/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12126082]

How do I into philosophy?

[Anonymous No.12126085]

You think hard about universe n shiiet

[Anonymous No.12126648]

>>12126082
Start with the Apology

[Anonymous No.12126655]

>>12126082
dont read any books

converse with nature

look to the stars on a clear night

wander the woods and think on the lives of the birds and the insects

[Anonymous No.12126656]

>>12126082


Start with Bertrand Russell's History ofWestern Philosophy but give up 100 pages in and then just watch 10 minute youtube videos about philosophy and pretend like you know everything.

[Anonymous No.12126694]

>>12126656
Is this book really a good start? How well does it hold up today?

[Anonymous No.12126726]

>>12126694
Extra question, should I get this or Will Durant's Story of Philosophy?

[Anonymous No.12126737]

1. Read Anthony Kenny's "Brief History of Western Philosophy"
2. Start reading some primary works
3. Listen to Peter Adamson's HOPWAG podcast in the meantime

Kenny's book is 400 pages, gives you all the context you need for a beginner and good recommendations. You don't want to get stuck on huge multi-volume tomes about western philosophy because a) you'll get discouraged or b) you'll never actually get to reading primary works.

In my opinion, either the Presocratics or Descartes are great starting places for primary works, both have their advantages. If you start with Descartes, you don't really need to know classical philosophy until you reach Kant, which gives you the whole rationalist-empiricist dialectic to enjoy. Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume are all eminently readable after a brief acclimatisation period, you're not gonna find German-tier levels of writing here.

Peter Adamson is just a great podcast to periodically listen to, and it's often entertaining - this shouldn't be a tedious obligation. It will give you a wider context than just the philosophical canon (medicine, islamif thought etc.), which is nice.

[Anonymous No.12126748]

>>12126737
>Starting with Descartes
>Starting with the most worthless hodge-podge excuse for a philosophy ever concieved(by a philsopher worthy of the name)

[Anonymous No.12126753]

>>12126737
Thanks!
By the way, how hard it is to get into modern european philosophy without a solid grasp of past works? I have a big interest in Nietzsche, Hegel and Kierkegaard but I don't know where to start and how complex it's going to be.

[Anonymous No.12126760]

Start with Richard Rorty

[Anonymous No.12126790]

>>12126082
Unironically start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.12126798]

Go to school and study it. Anything else is just wasting your time.

[Anonymous No.12126838]

>>12126753
I'd recommend against reading the German Idealists or anyone from the 19th century without a solid grasp of the major thinkers. Nietzsche will gloss over philosophical concepts constantly and reference the Greeks, Hegel won't even reference but assume you're following his special conception of the canon etc.

What you need to understand is that by the time Kant is writing his works, philosophy was becoming a specialised discipline in something like the way we see it today. This wasn't the case in the 17th century when the major dudes were addressing themselves to a wider audience. And it's simply 4he case that German philosophy has a special terminology which almost anyone has a hard time grasping without a lot of prep.

If you're really impatient about jumpstarting to Hegel though, you'll want to check out Terry Pinkard's "German Philosophy 1760-1860". I'll always recommend to get a good grip on Aristotle though, because he is so fundamental to the entirety of the western science.

[Anonymous No.12126881]

>>12126838
Thanks anon, I'll keep that you mind.
Would it be too much to ask for a list of what you would deem the "essentials" of western philosophy? I want to delve deeper into the primary works but I can't imagine myself studying an author's entire bibliography, at least not for the time being since I don't have the time.

[Anonymous No.12126994]

>>12126726
Neither is good but Russell is miles better than Durant. Durant is an obscurantist who pushes pseudohistory like all philosophy originating in India. Avoid at all costs. You'd be best off with a recent history of philosophy picked more or less at random from Amazon, where the author is a lecturer at some reputable but not overwhelmingly prestigious university.

[Anonymous No.12127003]

>>12126694
Third year philosophy student here

Fuck no fuck no fuck no. Please anon, don't read Russell's history of philosophy.

