/lit/ - Literature

>>3067307
What?

Are you me?

Someone at some point said to start with an outline (I went out and got The Story of Philosophy) and start reading from the philosophers that interest you.

Read the dialogues of Plato

There's no better place to start than the beginning.

>>3067321
I did this, too. They're incredibly accessible and short, so there's no point in avoiding them.

>>3067318
I look for some similar books next time I'm in a store, thanks


>>3067321
I have actually already had Plato recommended by a friend, I'll look him up thanks

>>3067332
Don't know why I saged.

I read Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, and I have Symposium in queue.

Don't feel as if you need to associate yourself with any one particular philosophy. At the very least look to be familiar with a wide variety.

>>3067365
I will, I just assumed I'd eventually become more interested in a certain topic

>>3067351
>no Republic

u wot m8

>Tao Te Ching
Why are you reading this faggot?

>>3067397
Because I want to

Western:
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Jesus Christ
Marcus Aurelius
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Niccolo Machiavelli
Francis Bacon
Thomas Hobbes
Rene Descartes
Blaise Pascal
John Locke
Baruch Spinoza
Gottfried Leibniz
George Berkeley
Voltaire
David Hume
Jean-Jaques Rousseau
Immanuel Kant
Thomas Paine
Jeremy Bentham
Georg Hegel
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Stuart Mill
Soren Kierkegaard
Karl Marx
Charles Sanders Peirce
William James
Friedrich Nietzsche
Edmund Husserl
John Dewey
Bertrand Russell
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Martin Heidegger
Karl Popper
Jean-Paul Sartre
AJ Ayer
Michel Foucault

Eastern:
Sun Tzu
Buddha
Confucius
Lao-tze (Laozi)
Zhuangzi
Mozi
Nagarjuna

>>3067304
ayn rand

>>3067543
>Socrates
>Jesus Christ
You forgot Gandalf the Grey and Mr.Miyagi bro

philosopher I recommend:

Snoop dogg

>>3067304
noam chomsky, anything by him.
and, get this OP, HE'S NOT EVEN DEAD YET. WOW.

>>3067573
>>3067558

samefag

>>3067566
You're complaining about two out of forty plus named. Calm down.

>>3067543
>Niccolo Machiavelli
groce.

pls go

>>3067321

But the Socratic dialogues are full of references to Homer and early Greek drama/mythology, so it may help to be at least somewhat familiar with that stuff first.

>>3067575
pff, how would you know

I would recommend reading "On Denoting" by Bertrand Russell, "The Thought: A logical Inquiry" by Gottlob Frege, "Naming and Necessity" by Saul Kripke, and "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" by Wittgenstein. If you're feeling very adventurous read "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant before anything else though. If you want to be Continental instead of the superior Analytic route, read some Husserl and then Being and Time by Heidegger.

>>3068155
>I would recommend reading "On Denoting" by Bertrand Russell, "The Thought: A logical Inquiry" by Gottlob Frege, "Naming and Necessity" by Saul Kripke, and "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" by Wittgenstein. If you're feeling very adventurous read "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant before anything else though. If you want to be Continental instead of the superior Analytic route, read some Husserl and then Being and Time by Heidegger.
are you saying a beginner shouldn't read anything before Kant?

>>3068170
Not at all, I'm just blatantly showing my severe Analytic bias. Although I would say ancient and medieval philosophy is a waste of time to read.

>>3068178
>Although I would say ancient and medieval philosophy is a waste of time to read.

explain yourself Mister

>>3067396
The Republic is long and grueling. I've started and stopped reading it like twice now, only getting to pt. 5. Schoolwork always gets in the way.

>>3068186
It is of extreme historical importance, and ideas brought up in Plato's work are still of interest, but almost everything else seems irrelevant unless you want to go into history of philosophy specializing in ancient or medieval.

>>3068155

Those are some intense works. You could easily spend several years studying the whole of them. In fact, I suspect one would not just be able to spend several years on them, but would have to spend several years on them.

For the casual like myself, Youtube has some great videos on philosophy. "Wittgenstein in 90 minutes," "Kant in 90 minutes" are good introductions. Then there's always Wikipedia.

I read the first page of the Tractatus. It meant nothing to me, but since I re-read it about 20 times in an attempt to figure it out, I ended up memorizing it.

Over the course of the next many weeks, the meaning of each line slowly dawned on me.

That is an exceptionally tacit and implicit work-- you have to sort of already be familiar with the questions he's getting at.

>>3068194
The point of it is stated in the introduction. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

>>3068155

why not read Philosophical Investigations instead of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus?

>>3068200
Only because I've never read the Philosophical Investigations, so I can't in good faith recommend it.

>>3068198

I'm sorry but if you're trying to say that the Tractatus is an obvious book, you're completely wrong.

Unless you're working through it with a class discussion group or a professor or with a read-along, it will all go over your head.

Also, Russell wrote the introduction and Wittgenstein didn't like it (all out rejected it in fact) , being the ungrateful little shit that he was.

>>3068211
Then the preface, not the Introduction. Yes, the Tractatus is complicated, and unless you have background in whats going on I suppose you shouldn't read it alone.

>>3067318
i agree with this

Though I think a good way to go about it is

Plato--->(a little bit of Descartes) Kant--->Hegel--->Nietzsche

at least to give you a basic overview of how things evolved.

My favorite is David Hume. Hands down.

>>3067321

>There's no better place to start than the beginning.

