/lit/ - Literature

I got excited that this was a cooking literature thread but oh well

Just read this list, report back when you’re finished

>>18451796
sorry man, Marco Pierre White's autobiography was a pretty good read though

>>18451791
Start with a general history of philosophy book. Bertrand Russell's has short chapters and a readable style. Ppl will nitpick but keep in mind it's a broad subject. The best extented series if you want to get more info about a certain epoch or school of thought: Copleston's excellent, pithy, extremely enjoyable books.

I liked story of philosophy by durant but it is quite long

>>18451791
>pithy
Are u awake?

>>18451791
>>18451811
Read this instead

Well, hopefully youĺl read Homer, Herodouts, THucydides, and many dramas BEFOre getting through Plato and when you find the need to, but it's not necessary to start up with him. If you really know nothing about ancient Greece you need to drop all priorities and read the Iliad right now, itś a medical emergency, & will not take more than two weeks.

>>18452091
> adj.Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief
You're welcome

>>18451799
Dont read confessions it fucking sucks. Basically a melodramatic and verbose no fap diary

>>18451791
No. If you want to understand Plato, the best thing you can do is just read him. If you feel like you are not getting it, or you want to go even deeper, read secondary sources by experts (SEP is free and a good starting point).

Learning about the culture, epoch and the language is helpful for small details, which is important if you are a scholar, not so much if you are an amateur. If the cultural reference is important it will be explained in the footnotes anyways.

Read in chronological order, don't jump straight into Nietzsche. Most of the time you need to understand the history of ideas to properly appreciate what a philosopher is trying to do. Nietzsche is a very clear example of that.

>>18452200
>If you want to understand Plato, the best thing you can do is just read him.
That's not true at all. The idea that ppl should simply dive into philosophy is naive. You need guidance, introductory books and overviews, not least because Plato, for instance, was going back to certain concepts and ideas that arrived before him. A good general, elementary overview is key, even if it's Alain de Botton or something like that.

DO NOT do any thinking about what you should read. Just read whatever you want. You can only figure out the answers to these kinds of questions by reading books and having reactions to them. There is no point doing this preliminary stuff that people get trapped into, just go and read and you'll see how it goes

>>18451791
>now that I finally am reading I wanted to ask you bros a question about philosophy because I'm interested in reading some soon. I hear people recommend Plato or Nietzsche books or whatever, but isn't it necessary to also learn about the period and place they were writing in? I feel like I'd be missing a lot if I just read Plato without knowing shit about ancient Greece. What do you think? Is it necessary to know about the kind of culture that produced these texts to understand them well? pic unrelated

bro I wish you the best but you sound incredibly retarded. I'm not sure where to start. I'm going to get incredibly stressed out thinking about this so I'm done, best of luck, dude.

>>18452169
>500 page book
>two weeks

Maybe I'm biased because I studied philosophy in uni so my guidance were the lectures and seminars, but no single book will help you understand Plato better than his own Dialogues.

If you want to read Sophie's World or some shit like that first then go ahead but the way we studied Plato for thousands of years was to straight up read him and then discuss his ideas or pick up treatises from other people that had read the same book as you did.

And by the way, the same method still works. Yes it will be challenging and yes you will be at a loss some times, but that's part of the process. You need to rediscover some wheels and form your own (probably wrong) opinions and THEN compare your takes with the secondary sources. If you think that your previous supplementary reading will help you understand all of Aristotle on your first reading then you are pretty naive. More than two millenia later we are still discussing what the fuck is he on about when he talks about catharsis.

>>18452239
Ideally twelve days. Yes, allowing for sabbath.

>>18452216
That would be an irrational, midwit approach to a rational subject.

>>18452271
Meant for (You)
>>18452215

>>18451791
>but isn't it necessary to also learn about the period and place they were writing in?
yes it's absolutely essential to historicize your reading and your imagination. the insights of plato and the like are not immanently available to you outside of time, you need to hermeneutically reconstruct an authors consciousness in your own mind. for example I can't imagine trying to understand plato without the knowing about the state of literacy and the homeric educational apparatus in athens or understanding plato's exposure to pythagoreanism and is failed political attempts in syracuse.

>>18452183
>no fap
Basado

>>18452271
Exactly, you did have formal guidance. When one is lacking, ppl get bored or lost, hence the importance of reading good overviews, the online Phil Encyclopedia here and there etc.

>>18452471
Is it possible to self study philosophy to any decent extent? How long would this take?

bump

How do you read philosophy? I keep sticky tabs near by and tab out important things, any tips on reading different than you would just genre fiction?

>>18452224
Get your head out of your ass

>>18452183
I'm about to start City of God. Haven't read confessions