Read Will Durant's history of philosophy. Listen to a couple of episodes of the partially examined life podcast and watch some videos by gregory sadler (particularly his short "philosophy core concepts" videos). That's the best place to start with philosophy.

I'd also stress that you should be aware that when you first start reading works of philosophy you'll be making a lot of mistakes. You're basically training your brain to think in ways it's never thought before, and that's a process, not an event. So by all means, pick up some Nietzsche or Kierkegaard and have a crack at it, but know that you'll be getting an incomplete picture of their thought

Some good intro books to philosophy:

check out Duncan Pritchard's what is this thing called knowledge, which is pretty easy to find for free on google. if you want an easy-ish intro to some basic philosophical terminology and problems (epistemology is the study of knowledge, and it might not be the most interesting part of philosophy, but it is definitely the most basic and fundamental)

also check out alaisdair macintyre's after virtue for a pretty meaty modern philosophical book that you can read without a lot of background. how you feel about what macintyre says in there should point you in directions to find out more about moral philosophy in particular. greg sadler has some very good videos on macintyre on his channel.

alaisdair macintyre also has a book called "a short history of ethics" but i havent read it so I'm hesitant to recommend it.

reading stanford enyclopedia articles on thinkers you get interested in is always a good thing to do in your spare time. doing this for a couple of weeks will *rapidly* expand your comfort with philosophical terminology.
-some good articles to start with would be: virture ethics, deontological ethics, utilitarian ethics (the three most famous kinds of moral philosophy), descartes, spinoza, leibniz (the three most famous rationalist philosophers), locke, berkeley, hume (the three most famous empiricist philosophers), and beyond that just click around and see what interests you

you dont have to start with the greeks now, but you will want to at some point (when you realize how all our modern problems go back to things they talked about)

philosophy is very overwhelming, you'll find yourself confused a lot. you'll be torn between completely different perspectives and not know what to think most of the time. but it's well worth studying and will make you a better more thoughtful person. i'd start off by buying the will durant book and reading some stanford articles, and then move on from there based on what interests you

[Anonymous No.12127010]

>>12127003
>epistemology is the most fundamental part ot philosophy
Wrong, that's ontology. You sound like an analytic pseud desu

[Anonymous No.12127023]

Just read. You can't expect to completely understand a work in your first read. Not even half of what it has to offer. You'll have to reread, but this doesn't have to be done just after. So just start anywhere you think it's interesting (but do eventually read important works that came before even if they don't seem that interesting).
If you really want a place to start, read Plato (works I'd recommend for a beginner are Euthyphro, the Socratic Apology, Crito, Phaedo and The Republic). Maybe somethig about the presocratics.

[Anonymous No.12127025]

>>12127010
okay, i should have said *arguably*

i'm really not analytically-inclined man. i just think that in terms of comprehending philosophical works, the most important thing is to understand epistemology,.

while, yes, the most important task of philosophy is talking about Being, every ontological claim is grounded by some notion of what we can possibly know about Being, and that's epistemology. doesn't make ontology less important than epistemology, but it makes knowing a little about epistemology more useful and primary than learning about ontology/metaphysics

[Anonymous No.12127032]

>>12127003
Third Year Phil student here as well. What this anon has said is good, but I'd honestly just recommending picking up some Plato and start reading.

Euthyphro is a good starting dialogue, but I'd honestly read the Meno first because it gets at the heart of what much philosophy is. I.e., what is the definition of X.

Once you've read some Plato, have a look at the Presocratics, particularly Heraclitus and Parmenides, just to get your bearings, and then continue on with Plato until you feel confident enough to read Aristotle.

