/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2583344]

Dude, I'm fucking stupid.

No, seriously, I'm dumb. I've been reading people of my age talking about politics, economics and philosophy, and I can't understand a single word of their conservations.

You guys need to help me, where should I start with all this shit? How can I into philosophy? Is there a good guide to all those -isms they keep using? Can someone explain me how our economy works?

[Anonymous No.2583356]

> a single word of their conservations.
>conservations

You might be right, OP.

[Anonymous No.2583366]

not 4chan

[Anonymous No.2583371]

http://www.scaruffi.com/

[Anonymous No.2583373]

pay attention if class. Read the news. Go on wikipedia and read you fuckwit.

[Anonymous No.2583375]

Look up every word in this book (5,000).

It will give you a shallow but useful understanding of common concepts.

While you do that, read books other anons recommend.

[Anonymous No.2583387]

1. locate introductory material
2. read
3. repeat steps 1 & 2

[Anonymous No.2583391]

>>2583344
Everyone here has read through and memorized this book. Better get on it, OP.

[Anonymous No.2583406]

>>2583391
>>2583391
>datfilename

[Anonymous No.2583449]

don't read anything.. most people haven't. find lectures/podcasts on teh internets and palm off the ideas put forward in these lectures as your own.. remember to identify and utilize appropriate buzz-words and name-drop accordingly

[Anonymous No.2583460]

>>2583449

I laughed. Not only did I laugh, but I thought it so rare an occurrence that it simply MUST be shared with the rest of you.

[Anonymous No.2583465]

>>2583449
Come on, really? Expecting everyone who seems smart to be just "pretending", to be a "pseudo-intellectual" (or whatever you kids are calling it today) is quite childish, and this mentality won't get anyone anywhere.

[Anonymous No.2583497]

Don't worry, OP. Those other people very, very likely don't understand the shit they're talking about either, they just think they do. Hell, most of the social sciences are pseudo-scientific bullshit, they don't employ the scientific method and have no predictive power. They're generally just ideology dressed up in a suit.

[Anonymous No.2583509]

>>2583465
you're right.. its not fair to label everyone this way.... but it is a fair genralization. It more important to be able to regurgitate a wide range of soundbites on a variety of subjects than it is to learn something in a substantive manner.

like dis if it makes u cry evrytime :'(

[Anonymous No.2583513]

>>2583509
;_;

[Anonymous No.2583589]

>>2583509
:(

[Anonymous No.2583612]

I'd start with a general introductory Philosophy course at your local community college.

[Anonymous No.2583626]

>>2583371
What a fucking pretentious idiot.

[Frigid Northlander !!MUgE+GiXSgQ No.2583629]

>>2583497

Some social science is stupid, but much of it is a set of values and symbols assigned to concrete things so we know what to call it when the stock market is up or down or make sense of political moves.

If we didn't have these things, we'd be in rough shape. The fact that we can't boil social sciences down to a consistency that is on par with hard sciences is inconvenient but it doesn't detract from the importance of discourse on those matters.

Also:

OP, there are really two steps in doing this. One is to surround yourself with people who talk about these things, and two is
>>2583387

[Anonymous No.2583633]

start here

http://plato.stanford.edu/

good source for cliff notes for philosophical ideas

[Anonymous No.2583645]

There are generally 4 approaches to getting into philosophy. They overlap somewhat.

1) Historical approach. Start with the oldest and read on. One can also read secondary literature e.g. Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, or some more impartial one like The Great Conversation by Norman Melchert.

2) Topical approach. Read about stuff that interests you. A good idea is using Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and various papers on the subject, or lastly, entire books.

3) Textbook approach. Find a general introduction to philosophy textbook. E.g. Quine et al’s The Web of Belief or Russell’s Problems of Philosophy.

4) Book/philosopher approach. Start with some large book written by a particular philosopher that the person recommending likes.

I think the first approach is immensely boring and tend to just make people quit. Unfortunately, many people here recommend it with the predictable results. This is the approach I used back when I started.

The second approach that people generally recommend is the 4th which is by far the worst idea. No one should ever start philosophy with reading e.g. Kant’s Critique of whatever. Pretty much no one should ever read Hegel or the likes. It also has the same results as the 1st approach because the recommender typically picks some book that is very badly written and long.

As for the 2nd and 3rd approaches. I don’t know what is the best. They both have some advantages and disadvantages. One problem with the topical approach is that one might focus on the wrong things and thus miss things one should have learned about, e.g. critical thinking and logic, or language philosophy. However, one risks boring the reader as they might not care about some of the things in the book. The topical approach has the advantage of being about things that the reader cares about.

[Anonymous No.2583650]

Well OP, are you interested in philosophy and economy? If not, why do you want to get into, just to pretend you understand this stuff? Seriously, no one is forcing you to get into it and read it, do stuff you are interested in and that you like.

If you want to get into this, got to wikipedia. Read articles about philosophy, find out what you are interested it and then read the articles about those certain fields. After that, move on to introduction literature on those topics. If you understand it, you can move on to the actual works of the philosophers. Don't just get a book by Nietzsche or Heideger or who ever and start reading it, you won't understand shit.

[Anonymous No.2583664]

>>2583645
Do you have this saved somewhere and copy-paste it from there every time or what?

[Anonymous No.2584541]

>>2583371
Isn't this guy supposed to be a fucking idiot or something, I recall some people on /mu/ dissing him

[Anonymous No.2584547]

don't worry; they're probably wrong anyway

[Anonymous No.2584581]

>Sophie's World
Pleb level, nice and very fun overview of philosophy

>Kenny's A Brief Intro to Wes. Phil
Good source, I'm reading it right now, very informative and readable.

The one by Russel is flawed and too subjective, but it outlines history together with philosophy so it's worth a read. The most important thing is to look up different sources and not stick with one book - before I got into Plato seriously, I read about Pre-socratics in all 3 of these books and a few sources online. You will learn something new every time.

When you have a basic grasp you can start reading actual works. Plato's dialogues are a good start, mainly the ones dealing with Socrates before and after his trial - Apology is a must read, very inspiring and the most probable historical source of what Socrates actually was.

Plato and Aristotle have immensely influenced philosophy and are a must; decide for yourself what you want to read after that. I'd say you start with Descartes afterwards, you don't really have to read romans and scholastics.

[Anonymous No.2584586]

>>2584541
100% of /mu/ are fucking idiots too so I don't see your point

[Anonymous No.2584593]

>>2583344
The majority of the unintelligible aspect of politics economics and philosophy is just jargon.

[Anonymous No.2584599]

watch the zeitgeist movement if you want any idea at all what is going on in the world. then read about what interests you or go back to tv. idc

[Anonymous No.2584604]

>>2584581
Strauss' History of Political Philosophy is also awesome, even though you might into an neocon after reading.