/lit/ - Literature

If you got brains you'll figure out what it means. If you're a midwit then yes, go read the entire chart.

>>22284350
Not really. You should really read the KJV's OT before the Greeks then the KJV's NT after the greeks.

>>22284350
Yes. Actually start with the Greeks, retard. You don't have to read every single thing we have of them, but if you want to understand the basis for Western thought, read them, at least the basics. If you start with later eras you'll be missing out on all kinds of shit without realizing it. Godspeed

Yeah I think it's a great idea
It's very entertaining and interesting, it's not something you need to struggle through besides Plato and Aristotle but I skipped them

>>22284350
I have sunbeams shooting out of my asshole

>>22284350
>start with the foundation
Yeah how dare we?

>>22284358
Which chart though I’ve seen like four Greek charts?>>22284377
You sure?>>22284477
Could you at least have some sort of chart or book I can start off with?>>22284482
I see>>22284517
I’m not saying you guys are an issue for the charts. Just wondering if it was serious.

>>22284350
The only real alternative to starting with the gayreeks is to start with the 'jeets or the chinks.

>>22284350
Quoting canceled meme tier authors is funny now? /lit/ should be ashamed. Think about the children.

I would advise starting with the Romans or Medievals first. Then the Greeks. This curriculum would be part of a classical education so yes it’s serious.

Bloom’s Western canon is also pretty good. You could just read through that.

>What if everything is water bro
>What if the stars are holes in the sky
>What if air is the essence of things
>What if the earth was all water first
wow what great insights

>>22284350
Get a textbook
>>22285610
Get a textbook or an anthology or whatever.

start with anime

>>22285618
>2023
>not starting with tranime
Why are chuds always like this?

how do I filter phone filenames?

>>22285506
>>22285610
Which one medieval and Romans or Indians and Asian? Or does it depend on my reading skills or learning?

>>22284350
I'm starting with Diogenes, seems pretty based

>>22285618
Fuck you >>22285616
Alrighty so just look up Greek textbook.

>>22284350
People like to say they’ve read important works even if they don’t actually understand what they’re reading and their knowledge of the work comes from a 20 minute YouTube video they watched after. There is no reason to read the complete works of Plato or Aristotle in English. There is no need to read the Greek tragedians; would you read Shakespeare in Ancient Greek? It’s the same with the Latin poets as well; why would you read them in English if everything that made them special is absent? Why would you read Cicero even though his mastery of Latin is what made him distinguished? Why would you read the ancient historians when more modern, holistic overviews of the time period exist? You’re certainly not reading them for historical knowledge, so what are you reading them for? Vanity, egoism.

>>22285610
>is himself 75% water
hmm

>>22286212
No, the point is that you shouldn't stop with them, that is why you start with them on the first place, you won't be able to make sense out of Kant's ideas without Hume, and so on. Philosophy is a big conversation and you have to start from the beginning, you can't jump straight into the middle of it and expect for it to make any sense.
And it started as something really primitive, because again, it is literally the inception of knowledge, so it wouldn't be anything sophisticated. This is the issue with most people, they are born in a world where a lot of things can be taken for granted. The issue with it is that they don't have any name or anything, so you will still need to read philosophy so that you can name certain things that you already know, in order to be able to talk and read about them.

>>22286223
Did I write that you should read Kant? If you don’t know German, then it is a fool’s errand. You are forming an interpretation of an author off an interpretation of their work. What’s more, your opinion will be further informed by whatever secondary source you needed to digest to understand it because it certainly wasn’t self-evident from the translation. Every great philosopher was a polyglot. What compelled you to read all of philosophy from Plato to Heidegger? Intellectual curiosity or something else? You read Kant because it was on a list of the greatest works of the western canon and it was necessary to read to complete some arbitrary list. Some chart compiled by some random anon so they could signal their intelligence to this wretched board.

>>22286279
>the form doesn't matter
This is stupid, some philosophers are worth reading exactly because of the way they express their thoughts. I don't think that you have to read their complete works, but still, reading some of their stuff is definitely worth your time.
>chart
There are books and uni courses online that do that. You have to be fucking kidding me.