From there, really you can read anything. You can take a look at the Hellenistics (Epicurus, Seneca, Sextus Empiricus etc), and then get into the Neoplatonists and then Medieval Philosophy (Aquinas etc). Or you can skip straight to Descartes and do what this anon >>12126737 says. Going down the Enlightenment epistemological route is fairly necessary in understanding modern philosophy. However, once you get to Kant you have a lot of options. (German Idealists, Hegelians, Existentialists, Pragmatists, Analytics, Continentals etc.)

But trust me anon, just start with Plato's dialogues.

[Anonymous No.12127079]

Start with plato, then read stirner, then stop.

[Anonymous No.12127139]

>>12126082
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Philosophy Read the sticky next time.

[Anonymous No.12127152]

>>12127139
That sticky is shit.

[Anonymous No.12127268]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/mobilebasic?pli=1
this is a really good cheatsheet, it's got everything you're looking for.

this is where i started at least

[Anonymous No.12127349]

Start with the post-continentals

[Anonymous No.12127405]

Watch Dr.Arthur Holmes' lectures on the history of philosophy and start with the milesian philosophers.

[Anonymous No.12127413]

>>12127349
wow! cool jackets! so dark and brooding!

[Anonymous No.12127431]

>>12126082
for me it went
experience social rejection -> introspect -> read -> reject the world of appearances -> re-enter social world

and repeat.

[Anonymous No.12127432]

>>12126082
Learn logic and just think really hard about everything

[Anonymous No.12128326]

>>12126082
You just started.

[Anonymous No.12128329]

>>12126082
Start by castrating yourself. Literally. It improves your focus so much. I can not recommend it highly enough. If you want to truly engage with the great philosophers and perhaps even contribute a work of your own to the sacred conversation of millennia known as philosophy you simply must give the gents a snipperoo. To cleave sack from soul is to be free of demons. Your life will become a field of lilies. Do you fear transformation? Do you fear the greatness to which your heart of hearts knows you must aspire? Destiny calls, anon, and calls for thee. Never have I heard a mortal name pass from its lips with such glorious enthusiasm as when it called yours.

You know what you must do. So do.

[Anonymous No.12128333]

>>12126082
ever heard of an intro book, online university syllabi, or wikipedia? sheesh i swear this gets post once every two days. Russell, Nagel, Plato, proceed.

[Anonymous No.12128862]

>>12126656
it's good for a laugh

[Anonymous No.12129618]

>>12126082
Question stuff.

[Anonymous No.12129632]

>>12126082
We see Socrates in action often, the dialectical wizard. Calmly and patiently, with a memory unsurpassed even by today’s quantum computers, he asks, he goads, he responds, he attacks, he references, he cites, he mythopoeticizes—he argues—dismantling the confidence, certainties, opinions and beliefs of any and all of his interlocutors.

But how did this barefoot, bug-eyed and bulbous-nosed bandit, plucking with grubby fingers beautiful truth upon truth from the ether, manage to see into the heart of all that is intelligible and communicate it in so direct, visceral and engaging a way?

The key lies in what he was doing on that doorstep before he entered the Symposium and gave his speech, a veritable event in the history of philosophy and art that would form the rationalities and enrich the imaginations of men, women and children for centuries to come. This demanding dialectician, this spelunker of the soul, thrice daily banished from the sanctuary of his mind the forms and figures which structured it, the daemons and demiurges which haunted it, and with a meditative mental clarity performed the ritual act of Onan.

Yes, dear fellows and friends, he slammed his ham, he wrangled his weasel, he wrenched and wrenched and wrenched his bolt until it creaked, cracked and the nut he was working blasted clean off.

(Uncorroborated rumours, historically attributed to the soldiery with whom he braved the perils of combat and in front of whom he engaged in such acts of self-abuse regularly, hold that he was a real long shot, too.)

This was gift with which he blessed that humble Athenian stoop. And may the God bless him for it. For Socrates himself has blessed us with the fruits of his tireless labours

[Anonymous No.12129651]

>>12128333

This except don't read any analytic philosophers or any philosophers from the last 120 years for the first 2 or 3 years at all