/lit/ - Literature

Realise that that's a bad idea.

>>2819506
oh. is it?

your world will crumble once nihilism latch on to.

can we stop having this trollaspam thread over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?

Thanks.

Yours

Anon.

>>2819513
Yes, he doesn't understand it I think.

Take a direction that you like. I think there are ways on the recommended reading page (sticky), then post back in this thread and maybe we have a suggestion to start out with.
Philosophy isn't really necessary in any way if you don't know it yet, so go ahead and start with what you like.

I can recommend almost everyone to start with Sartre. He's the one I like the most after all the philosophy I've read. If you like the idea, then perhaps start with Sartre's Nausea; it's a novel and like that you can combine your favourite hobby (literature of course) and your new lover: philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_(novel)

If you find yourself on feminism, don't just read de Beauvoir, but read secondary literature which handles both de Beauvoir and Irigaray. Otherwise most philosophy is best read from the philosopher himself.

>>2819523

Don't listen to this guy. Sartre was a terrible writer and a mediocre thinker, at best.

If you really are determined to pursue philosophy, it's probably best to begin with Nietzsche.

I was going to start a thread about this, but I might as well ask it here.

Can one learn all one needs to about philosophy from Wikipedia and plato.stanford.edu, or is reading the original works vital to a comprehensive understanding?

>>2819527
Nietzsche is great for deep&edgy indeed!
Only der Untermensch loves his close ones and has pity for others.

>>2819537

Read Wikipedia if you want to be misled.

>>2819535

You don't understand Nietzsche.

>>2819527
>>2819523
agh, well I'll pick up the book in the library to take a look at it, anyway.
is there a specific work of nietzsche I should start out with?

>>2819535
Stanford is a great place to go, but reading the actual source material is much, much better. Takes a longer time though. So just depends on whether you want to know deeper of something or whether you want to know more philosophers.

>>2819541

I assume you misquoted those posts.

So I'll ask, why is Wikipedia misleading?

>>2819542
Like la Nausée for Sartre is Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spoke Zarathustra) for Nietzsche.
Can't remember with which one I started though. I think it was one of his last published ones.

>>2819542

For Nietzsche it's best to start with secondary texts. I suggest Walter Kaufmann's 'Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist'.

>>2819543

I'm a complete newb when it comes to philosophy, and I've considered taking the historical route, rather than just reading what I find interesting, but I'm daunted by the fact that there's so much to read (plato, aristotle, hegel, kant, wittgenstein, derrida, and on and on). I wonder if I should start by going on Stanford and getting a basic idea of what all the thinkers had to say, and then slowly going through the original writers over time. (I'm generally a fan of reading literary fiction, non-fiction and philosophy have always kind of bored me, but I'm coming to learn that having a base knowledge of philosophy is important to discourse and a greater understanding of literature at large)

>>2819552
If that is your purpose, don't forget to read on the Greek mythology too. It's referenced to quite a few times in literature.

>>2819580

I've read a bit on mythology, as well as the Bible and many of the classics, but I'm still lacking a comprehensive knowledge on philosophy. There's just so much to read and so little time. I'm just too in love with fiction to spend my time on much else at the moment, but hopefully that will change

>>2819552
Try the book "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell if you're going the historical route.

>>2819594

I've heard that Russell ignores a large portion of philosophy (in that he ignores what he deems less than important). I have quite a few of the Very Short Introduction series, I think those will help in my journey

>>2819598
Yeah, he skips a lot of the pre-Cartesian philosophy and over generalizes, but it's a pretty good starter text. Are you interested in Eastern philosophy at all?

>>2819603

I'm interested in all bodies of thought, I'd like to gain a greater understanding of myriad and varied worldviews and come to my own understanding of how it all works. Taoism seems really interesting to me, I recently picked up a copy of the Tao Te Ching and I want to read it, but I haven't got around to it yet. I'm a pleb westerner but it seems the Easterns had it figured out long before the continentals got around to rehashing the same basic ideas.

>>2819609
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books
Try those for your Confucianism needs.
>http://suite101.com/article/essential-reading-for-understanding-buddhism-a137145
Those are just some introductory texts, not sure if that's what you're looking for.

>>2819619

Thanks, that helps a lot. I have a shitload of reading to do. I don't know much about Confucious aside from a very basic knowledge of who he was. Same goes for Buddhism, it all seems very interesting to me.