>>22286279
The question of translation is super interesting, and reading philosophy in its original language is extremely helpful (you mentioned Heidegger, who's pretty exemplary in this regard). That being said, who fucking cares. I like to be surrounded by thoughtful people and if that starts with an arbitrary checklist or reading a translation then so be it. Let them make the next turn in the hermeneutic circle on their own time

>>22286301
They are not thoughtful. They merely seek validation. It’s not out of intellectual curiosity. Take Nietzsche for example—there is a lot of fanfare on this board with him. Anons will spend their time reading his entire oeuvre from obscure to unpublished. Yet, not a single one of them knows German. Why is that? You would think if they were genuinely interested in the thought of Nietzsche they would read him in German. But they don’t. Because it was never about him in the first place. He’s just ‘that guy’ on this board and everyone is compelled to read him. They view him as some level in a video game so they can graduate to the next level, the next author on a list or chart. And then when they complete all the levels they will reach a sort of nirvana and transcend above the plebs. They’ll read a treatise, not really understand it, and then consume some video or blog to do the thinking for them. Rinse and repeat. The reading is entirely perfunctory.

>>22285564
>I would advise starting with the Romans or Medievals first. Then the Greeks.
Why?

>>22284350
Billions must try!

>>22284350
Hello, fellow /fitlit/ brother! Allow me to attempt to help you navigate this. Your skepticism is appreciated, retain that. /lit/ is a terrible place with very few people who genuinely read.
Now, the reason you start with the greeks is because you cannot start with anything earlier. If we had complete record, text or otherwise, of who influenced the Greeks, or if there were very important groups (Celts, Scands, Germans for example) that influenced history and storytelling, you would want to start with them. However, we don't have that and we look at the Greeks as the foundation.
That foundation is important. You will want that foundation because if someone writes in a book that they "feel like Sisyphus", you'll probably want to know who that is and what it means to feel like Sisyphus. Sure, someone can say "It's a futile task that requires a lot of effort." but that doesn't properly convey the magnitude or context. Does this make sense?
As for an actual reading order:
>AESOP'S FABLES
>HOMER'S ILIAD
>HOMER'S ODYSSEY
These three works are required and important. They help convey a bit of Greek morality as well as a storytelling structures that have echoed throughout history in literature.
>The Greek Myths (2-volume set) by Robert Graves
This is basically further elaboration on Greek myths. This is where you'll find Sisyphus, the story of Atlas and Prometheus, and so on. You don't need to read everything, but it is not a terribly bad idea. It's also not as much of a chore as what I'll mention next.
>PLATO: Complete Works
>Complete Works of Aristotle (2-volume set)
You do not really need to read the entire collection of Plato nor Aristotle. It's not a bad idea though, but you don't have to. There are a few must reads, you can find a lot of different opinions on that and I will not be including my opinion in this. This will help you understand everything from philosophy to mathematics to even more Greek morality as well as politics and storytelling.
>The Christian Bible
Technically, this is mostly post-Greek. But still extremely important to become a little familiar with the Genesis, Exodus, then skip all the way to Revelation. This is the bare minimum. A lot of authors reference the bible and the Greeks, you'll want to be able to recognize when that happens so you can have a greater context of what is happening. Maybe you don't need it because you grew up in a christian-influenced household, but it is recommended so that we can maximize how many people do understand the context. If you want to know which one: Douay–Rheims Bible, KJV, and the Orthodox study bible. If you can get all 3, get them. Otherwise, any one will generally do.
I hope this was helpful.

>>22287066
>If someone writes in a book that they "feel like Sisyphus", you'll probably want to know who that is and what it means to feel like Sisyphus. Sure, someone can say "It's a futile task that requires a lot of effort." but that doesn't properly convey the magnitude or context.
No, the explanation you give is perfectly acceptable and encapsulates what the layman ought to know.

>AESOP'S FABLES
>HOMER'S ILIAD
>HOMER'S ODYSSEY
Useless in translation. Reading Homer in English is like reading Dante in Russian. Just another tick off the arbitrary ‘western canon’ bucket-list.

>The Greek Myths (2-volume set) by Robert Graves
Bizarre inclusion. Rigmarole.

>PLATO: Complete Works
>Complete Works of Aristotle (2-volume set)
Months of intense study. Waste of time. This is something you do when retired and decrepit and have a passable knowledge of Ancient Greek.

