studying philosophers firsthand and then trying to find something to disagree with in that book and more or less failing.

Gives a lot of context for the works in question as well. Cultural climate and whatnot. It knows its just a secondhand text and it sets out to do that as well as it can.

Are you a lesbian? If not fuck off we’re full white boi

>>12408782
Literally just start with Wikipedia dude, only get into reading books / essays if you actually want to. Don't let the sophists here trick you into thinking there's a "correct way" to do it.

Here, I've posted a random philosophy article to get you started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

>>12410763
Private, esoteric forums more niche than 4chan exist moron.
You are as bad as a redditor that thinks it's the hottest shit ever.