Perhaps after reading Plato and some other classics, in old as well as more modern philosophy, its worth taking a look at the pre-Socratics (Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Zeno ect.). Their texts (or what little historians have been able to gather) are short, and it's interesting to see how early the perennial issues of philosophy and discourse in general were primitively anticipated, such as: the internal ambivalences of notions regarding the succession of different states, the conceivability of permanence, and all that other jazz. But as I said, I feel that type of literature is better approached once one has garnered a sense of familiarity with how philosophical arguments and theories are generally shaped, and what importance they might bear. Otherwise, it seems that readers have a tendency to quickly dismiss the stuff as outdated nonsense.

>>3068304
yeah

frankly, telling people to start studying philosophy with the pre-Socratics is fucking stupid, because understanding why the pre-Socratics mattered is next to impossible without reading later more accessible thinkers, and understanding the thought of the pre-Socratics is not necessary for understanding later thinkers. it's intellectually lazy (to suggest it) and I really wonder why it's such a popular meme - is it just the influence of Nietzsche and Heidegger on /lit/?

>>3067543

>Nagarjuna

yes

..noticed you mentioned Foucault, but no love for Derrida. Any particular reason?

A marxist post-structuralist continental Ecole Normale Supérieure professor and feminist activist was teaching a class on Martin Heidegger, known hermeneuticist.

”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Nietzsche and accept that his genealogical method was the most highly-evolved theory the continent has ever known, even greater than Hegel's dialectics!”

At this moment, a brave, rational, positivist analytic philosopher who had read more than 15000 pages of Popper and Wittgenstein and understood the raison d'être of empiricism and fully supported all modern hard sciences stood up and held up the constitution.

”How universal is this text, frenchfag?"

The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “It's not universal at all, fucking positivist, its 'truth' is rooted in our shared understandings about culture, the subject and the nexus of power and knowledge”

”Wrong. It’s been 225 years since human reason created it. If it was not universal, and post-modern relativism, as you say, is real… then it should be regarded as a myth now”

>>3068308

>I really wonder why it's such a popular meme - is it just the influence of Nietzsche and Heidegger on /lit/?

newfag. So I wouldn't know. But I might suggest that it's because people generally regard Nietzche as a bad motherfucker. I haven't read his stuff in a long time, so I don't really have an opinion about him.

It seems to me that you're just spitting out your favourites and completely ignoring OP's position as a reader.

Answers such as >>3068155 are an example of that. Yes, great works, but not for someone who has only begun the search for the topics that most interest him. Getting familiar with the jargon is an important aspect as well.

OP. I'd recommend to browse through some introduction to philosophy such as Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy".

And yes, it's over-simplified, it omits important things and it's filled with useless witty remarks but it still gives you an impression on what certain kinds of philosophies are like.

I'm not sure who said it - maybe Wittgenstein - that some book of his was a "ladder you must throw away once you reach the top of it". Well all brief introductions are usually like that. They're worth studying anyway.

I'm a phil major myself and there's no way I could've read these recommendations from the /lit/ folk during my early interest. Yes, some begin with Sein & Zeit or Tracatus and get it all at once but for most it really is a slow path.

So instead of forcing yourself to read Parmenides, Zenon, Wittgenstein Derrida and who-knows-what just pick up some pieces you enjoy reading and try making connections to the premises and general thoughts that connect philosophies.

>>3068319
SEMPER FI
ps: close the borders

>>3067304
Simple, read "What does it all mean?" by Thomas Nagel. What ever section pops out to you as the most interesting, come back here and ask for suggestions on that subject.

>>3067543
pleb of the month.

>>3067543

You recommend Aquinas and not Augustine? BLASPHEMER!

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

>>3068374

Kant doesn't rhyme with pissant.

Stopped reading.

>>3068374

>>3068377
full sick kunt

>>3068374

absolutely grave-rolling

>>3068319
>The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly

this line gets me every time

it's like an anti-semitic 10 year old wrote it

Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

He's the most influential. Start with him.

>>3068377

if this is how you actually feel then you should probably just stop speaking altogether, let alone speaking English, because no matter how you speak, you pronounce the vast majority of words differently than the people who coined them

idiot

>>3068479

Names have very specific pronunciations

http://www.openculture.com/philosophy_free_courses
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/philosophy_for_beginners
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/general_philosophy

From these, you can find who you like the most, then start reading up on them. They will also give you a nice fundamental understanding of philosophy so you don't have to start from the beginning which may not appeal much to you.

I realise that I may cop much criticism for this, but I find Aleister Crowley (along with the people that preceded and influenced him) extremely interesting.

>>3068476

I suspect we were speaking earlier on /b/, but then the thread died.

... "morality"?

speaking of Wittgeinstein, was he influenced by any other philosophers, except Ferge and Russell? what stuff was he reading/studying?

>>3068496
have you read Gurdjieff?

>>3068530

Not yet unfortunately, but I've heard he's Crowley - but better.

Recommend me a book to start on?

>>3068535
you might want to start with P. D. Ouspensky book(s) on Gurdjieffian thought first

In Search of the Miraculous and The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution are awesome.

>>3068497
>I suspect we were speaking earlier on /b/, but then the thread died.
>... "morality"?

Morality is categorical

>>3068550

Cheers, on it now.

>>3068535
Are we talking about hypnosis, NLP, and mentalism? I'd like to get into that and re-create Derren Brown's audacities on a smaller scale, obviously just as party tricks.

>>3068527
Schopenhauer, it i said, was the most spiritual influence on the young Witt. I understand that as being the contents which were processed through the twisted, tortuous logico-analytic form in nascence then.

>>3068673
the vast majority of them are set-ups

>>3068396
It's a monty python sketch you humorless American trash.

>>3068693
What about that trick where he gets you to pick any card from a pack of cards and he then guesses what card you've picked?