/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23059719]

I am starting with the greeks, the iliad to be specific, but I don't want to get stuck reading 50 books of greek philosophy before ever moving forward
Give me 2 or 3 books that give me the gist of it so I can just go ahead and read more modern stuff.
I have already read the symposium and I have a copy of the republic

[Anonymous No.23059732]

>>23059719

[Anonymous No.23059735]

>>23059719
Okay.
Homer:
>Iliad
>Odyssey
Plato:
>Gorgias (And Meno if you can)
>Statesman
>Republic (Theory)
>Laws (Praxis)
Aristotle:
>Athenian Constitution (Optional, but it greatly improves your historical knowledge)
>Ethics
>Politics
This should get you the bare minimum knowledge. Do not engage in discussions about Platonic Forms, though.

[Anonymous No.23059737]

>>23059719
Read Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks if you want an idea what Greek philosophy was like before Plato subverted Greek thinking. The Iliad will give you a better idea what Greek thinking was like more so than Plato, because Plato was antagonistic to Greek life and thinking. Their philophers like Thales, Anaximander, and Parmenides would give you a better idea of what a Greek thinker thought during their vital / colonizing periods.

[Anonymous No.23059784]

>>23059719
Plato isn't quintessential for Greeks. You'll probably get more of a misunderstanding about their mindset from him, by the time platonic thought was widespread in Greece they were subjugated by the Macedonians.

You should read Pindar's Pythian Odes, older philosophers like Thales/Anaximander/Parmenides, read the Hesiod, and read biographies of famous Greeks by Plutarch. My favorite is Plutarch's account of Archimedes.

[Anonymous No.23059788]

>>23059732
This chart (well, the normal-sized one) is terrible it has you reading bumfuck boring shit like Edith Hamilton's Mythology before doing anything else. Listen faggots, you don't need to read in any order. Just read what you are interested in instead of forcing yourself to wade through 300 pages of turgid boring Wikipedia "explanations" of Greek mythology before reading Plato or whatever it is you ACTUALLY want to read. All the stuff you "need" to know you will just accumulate passively over time by engaging with the ancients, and if you're really stuck on something you can just Google it. Christian scholars in the Dark Ages couldn't read all this shit in order because they didn't have access to most of it. Who cares? They just engaged with the texts they did have and were interested in. You can also afford to be choosy about which works by famous people you read. Don't feel like you need to just stick to the MOST IMPORTANT CANONICAL STUFF(!!!!!!!). Augustine's whole life was changed by a reading of Cicero's Hortensius (which is completely lost to us now) and Aelred of Rievaulx based his whole philosophy of friendship off of Cicero's De Amicitia, which I think is the only work by Cicero he ever read.

[Anonymous No.23059790]

>>23059737
>>23059784
But isn't Plato important to get to modern philosophy?

[Anonymous No.23059793]

>>23059790
Plato is super important for modern philosophy, but thinking he represents ancient Greek men (pre Prince Philip of Macedon's conquest) isn't accurate. Most of the famous Greeks and really interesting Greek periods are prior to Plato.

[Anonymous No.23059803]

>>23059788
>Dark Ages
stopped reading

[Anonymous No.23059807]

>>23059803
I mean it purely in a chronological sense

[Anonymous No.23059812]

>>23059793
Yeah but I read the greeks more as a basis to try to tackle modern philosophy than anything else, hence why I jumped straight to Plato.
I am reading the Iliad to have a taste of normal greek stuff but I am not trying to delve into their world right now (I find it very interesting, don't get me wrong, I am just not focused on that goal this period)

[Anonymous No.23059823]

>>23059812
Read Plato, but also pick up Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. It's an easy / short read and will give you a great understanding of early Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, and even Heraclitus

[Anonymous No.23059827]

>>23059719
Just time travel to ancient greece.
Its better than reading the books.
You should try it.

[Anonymous No.23059884]

Depends why you are reading the Greeks. If it's for entertainment, you don't need to read the philosophy, perhaps just the Symposium because it's an easy and short one.

I would recommend reading a brief overview of Greek mythology before the Iliad and Odyssey which both start in media res and assume you know what the Trojan War is all about and will get all the mythological allusions.

[Anonymous No.23060003]

>>23059784
Why do you think Pindar is important?

[Anonymous No.23060022]

Homer is just ancient capeshit.

[Anonymous No.23060033]

>>23059719
>but I don't want to get stuck reading 50 books of greek philosophy before ever moving forward
yes you actually do

[Anonymous No.23060042]

>>23060003
It shows Greek psychology towards competition, which ends up being the foundation of their fame / glory / κλέος seeking and many of their idiosyncratic personalities/and great men can be said to have held those things in very high regard. Pindar also preserves old form poetry and many ancient myths that we only have fragments of like in his poem where he talks about the birth of Yamus. Pindar should be read by anyone interested in the Greek classics.

[Anonymous No.23060071]

>>23059719
These are the authors you need to read. After them, you can try reading Plato and Aristotle. And anyone who says otherwise is a faggot.
- Homer
- Thucydides
- Herodotus
- Aeschylus
- Sophocles
- Euripides
- Pindar
- Aristophanes

[Anonymous No.23060079]

>Homer
>Sophocles
>Ovid
>Virgil
then you could skip to Dante if you really want to move quick

[Anonymous No.23060081]

>>23060079
>Greeks
>Ovid
>Virgil

[Anonymous No.23060083]

>>23060081
he said he wanted to move quickly on to more modern

[Anonymous No.23060084]

>>23059719
The canon isn’t for you if you can’t read 36 platonic dialogues.

[Anonymous No.23060086]

>>23060083
that's bullshit but i believe it

[Anonymous No.23060336]

>>23059719
>Give me 2 or 3 books...
ngmi

[Anonymous No.23060339]

>>23059735
No aristotle's metaphysics?

[Anonymous No.23060417]

>>23060042
Thank you. I’ve read him, but never found much value in his works, esp. in comparison to Theocritus, whom I read around the same time.

[Anonymous No.23060429]

>start my day off with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.23060511]

>>23059719
Definition of ngmi sorry buddy

[Anonymous No.23060520]

>>23060429
Chad reader vs weak "where is my s-shortcut?"

[Anonymous No.23060686]

>>23059812
If you just want to prepare for modern philosophy, then Plato and some Aristotle is the minimum. But that's pretty minimal, it wouldn't hurt to get at least a summary of the pre-socratic and later Hellenistic philosophers. However, you don't need any literature to understand philosophy. Although you'd be missing out on good reading and culture and not being a pleb.