/lit/ - Literature

How much do you already know about philosphy? Normally it would be better to read some essays about the philosophers before reading their actual texts.

>>700225
This before you read any of that. Plus some stuff on Nietzsche, that book just barely mentions him.

The Birth of Tragedy isn't so much philosophy as classical studies..you should be familiar with Greek tragedy before reading it.

Descartes is interesting, you might wanna add him. Russell, Ayer, Wittgenstein if you're feeling analytic. Definitely Quine (From a Logical Point of View) because he fucks up pretty much everything Hume, Kant, etc. rely on.

>>700325
Oh, not a whole lot. Do you have any essays you would suggest?
>>700331
Okay, I'll look into that. Thank you.
>>700334
What should I read by Descartes?

Anyone has the part 9 of recommended philosophy works?

>>700364

Discourse.

As for an intro, I suggest Magee's The Great Philosophers instead of Sophie's World.

>>700377
Alright, thanks a lot.

Try to go chronologically. If you familiarize yourself with a bit of the classics - Plato, Aristotle - you'll have a better groundwork on which to build. A guy in my Aristotle class this semester said that he didn't really understand Nietzsche until he understood Aristotle, and he wished he had studied Aristotle first.

Basically, you'll better understand a philosopher if you are familiar with the ideas that came before him or her - the ideas that he or she accepts, rejects, and modifies.

Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit, Intro. to Philosophy of History

>>700925
btw, do this after reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

>>700913
What should I read by Plato and Aristotle first?

>>700427

God could that get any more poorly laid-out?

>>700313

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Definitely read some Schopenhauer.

>decided to start reading philosophy
>Kant: Critique of Pure Reasoning
dear god. gl hf OP

mark rowlands.

>>701642
Oh lol, I planned on reading it later on. After Locke and Hume.
But I'm going to put it further off now.

Motherflippin' History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel

Kierkegaard: The Sickness Unto Death
or, if you can handle long books,
Kierkegaard: Either/Or

>>701731
>I am a complete fucking imbecile that should not be allowed to breathe let alone spread my ignorance on the internet.

>>700315
Replace Birth of Tragedy with Thus Spake Zarathustra

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>>701744

>>701743
>what

Plato, The Republic. If nothing else for the ring of gyges and the cave allegory

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>>701750
How was that trolling?

read sophies world first

Mein Kampf.

Revised list:
Gaarder: Sophie's World
Magee: The Great Philosophers
Russell: A History of Western Philosophy
Plato: The Republic
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics; Metaphysics
Descartes: The Discourse on the Method
Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals; Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics; Critique of Pure Reason
Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation
Kierkegaard: The Sickness Unto Death
Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit
Quine: From a Logical Point of View
Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil; The Birth of Tragedy; Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Y/N?

I'm currently reading 'Twilight of the idols' a but hard for me to grasp but well worth the read.

>>701772

Need some Camus Myth of Sisyphus to balance out all that existentialism

>>701772
that looks good. It's missing some of the existentialists (like Sartre) and phenomenologists (like Husserl) and personally for Nietzche I'd start with Human, all too Human (it's one of his earlier, simple works and contains mainly his bite sized 'aphorisms') but that's just me, bearing in mind each time you ask, people will have more to suggest until you can make a crude book-house out of the suggestions.

>>701772

No. Thus Spoke Zarathustra should only be read after you have gone through ALL of Nietzsche's other works AND some Nietzsche scholarship.

>>701778
Alright, I'll keep them in mind. And yeah, I figured. I plan on stopping, since I've reached like 20 books.
>>701783
Okay, I'll put it off. Thanks.

>>700315
Fuck your pretentious ass philosophy, just read fucking Bertrand Russel and skip all that faggy shit

>>701837
Oh, what do you suggest I should read first by him?

>>701837
Also, skip aristotle, plato, and socrates. shitty philosophy, should only be read for historical context.

you're missing some marx and freud

helps to do some rousseau

and some wackie continental stuff

>>701847
I'm reading The Communist Manifesto right now.
Which of Freud's works should I look into?
Also, what should I read by Rousseau?

"Modern analytical empiricism [...] differs from that of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume by its incorporation of mathematics and its development of a powerful logical technique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy. It has the advantage, as compared with the philosophies of the system-builders, of being able to tackle its problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one stroke a block theory of the whole universe. Its methods, in this respect, resemble those of science. I have no doubt that, in so far as philosophical knowledge is possible, it is by such methods that it must be sought; I have also no doubt that, by these methods, many ancient problems are completely soluble."-Bertrand Russel

>>701848
Yeah skip all those books by socrates.....

>>701845
The problems of philosophy.

>>701772
Add some Boetius, Aquinas, Ockham, Roger Bacon in there to have something representing the middle ages.

You jumped from 400 bc to 1700 ad, disregarding more than 2000 years of philosophy.

>>701856
The Manifesto isn't enough. Take a look at these selected works: http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/sw/index.htm

On Freud, I'd recommend: An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, The Psyhopathology of Everyday Life, Civilization and Its Discontents, and Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.

Surely you don't expect to understand the works in this list simply because you've "decided to start reading philosophy".

