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/lit/ - Literature

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4747613 No.4747613[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

where do i start with philosophy? I tried reading thus spoke zarathustra but dropped it because it felt like i was missing a lot of stuff. i am interested in nietzsche but dont really know where to start

>> No.4747619

Why do plebs almost always start with Nietzsche? It's annoying.

>> No.4747628

THE GREEKS

Don't bother starting with Nietzsche without some basic knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Schopenhauer

>> No.4747639

>>4747619
people frequently mention him and his works on this board so i figured it would be interesting to read some of his works. but thank you for your contribution

>> No.4747641

>>4747628
A decent understanding of Christian thought might also be nice. And Hegel, if you can manage.

Nietzsche is very much a 'responder,' in that he is grappling with a long-standing tradition of Western thought. You need some exposure to that tradition before you're ready to tackle him.

>> No.4747642

Kant.

You don't need to read any philosophy before Kant. He basically reinvented it.

>> No.4747645

http://www.mindmeister.com/nl/23290325/western-philosophy/

>> No.4747647

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a really good entry level book on metaphysics. Definitely check it out.

>> No.4747650

>>4747647
>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a really good
kek. please kill yourself if you actually believe this.

>> No.4747652

>>4747613
Start with the greeks.

>> No.4747658

>>4747650
>kek
>kill yourself
I was under the assumption that this isn't /b/.

>> No.4747663

>>4747619
In my case (not OP) I heard he's edgy and some of his ideas which I was introduced to in watered down form resonated with my kind of edgy so I went for him.

>> No.4747664

>>4747658
Well you erred, kiddo -- which would not surprise me, since you think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is good.

>> No.4747667

It's a huge area of study, what in particular are you interested in?

>> No.4747673

>>4747664
What do you dislike about it?

Try to formulate a critique without using buzz phrases like "babby's first" and profusely cursing to get your point across.

>> No.4747674

>>4747663
[I'm the anon you are addressing]. I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with starting with Nietzsche insofar as you recognize that is not an appropriate starting place for philosophy. But if you just want to read him, that is fine.

>> No.4747686

>>4747650
are you literally 12? don't talk like that.

>> No.4747689

>tfw will never get around to kant

>> No.4747685

>>4747674
When I noticed that I don't understand almost any of the more intricate concepts and ideas he was trying to build up or debunk I decided to start over from the start.

>> No.4747693

>>4747689
Kant a shit, Nietzsche is much more entertaining.

>> No.4747696

>>4747658
>I was under the assumption that this isn't /b/.
you thought wrong faggot

>> No.4747701

>>4747696
People who talk like morons and are incapable of articulating themselves without memes are honestly in the minority here, so don't pretend liek it's okay to talk like that because you're in the majority.

>> No.4747704

>>4747701
really faggot? do you actually believe that faget

>> No.4747709

>>4747701
Just ignore the man-child, he is angry

>> No.4747711

>>4747704
Yeah. Everyone looks down on you.

>> No.4747716

>>4747711
nah nigger. if you aren't an edgy 12-year old on /lit/ you're a faggot

>> No.4747733

While we're talking about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you should check out The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Really changed my life :)

>> No.4747737

>>4747733
it's not that bad of a book. not really 'philosophy' but moreso a guiding spiritual principle and a good enough story

>> No.4747749

>>4747737

Jesus Christ, holy Mary and all the angels and saints this board is gay... :^(

>> No.4747755

>>4747749
What was gay about it?

>> No.4747763

>>4747755

stop replying to me you fucking creep

>> No.4747765

>>4747763
:(

>> No.4747768

>>4747749
want to fuck :^)?

>> No.4747876

>>4747641

Don't overlook the Enlightenment figures! Nietzsche is in a conversation with the Greeks but he's also DEEPLY critiquing the enlightenment project.

>>4747613

Look for a good intellectual history of the
west so that you can get a good feel for the long waves of western intellectual history.

>> No.4747890

What's essential Aristotle?

>> No.4747937
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4747937

>>4747890


pretty much all of it is gold.

i like politics, ethics, and poetics the best. also check out the aquinian commentaries (who sought to 'rescue' aristotle from what he saw as misuse and abuse by the parisian school of the time)

>> No.4747973
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4747973

>>4747937 frogs have always been intellectual terrorists.

