/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14361582]

Is start with the Greeks just a meme ? If so where should i start with philosophy ?

[Anonymous No.14361587]

start with pewdiepies videos

[Anonymous No.14361682]

>>14361582
Start with the Gathas, which is Eastern Iranic. I like both Mary Boyce and Piloo Nanavutty's translations. Ignore the rest of the Zend Avesta except for the Gathas, which is only ~6000 words. Then move onto the Pre-Socratics. It transitions very, very well.

[Anonymous No.14361704]

>>14361587
This triggered me, have a (you)

[Anonymous No.14361734]

Just start with this. If you like it move on to the republic or his complete works, and then Aristotle’s nichomachean ethics and metaphysics. After that you can try Plotinus and the 3 stoics.

[Anonymous No.14361835]

>>14361582
Well, you can easily find the answer to your question on the internet, but anyway:
The apology
The discourse on the method
What is enlightment? (Kant) + The metaphysics of morals
The problems of philosophy (Russel)
I recommend picking up some logic as well.

[Anonymous No.14361871]

Just started the repubblic yesterday, wish me luck boys.

[Anonymous No.14361898]

>>14361835
The apology is only 127 pages , do i need to read something in advance ? Do i need to know something about Greek history/mythology/society ?
>>14361871
How are you digging it ? I got third of the way through and i am super bored.
Did you read anything beforehand ?

[Anonymous No.14362169]

>>14361898
>Do i need to know something about Greek history/mythology/society ?
No, and that’s what makes it a perfect introductory text.

[Anonymous No.14362192]

>>14361582
I began it and found it extremely boring. I couldn't see what I could get out of it. I know it's a pleb-tier idea, but it was the first book that really made me feel sleepy in my life (I'm in my early 20's). I sent it back to my to-read list, nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.14362221]

i agree with reading 5 dialouges, and moving from there. basically there is a lot of shit that takes a while to understand after you get out of ancienct philosophy. but the greeks are really easy for anyone to understand. i really suggest chronological order for the most part as ideas build off each other, s o you cant understand kant without understanding hume who you cant understand without descartes who you cant understand without aquinas who you cant understand without aristotle (who you cant understand without parmenides, who is perfectly clear because what he revealed was divine knowledge that is self-evidently true: etched into our brains.) happy reading :) akllso dont talk to anyone about philosophy until you have read a t least 10 books because you will sound really pretentious at first. it isnt a pretentious subject but a lack of understanding can comme off poorly

[Anonymous No.14362244]

>>14362192
read the 5 dialouges first, it will give you a sense of what plato was doing before he wrote the republic, and "what is at stake here"

read the allan bloom translation. read each book one at a time, setting aside an hour. then re read the book. after that, move on to the next book. i am not joking that this book is the most structurally complex but textually elegant thing that has ever been written. there are many debates about what plato was trying to represent with the 'city.' was it a city? was it a soul? was it a psyche? the answer is that it is all of them. plato unwittingly struck a cord that resonated with the universe. he had a god giveninsight in what it means to be human and the literature on his work will never be able to identify that , because only every 1000 years will we get someone as integrated with reality as plato was.

[Anonymous No.14362266]

>>14361582
Why would it be a meme? If you are interested in Philo stuff you should be able to use both ethos and logos. Does it make sense to start at the bedrock of western thought? Yes? than do it.

[Anonymous No.14362274]

>>14362244
screencapped
thx anon, will take into account when I retry it

[Anonymous No.14362287]

>>14362244
>Textually elegant
Didn't seem like beautiful to me , but i don't usually see the beauty in words.
>plato unwittingly struck a cord that resonated with the universe. he had a god giveninsight in what it means to be human
Than how am i supposed to reale to what he's saying of we in the modern day are so far removed from what it means to be human ?
I read his words and i can't see how they are applicable to my modern life, he spent like 50 pages rambling about music or whatever, and music means nothing to me.

[Anonymous No.14362292]

>>14361582
Read all of it. I'm using this guide:
1st tetralogy (getting started): Alcibiades I + Lysis/Laches/Charmides
2nd tetralogy (the sophists): Protagoras +Hippias major/Hippias minor/Gorgias
3rd tetralogy (Socrates'trial): Meno + Euthyphro/Apology/Crito
4th tetralogy (the soul): Symposium + Phædrus/Republic/Phædo
5th tetralogy (logos): Cratylus + Ion/Euthydemus/Menexenus
6th tetralogy (dialectic): Parmenides + Theætetus/Sophist/Statesman
7th tetralogy (kosmos): Philebus + Timæus/Critias/Laws

[Anonymous No.14362375]

>>14362287
>Didn't seem like beautiful to me , but i don't usually see the beauty in words.
i feel you . right now i am not finding much beauty in reading. it comes and goes. but i really hope that you can eventually be struck by the grace of the language as i once was, recognizing that i f i read it now i wouldnt be struck in the same way that i was.
>>14362274
:) happy to help.

[Anonymous No.14363358]

If you have no background understanding of Greek culture start with Edith Hamilton's Mythology.
Most people have absorbed that knowledge by adulthood anyway though and can jump in to Homer and Hesiod, the foundation of classical Greek culture and thought
After that, read some Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Then you can do the historians Herodotus and Thucydides (leave Xenophon for later)
At this point you have several options open. If you want to do philosophy, go for an intro text on the presocratics like Kirk and Raven's "The Presocratic Philosophers"
After that, spend at least a year on Plato before moving on to Aristotle and Xenophon. You can also take breaks to read Aristophanes, Euripides, &c.

