/lit/ - Literature

The only reason to read early greek authors is because Philosophy, from its beginning, directly opposes them.

Since there wasn't a real powerful priest caste in ancient Greece, the whole knowledge about physics, history, religion, aesthetics and moral values came from the poets. Philosophy challenges this with the innovative (for that time) idea that truth should be investigated with reason.

Reading the ancient poets will be useful, but you will probably still need footnotes and commentaries to understand all the references, for example, in the Republic.

Another thing: don't just "skip" to Plato. In order to understand Plato you need to study the philosophers that came before him, or else you will not be able to make sense of a lot of what he is saying (just look at all the recurring threads that say Plato was a moron, if you want a preview of what will happen to you). At the very least you should understand:

- where the basic problem on the being comes from (Parmenides + Heraclitus)
- what kind of solutions had been tried before Plato (the pluralists)
- the relativism and the dialectical innovations of the sophists
- Socrates (he was the one that ultimately moved the focus of investigation from nature to man, revolutionized the moral values of his society, pioneered the research on problems of language and invented the modern concept of soul on top of that)

>>9181320
You don't even need to read Homer, Hesoid, or Sophocles (although you should, for their own sake, because they are good). If you want to read Plato, just read Plato. No prerequisites.

>>9181320
A good way to start understanding Greek philosophy, in my opinion, is to listen to the great courses (also known as the teaching Company) lecture series on Ancient Greek civilization and also the series on Socrates and Plato.

The professors are award winning teachers and really help introduce and breakdown for you some of the most vital chunks of info about the subject.

Plus, it will make you very interested into the subject. Highly recommended.

>>9181320

Let's be honest. You don't need anything in order to read Plato. You can read some Aristophanes, both for fun and to get introduced to Socrates in a non-platonic view (cf. Clouds). But you don't "need" it at all.

Now when it comes to presocratic thinkers, you can read some stuff about them, but keep in mind that we mainly know them through the quotes that Plato and others made ; if you got a nice edition of Plato, the footnotes should be more than enough. And there's only a few dialogues by Plato that require knowledge about the Presocratics - precisely the dialogues that you'll read at the end.

Fuck, just realized that I made it sound like I'm a total noob.

I've already read some of Plato's works and been getting into learning greek history, my question was more like something about which authors will help me in having a general idea about how the greek way of thinking works.

One more question:

Is Diogenes laercius a good author to get a good general idea on the history of philosophy or should I just read something written by a modern historian?

>>9182726
>Let's be honest. You don't need anything in order to read Plato

I disagree with this, there are multiple references to the classic poets and historical events in most of his work and it can get pretty confusing if you don't know jackshit about what was going on Greece at that time.

Thanks for your replies guys.