>The Christian Bible
Read the KJV for the literary influence.

>>22286355
Everyone else is so vain and egotistical not like me I know GERMAN and read works in their original language.
Sounds like you're playing the same game as those you criticise, maybe take a look in the mirror first.

>>22287308
You're operating under a very specific perspective, while mine is a lot more open to what OP was asking which is "why" and even opted in to a "how" response.
You never gave an alternative suggestion outside of the so called "heretic bible." The very same bible that only exists because the king threw as "hissy fit" about religion not conforming to the sudden distaste for the sacred rite that is marriage. The reason I gave the guy three options is so he could avoid having to ask people and getting a christian flame war that's really just a nearly 500 year old argument about which British monarch is valid.
Kill yourself and enjoy your right, peasant. I will not be responding.

>>22287852
>>22287916
>I will not be responding
Good. After that little deranged rant no one wants to read what you write ever again. And fyi, you read the KJV because it has by far the most literary influence out of any of the accessible versions. This is a literature board, after all. For a man so well read you have a rather unhinged way of expressing yourself.

>Sounds like you're playing the same game as those you criticise, maybe take a look in the mirror first.
How am I egotistical? It’s perfectly valid to question motivations. I think I’ve struck a nerve.

If you’re going to read the entire corpus of Nietzsche and presumably a healthy dose of German idealism for context it is certainly advisable to learn to read German. You will be reading millions upon millions of words of translated text otherwise. And if you want to consult secondary sources all the best scholarship is in German. If you were truly doing this out of intellectual curiosity, you would have figured this out already and compelled yourself to do it. But you didn’t because that’s not really what it’s about.

>>22289035
Well reading German authors is part of larp i play inside of my head. I also learned reading German just so i could immerse myself more. Now im starting a new scenario and feel compelled to learn Russian.

Autism aside, learning Homeric and Attic Greek sounds considerably more demanding, especially if all one wants is an introduction into western canon. Like its a decade or two of hard work.

>>22286279
>american learns one language for 3 months

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>>22289147
>Autism aside, learning Homeric and Attic Greek sounds considerably more demanding, especially if all one wants is an introduction into western canon. Like its a decade or two of hard work.
Or just… don’t read Homer? And stop boxing things into this arbitrary ‘western canon’ distinction. Much of these ‘western canon’ lists were also composed with the idea that the student have a healthy bearing of Greek and Latin, and would have learned French by virtue of their aristocratic status. You should not feel bad for not knowing Greek or Latin or French. I never said that. French is no longer the language of diplomacy, for one. Greek and Latin provided no benefit to the layman apart from acting as a status symbol which is why it was scrubbed from the western curriculum. But if you are intending to engross yourself in a culture’s philosophy and literature for an extended period of study, such as Germany, then learn the language.

And if you’re hesitant to write off translations, imagine if the situation is flipped. Imagine if a Spanish speaker claimed to be a Shakespeare scholar… without speaking English. Imagine if a French speaker claimed to have read everything Dickens ever wrote… without speaking English. I use these examples, of course, because they are those authors most associated with Englishness and the English language.

>>22285610
>What if the stars are holes in the sky
that's elder scrolls stuff

>>22289374
I agree with you in general, just wanted to point out that it may not be completely useless for someone without sufficient background to read some Greek and Roman authors in translation. You know just to provide basic knowledge of tropes and motives useful for contemporary literature. Same approach should be applied to reading more important church fathers and New Testament.

Having established such a foundation one may choose to engulf oneself into studies of European culture of choice. And if one is serious about that learning a language is essential, yes.

Also term "western canon" is useful (although artificial to an extent, yes) in a sense that it allows you to exclude works which, although important in other context, might not be of one's immidiate interest. For example, are works of Ibn Arabi, Attar of Nishapur and Rumi important in general? Yes. Do you need them to understand to understand contemporary German literature? They may give broader perspective on some themes, especially once orientalism starts being a thing in late XIX century but in general you can do without them. Life is short and not everyone has an opportunity to devote in entirely to literature, as good as it sounds.

(I think you might be confusing me with some other anon, that was my first post in this thread)