[Anonymous No.14363361]

>>14361582
Stop asking this fucking question on here you fucking vermin

[Anonymous No.14363552]

greek philosophy is the meme. For literature, read Homer, Hesiod, the three major playwrites, and eventually senca and Virgil.

[Anonymous No.14363626]

>>14362221
This is completely wrong and why start with the Greeks is a meme.
Anyone who thinks we progressed from those ideas is an idiot who doesn't understand what he read.

[Anonymous No.14363648]

>>14363358
>most people have absorbed the myths
kek no they haven't and Hamiltons book is trash

[Anonymous No.14363660]

>>14361871
its boring desu

[Anonymous No.14363715]

>>14363648
>Hamiltons book is trash
which alternative(s) would you recommend?

[Anonymous No.14363805]

>>14363715
The original texts, although if you aren't interested in myths you won't really understand them so it'd be a waste of time. Even if you are interested it will take some time to grasp the different way of thinking, most interpretations are wrong and will only confuse the issue further.
If you're the OP you should post what you're interested in and what your goals are.

[Anonymous No.14363829]

>>14361582
Do I have to read homer to understand the Greek philosophers?

[Anonymous No.14363858]

>>14363829
Yes, but what this meme is selling is a very basic introduction. If you're lucky you might be able to understand the Greeks after twenty years, and only in conjunction with an understanding of modernity and its opposed laws.

[Anonymous No.14363865]

>>14363805
Not OP, but was looking to get back into reading and figured "starting with the greeks" per the sticky was as good a place as any. I read Meditations and enjoyed it but I'd like to have a better grasp of philosophies of the time

[Anonymous No.14363892]

>>14363626
im not a start with the greeks poster, but i do think philosophy becomes harder as you go along because of its self referential nautre.

[Anonymous No.14363903]

>>14363892
Similar to math you’ll only understand the later concepts if you learn it sequentially and have the proper foundation.

[Anonymous No.14363964]

>>14363903
exactly :) ancient philosophers are often a bit easier to understand, and i think its 2 things.
1. they have less historical complexity (although their ideas might be complex, they are interacting with a less specialized context)
2. the academy wasnt as highly developed and didnt have the same memetic exercises that makes phil inaccessible to those who arent heavily read in it today

[Anonymous No.14364555]

>>14363964
Test time.

[Anonymous No.14364584]

>>14361582
Somebody upload the /lit/ complete western philosophy reading list for OP. Yes, I'm talking about the sixty-something page pdf. I don't know how to convert the file to a link.

[Anonymous No.14364592]

>>14364584
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Nevermind, I think this should work. Check this out, OP.

[Anonymous No.14364622]

>>14364592
>On bias
>I am a Marxist and an atheist, my main interests in philosophy are Poststructuralism, Structuralism, Critical Theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Philosophy of Music (so basically Aesthetics). Having admitted these possible vectors of bias of course does not absolve me of any mistakes due to bias in this guide.

>Since you are a Marxist will you cover Marx?

Yikes

[Anonymous No.14364802]

I don't see why you should start with the greeks when everything they say has been BTFO by modern science and they stole everything they ever knew from easterners anyway. It's much more sensible to start with Hermes, Zoroaster and the Indians, and then just move on to Descartes.

[Anonymous No.14364947]

>>14364555
Studying calculus when I was in high school was the point where I realized how a single human mind was capable of so much and yet so equally limited by the period of its life.

The tragedy of Zeno's paradox, for me anyways, was the logical effort required to construct such an argument that would be entirely discredited by the invention of infinitesimals.

I sometimes wonder what apparently brilliant conclusions of our time will be readily demolished by the passage of time and the steady advancement of mathematics.

[Anonymous No.14364988]

>>14364802
I agree with you that antiquity philosophers aren't the 'foundational' thinkers that many academic folks tend to claim are necessary for basic logic and understanding. Even still, though, the construction of their arguments does hold merit with regards to those without a background in philosophy or logic. The reason is simply that these works were created for the purpose of advancing and improving the minds of the citizens of those philosopher's city-states
and were written by men who did not have thousands of years of intellectual effort to build off of.

The combination of appealing to less sophisticated audiences and the effort of building arguments without the assumption of prior knowledge (indeed we have few, if any, records to indicate that a field such as philosophy existed or was practiced prior to antiquity) makes for a good introduction. Even if many of the positions taken by those philosophers have been rebuked or improved upon in later eras, they are still of value in terms of introducing critical thinking to those less versed in the field.

[Anonymous No.14365876]

>>14364947
Jesus Christ. Never post here again.

[Anonymous No.14366183]

>>14361587
based

[Anonymous No.14366646]

>>14364622
literally all the good charts/docs produced by /lit/ are from back when it was primarily a leftist board. the other decent philosophy chart was made by a maoist tranny tripfag. you can't escape it, /lit/ culture was built on a marxist base with a thin layer of /pol/ memes on top.

[Anonymous No.14366651]

>>14365876
Why so rude?

[Anonymous No.14366652]

>>14364947
Pseud season already?

[Anonymous No.14366659]

>>14364947
>anyways

Never, ever try to sound intelligent again