/lit/ - Literature

Start with the greeks. For real.

Starting with Nietzsche or Kierkegararard is like opening an STEM textbook to the middle of its middle chapter. No wonder you don't understand shit. The basic questions they are trying to answer and the previous answers that they are working to replace are all in the shit you skipped.

That's common. Read secondary literature that interprets the primary texts.

>>6690665
It's funny, with the exception of Nietzche I've never had trouble understanding philosophy (although to be fair, when I read Nietzche I was also blazing it 24/7, so my reading comprehension was shit at the time).

A lot of it is because I feel like I can relate to the philosophers I've read on a personal level. Like they're not just writing for a blanket audience, they're speaking to me, advising me on how to be a better human being.

Plus it kinda helps that I've been reading at the college level since I was 12

>>6690739
that's funny, i started philosophy off nietzsche

>>6690744
Word! I started pretty easy with Meditations a few years ago, then tried Nietzche right after but couldn't do it so I put him back on my shelf. I'm reading this Emerson anthology right now and I can understand it pretty clearly, so here's hoping Nietzche won't sound so convoluted this time around

>>6690681
But how do you know when you've read enough Greek stuff?
Like, could you just read The Republic and then go on to the next stuff?
Also, can you start it right after the greek stuff, or should you real the western philosophers like Descartes and stuff??

>>6690779
You've read almost enough Greek stuff when you understand who Plato is answering, and why.

>>6690783
That makes sense. And it sounds wise.


(Also bump)

>>6690665
Quite an interesting question.
Thus, B.U.Y.P.

>>6690665
b b b b b b buuuuuuuuuuuump

Be patient because it takes time to acclimate to the language involved, and to reading more slowly and carefully

Be aware of the background of the writing, since most of the time it was written under the assumption that you are pretty well-educated and well-read in concepts and terminology that were all the rage at the time

Don't be afraid to read summaries and secondary materials to help you understand complex things

Above all, be aware that most people talking about philosophy, even the ones who seem super smart and serious about it on a gay internet forum, not only read secondary materials but probably had it outright explained to them by a professor in some 101 course, and (if they read the actual book at all), read the book backwards from already knowing what it was saying in simplified form

Start with Spengler or Nietzsche. Even Zizek is fine as a starting point. Or look up Rick Roderick on YouTube if you really need it in common sense language. It doesn't have to make sense, it starts making sense eventually you just have to keep at it. Reading Plato first did not really help in retrospect but it's hard to say.

Generally you'll want to stay away from analytic "philosophy" except Wittgenstein and a few others

Free video lectures, secondary material/commentary/critisism, annotated versions, anthology overview of History of Ideas.

You need help man, you can't just read the original texts themselves and understand to get everything. The internet is a giant gift for this. In my experience, especially listening to lectures is helpful, it might has something to do with the oscillation of the visual reading and auditive listening.

>>6691814
There's just something impersonal about writing. I love the spontaneity and feeling of a good lecture, if I could just go to school and listen to awesome professors lecturing all the time life would be chill.

>>6691814
Are there any lectures in specific that would be helpful???

>>6690665
BRING
UP
THIS
POST
- Ronald Reaghen

>>6691699
This is a good point, I think trying to understand a work on its own terms is really important, but starting with another's exegesis is often the best stepping stone.

>>6691699

Does anyone actually read primary sources outside of dedicated professors/scholars? I have a hard time believing that most professors who lecture on Kierkegaard have read all 800+ pages of Either/Or.

thanks anons
also bump

>>6692717
I'm trying to :^)

>>6690739
It's funny, I can always understand Nietzche with no trouble, even when high.

>>6692717
Not really. Or if they do, they won't understand anything.

I can't decide if /lit/ is trolling on this point or is genuinely stupid.

>>6692717
Yes. My close friend just wrote a 120 page thesis on Nishitani. He and all of his professors read the primary sources because it's their fucking job.

>>6690665
Stop being such an uneducated, dumb faggot.

It really helps if you have someone to talk to about it.

>>6694402
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk8WkF4JKME

>>6690665
Learn how to think philosophically. Most philosophers in the western and eastern canon are there for good reasons.

Once you understand the ways philosophical questions are posed and asked, and what things they think about, specific philosophers will make more sense, but you can't fully understand the questions until you read some philosophers. So it's a to and fro, a bootstrapping.

>>6690665
>>6690779
Part of what I find so surprising about "should I read X" philosophy threads is how often it seems thought that one has to have simply read a given work cover to cover, and that's good enough, end-of-story.

Philosophy's hard for a number of reasons, the two primary reasons being the difficulty of the subject matter, and the very way that philosophers throughout history wrote.

The first difficulty can only be overcome by sensitive reading and, most importantly, RE-reading. Secondary work can be helpful, but it should only be referred to after you've made your own attempt, and can both point to what you think you can account for in a text, as well as what you can't.

The second difficulty can only be overcome through really insane close reading, and sometimes you just have to be lucky enough to find some external account or text that opens up a thinkers work more (for example, the esotericism of both Descartes and Leibniz is only clear through the correspondences of the latter, and through Henry More's account of the former; Descartes, according to More, didn't actually believe his own account of mind as substance, and Leibniz, by his own account, writes exoterically both to better persuade people to his metaphysical position, and to keep from getting in trouble.).

Overall, stick with a work, and devote some time to it. Eventually, after much work, you'll discover for yourself whether philosophy is or is not for you.

>>6690665
It's becoz your disinterested. I have the same problem as when I am and then when I get depressed again that's when I comprehend it. If you're not depressed imo philosophy should be avoided and that's not for the above mentioned reason but if you're not a regular returner to depressed states of mind Phil. Will rek you.

Don't read it like this faggot: http://bigthink.com/the-proverbial-skeptic/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-you-stronger-really

One always begins in the middle of anything, especially philosophy. I've been reading philosophy off and on for the past several years and its only in the last year that its actually come together for me in a real way.

Just keep reading.

>>6694635
I agree with this anon. For the first time, I can pick up Nietzsche and nothing is really all that cryptic

>>6690665
b u m p

Applying philosophy is, in my opinion, the best way to understand it. Most authors in that field write about how they see the world or how they think the world would be better, I've always tried to apply philosophy in a random situation and just wonder "What would X do about this?".

I think, bottom line, philosophy is about knowledge and if you start wondering about thinks, start analazying things in a deeper way, the philosophers part is done.

What does it actually take to understand philosophy books,like Thus Spoke Zarathustra?Is it enough to understand more or less the basic ideas or is there more behind it?

>>6696590
Context is always important, Nietzche had a tough life, it was different times also, when I read a new book, any medium/long boobk I always read at least a short wikipedia Biography to understand what the author was going through at the time he wrote that.

Like, books about writers, about bohemian live, I'm just finishing Dostoyevski's Humiliated and Insulted, I'd like to read something similar but not that sad and deprresing.

>>6696604
>context
thats a given.I meant it more like pic related

>>6696622
It's philosophy, not a fucking children's book. You're supposed to analyze it as much as you can.