>> No.4747996

The geneology of philosophy goes:

Generation 1 (Greeks):
Socrates to Plato
Plato to Aristotle

Then

Generation 2 (Modern Philosophy)
Aristotle to George Berkeley
Berkeley to David Hume
David Hume to Descartes
Descartes to Kant

Then

Generation 3 (German Idealism)

Kant to Schopenhauer (and)
Kant to Hegel (and)
Kant to Kierkegaard (if you give a shit about weird-ass theology and esoteric existentialism)

Then

Generation 4 (The Victorians)

Schopenhauer to Nietzsche (and)
Hegel to Marx

Then

Generation 5 (The Modernists)

From these people, you can now pick and choose who you want. The geneology kind of cuts off here and philosophers start becoming more and more academic people who sample from everyone, but I think you should go with:

Sigmund Freud (I dont care what you think about what he has to say, he's an important part of the history of thought, ESPECIALLY in philosopher.)
Jacques Lacan (for a continuance of Freud)

Husserl (for a continuance of Descartes)
Heidegger (for a continuance of Husserl)
Sartre (for a continuance of Heidegger)

you've also got a wide array of Marxist philosophers known as critical theorists (who dominate 20th century thinking, for the most part) such as:

Theodor Adorno
Herbert Marcuse
Walter Benjamin
Erich Fromm
Louis Althusser
Judith Butler
Michel Foucault

Then

Generation 6 (the Post-Modernists)

I don't blame you if you stop here. IMHO they never said anything worth saying, buuuut

Jacques Derrida
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (for a continuance of Nietzsche)
Jean Baudrillard
Jean-François Lyotard

Then, after this generation is a category I like the called "the anti-post-modernist", which is simply the Slovenian Psychoanalyst and philosopher known as Slavoj Zizek.

---

things to avoid:

Don't get too caught up in the Greeks. A lot of them said things that aren't worth your time.

Skip eastern "philosophy". Buddhism and Taoism are religions, not philosophy.

Skip any book that begins with "the art of..." or "the Zen of..."

Analytical philosophy is worthless (basically, 99% of the things written by American or British philosophers)

Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell are okay to read if you're a science nerd or an edgy atheist.

>> No.4748004

>>4747996
this is useful thanks.

>> No.4748023

>>4747996
thank you very much

>> No.4748026

>>4748004
>>4748023
>Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell are okay to read if you're a science nerd or an edgy atheist.
>that is considered useful and warranting of thanks

>> No.4748029

>>4747996


my god, this post is *pure* ideology.

>> No.4748034

>>4748029
Different guy, but what do you mean by this?

>> No.4748040

>>4748026
*plebs plebora*

>> No.4748046

>>4747996
Maybe you should encourage OP to read some analytic stuff and let OP decide for him/herself?
Everyone isn't as crappy at mathematics as yourself.

>> No.4748050

>>4748046
>I say analytical philosophy is shit
>Everyone isn't as crappy at mathematics as yourself.
>comparing math to philosophy
>positivist detected

>> No.4748081

>>4747996
texts to go with each?

>> No.4748106

>>4747996
where be the transcendentalists? or do you not consider them philosophers.

>> No.4748175

>>4748050
Math is just philosophical flow of logic enumerated out on paper

>> No.4748186

>>4748081
Plato wrote everything on Socrates (read: the symposium, The apology, The republic)

Aristotle wrote a bunch of shit categorizing other shit (read: Politics, Poetics, Logic)

Berkeley wrote one noteable book about epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge (read: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge)

Hume wrote a few important things, but you only need to know a couple (read: A Treatise of Human Nature, and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

Descartes wrote one book that most people know about, it's like the first thing you read in philosophy 101, and it's basically all that matter about descartes (read: Meditations on First philosophy)

Kant wrote a bunch of important shit, and it's not easy to say "just read this" because kant's books are dense as FUCK, but if you want to know kant (read: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment, Groundwork on the metaphysic of Morals, prolegomena to any future metaphysics). Skip Kant's political writings because they're pants on head retarded.