You need a firm background in the humanities across multiple eras before you'll be able to BEGIN to get anything worthwhile out of anything you have listed.

>>701875
He's got to start somewhere. When I first started, I thought I was smart so I picked up Schopenhauer's Essay on Free Will.
Needless to say, it went right over my head.
Learned from my mistakes and built up knowledge step by step until I could really understand them.

Learn from my mistake, OP.

>>701875
this is the fucking attitude that i hate the most. people don't need to learn what people thought was logical 2000 years ago, to learn the logic of today. people don't need to read the greeks. people don't need to read the philosophers of the middle ages. people don't need to read freud or marx. people need to learn logic. learn the ideas of today, because people believed things that were wrong, or unfounded centuries ago, and we've moved on. read those texts for history. read modern texts for philosophy

>>701866
Oh I didn't realize.
Could you suggest something by them?
>>701872
Okay, thank you. I'll add those.
>>701875
Well, yes. I don't really expect to understand any of these at first. I just want to grasp some of the basics right now, really.
>>701890
To be honest I tried reading Nietzsche first, but I realized I don't know any of the basics so I put it back down. :(
>>701894
I thought maybe I should read older texts to get an idea of what modern philosophers are talking about, since it seems that a lot refer to older ones?

>>701894
Yeah, but the modern texts are in dialogue with older thinkers. Marx and Freud are the bread and butter of French critical theory. Foucault even says so himself in his preface to Anti-Oedipus.

>>701894
This is the attitude that I hate the most. People need to learn in what context the ideas were formed and how they were shaped in history to fully understand them and reach their own conclusions about them.
People need to learn how to think by themselves and every aspect of the process is important to achieve that.

>>701908
Go away Kuhn.

>>701866
Well, considering Western philosophy during that time period was usually along the lines of "GOD DID IT", I don't see why not.

>>701913
You haven't read much of that period, have you?

Prejudice is ignorance.

>>701908
people need to learn to think by themselves, by obviously not completely by themselves which is why we read books...

anyways

also, while many modern authors make reference to older philosophies, most of the time, those references are self contained, and can be understood from within the works themselves.

people do not need to know the historical context of an idea to know whether it is logically correct or not. logically correct thinking should be understandable, and correct outside of any historical or cultural context.

while it may be useful to read older texts to see how modern philosophers corrected and discarded those ideas as an exercise, if you just want to learn correct philosophy, skip it. (its like in math, reads up to date math to learn, one learns outdated math as an exercise to practice ones skills at recognizing bad math haha)
>>701905

French Critical Theory, is, how you say, Bullshit?

OP, please disregard this misguided anon (>>701964)

Putting things in context and tracing development is the right idea.

>>701975
OP learn analytical philosophy, take some math classes, avoid bs, kick ass

>>701964
You seem to think modern philosophy is correct philosophy, for some reason.
Philosophy follows an unyelding path towards the truth, and it deals with questions that can't be thoroughly answered by the very definition of it.
Modern philosophy is just another step towards it, and not, by any means, a perfect state worthy of being called "correct".

>>701987
i agree, its the most correct philosophy, not the correct philosophy, im sorry i mispoke. even so, why should anyone learn anything but the most correct philosophy...

OP, another great starting point would be Scruton's 'Short History of Modern Philosophy'.

>>701992
Well, we have thousands of years worth of philosphers who thought they had the most correct philosophy, so I guess we should get busy reading...

>>701992
For one thing, to understand precisely that, that it isn't a perfect state and by seeing how it has progressed so far, try to aid on its very future.
It's reckless to advance blindly without knowing what came before.

>>702001
yes i agree, and if you have time, you should spend time disproving every idea that is inconsistent with your own. however, that isnt where you should start

>>702001
Ideas are forever-changing. Just like the sun revolving around the earth and schizophrenia caused by demonic possession. In a hundred years the standards of today will be laughed at.

>>701996
Thank you. I'll add that as well.

If you want to read about the Presocratics, the very first philosophers that brought to the table most of the issues that are still being discussed, I reccomend Kirk, Raven and Schofield's The Presocratic Philosophers.

You won't regret it.

>>702009
haha exactly

>>701772
This list is great, but shouldn't Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy be on there? I think his concept of mind-perception is significant at the very least; it obliterates Aristotle's views.

One thing that really helped me understand all philosophy is reading a lot of Hegel, especially his introductory lectures on the philosophy of history and of aesthetics. The reason that this has helped me is because Hegel is just so difficult (or different) at first, and it takes a lot of thinking to really get what he is saying. You really have to think of your brain as muscle that has to take on a work which surpasses its current power in order to grow. That is the reason why I think it's important to read both easy philosophy and difficult philosophy, and not gradually building up to Critique of Pure Reason and Phenomenology of Mind. If you read Phenomenology of Mind at the same time as, say, A Theologico-Political Treatise by Spinoza, the easy work, here being TPT by Spinoza, will seem much easier to comprehend, and the arguments and logic will be easier to follow.

>>702015
Okay, added.
>>702032
I don't know, haha. But I'll add it. Which do you suggest reading first?
>>702035
Okay, I didn't think of it like that. I'll consider doing it that way. Thanks.