Schopenhauer wrote 2 important works. (read: the world as will and representation vol. 1 and 2.) If you feel like being a emotional bitch, you can read anything he wrote about pessimism, but keep in mind that being rejected by some chick when he was in his 20s drives most of his views about life and women in general

Hegel wrote a LOT of important shit, so I'll just name the most important (read: The Phenomenology of spirit, The Science of Logic, the Philosophy of right)

Kierkegaard mostly wrote really short essays, so there's not many "books" to tell you to read, but you should try to (read: Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, The concept of Anxiety, and The Sickness unto death.) You don't have to read all of these.

Nietzsche's works are so well known I'll only tell you to (read: beyond good and evil, Thus spoke zarathustra) because the rest of what he wrote is pick and choose. There's hardly a comprehensive "system" of thought to nietzsche like there is to Marx

Marx also wrote a lot of things that Marxists argue you should read all of but you just need to (read: Das kapital vol. 1, Communist Manifesto, The german ideology, critique of hegel's philosophy of right)

Freud you simply need (the interpretation of dreams, The ego and the id) and then anything else you want to read after that is p entertaining IMHO.

Lacan never "wrote" anything. He mostly did speeches, but you should (read: Ecrits, a Selection). It has the essays about his contributions to what he considered freudian psychoanalysis, but what others would later call "Lacanian". Lacan once said "you can be a lacanian; I myself am a Freudian.

Husserl is a shitty writer. He never wrote a "magnum opus" of any kind, so just (read: this: http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-European-Sciences-Transcendental-Phenomenology/dp/081010458X/ref=la_B001IQWL5W_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396890353&sr=1-1 )

Heidegger is simple, just (read: Being and Time)

cont'd

>> No.4748190

>>4747996
Nice use of wikipedia, pleb.

>> No.4748196

>>4748186
Holy shit, you have no idea what you're talking about.

>> No.4748219

>>4748186
Sartre is also easy, just (read: being and nothingness)

The critical theorists were super academic and mostly wrote papers published by universities and such, so I'll just reccomend a few, that in no way constitute their respective author's Magnum Opus's.

Herbert Marcuse: Eros and Civilization

Erich Fromm: To Have or To be?

Judith Butler: Gender Trouble

Michel Foucault: The history of sexuality (any volume).

The postmodernists I didn't spend much time on because they're basically a bunch of french dudes making up words and fake concepts buuut

Derrida: Writing and Difference

Deleuze and Guattari (DnG): Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.

Baudrillard: simulacra and simulation

Lyotard: The post-modern condition

Finally, Zizek writes a new book every year basically, but I'd go with:

The Sublime Object of Ideology
First as Tragedy, then as Farce
The year of dreaming dangerously

Zizek himself considered his "parallax view" to be his Magnum Opus, but I dont see how.

Also, zizek does a ton of lectures which you can find mostly on reddit.com/r/zizek

He was also in some movies, such as:

Zizek!
The Pervert's guide to cinema
The Pervert's guide to ideology

>>4748106
More like an art/literary movement, IMHO. No disrespect to the transcendentalists, just thought it is better described through literature than philosophical essays. "self reliance" is still one of my favorite essays, though

>> No.4748224

>>4748190
>>4748196


practically half his emphasis is 60s frankfurt school academics and similar affiliates, its obvious he is either ignorant and not very familiar with much thought outside his collegiate bubble, or is an actively disingenuous ideologue acting in bad faith.

>> No.4748246

>>4748224
I'm a Zizek fanboy.

>> No.4748256
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4748256

>>4748246


well that gets you bonus points, but dont think i dont got my eye on you.

>> No.4748308

>>4747996
>no pre-socratics
>not realizing the tao is on a level of thought leagues beyond most western philosophers
>simply calling buddhism a "religion" and ignoring it's complex metaphysical and ethical system
>implying the japanese don't have a better sense of aesthetics as it relates to how it expresses the nature of Being via an internalization of buddhist philosophy

>> No.4748316

>>4747996
>Skip eastern "philosophy". Buddhism and Taoism are religions, not philosophy.
I'm not entirely convinced that you know what Taoism is.

>> No.4748340

the only nietzche book i enjoyed was 'human, all too human'

>> No.4748526

>>4747996
>Analytical philosophy is worthless (basically, 99% of the things written by American or British philosophers)
All credibility lost.

Ignore the guy.