/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Wed May 27 11:42:06 2015 No.6598305 [Reply] [Original]

I'm a fucking ignorant goon.

I know nothing of Western philosophy since the second century AD, with the most basic knowledge of people like Nietzsche and Locke. I really want to learn, but I don't want to be a Wikipedia poser. I plan to spend the summer reading primary sources.

Which thinkers ought I read about? I'm definitely going to look into Kant, Hegel, Russel, Camus, Foucault, and Sartre, but where ought I begin with them? And who else should I read?

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 11:45:59 2015 No.6598319 Is there even a reason to read philosophers when dozens of accurate and more understandable versions of their works exist? Serious question.

Anonymous Wed May 27 11:52:10 2015 No.6598344

Start with Descartes' first three books on his meditations of first philosophy then proceed onto the Empiricists (Berkeley, Hume and then Locke - in this particular order). Finally, one you feel you understand them enough - humbly try to pursue Kant. If Kant is initially to difficult to understand, return to him after doing more readings. I recommend reading Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as well.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 11:55:27 2015 No.6598360 >>6598319 That's cheating, though. I care less about their main points but more about having the experience of reading them.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 11:55:27 2015 No.6598359 Start with Frege, then move on to Russell, Moore, Ayer, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and Kripke. Those are the only philosophers worth your time.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 11:57:26 2015 No.6598372 >>6598360 Time is limited and theres a bunch of shit to do and read.

Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 11:59:04 2015 No.6598379

>>6598305
Even the greatest philosophers did not read everyone who came before them. Nietzsche did not even read the Critique of Pure Reason. Because time is limited, you will be forced to read the summaries of some, unless you want to aimlessly move from book to book with no purpose. Try to narrow down your interests, determine what you are interested in the most, what questions you want answered, what you want in general.

If I were you, I would ignore Kant, Russell, Foucault, and especially Hegel. If you want to know about them, use this website: http://plato.stanford.edu/

A good starting point could be Schopenhauer (his essays and the third and fourth, maybe second, definitely not first, books of the World as Will and Representation) since he will lead you to Nietzsche and maybe Wittgenstein. Actually it would probably be better to start off with Nietzsche or read Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein before reading Philosophical Investigations. Locke is pretty boring, Hume would be better. Berkeley is fun to read. You could also start with Camus since he is easy to understand, although Sartre is superior.

I suggest starting with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency,_Irony,_and_Solidarity

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 12:03:04 2015 No.6598396 File: 2.00 MB, 2389x3636, Twiggy009.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6598360 >having the experience of reading them. Get a bird identification guide, go on early morning walks, read Walden and Homer.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:05:53 2015 No.6598407 >>6598379 >not even mentioning Frege or any logicians It's like you want OP to be unable to participate in contemporary discourse.

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 12:08:36 2015 No.6598416 File: 108 KB, 620x850, Twiggy010.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6598407 Fuck your philistine word math.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:10:20 2015 No.6598423 >>6598416 Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 12:11:22 2015 No.6598428 >>6598423 Plato is shit.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:12:20 2015 No.6598432 OP, don't read philosophers, instead start with structuralism. anthropology and so on and then go to post-structuralism Just start reading Saussure and then go on to levi strauss and other anthropologists.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:12:46 2015 No.6598434 >>6598428 Your 19th century obscurantists are shit.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:14:03 2015 No.6598441 >>6598432 >OP, don't read philosophers, instead start with structuralism Don't do this unless you want to be laughed at.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:14:25 2015 No.6598442 >>6598379 >(his essays and the third and fourth, maybe second, definitely not first, books of the World as Will and Representation) Explain pls. Why the third and fourth and why is the first to be avoided?

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:15:11 2015 No.6598446 >>6598428 >Plato is shit are you fucking serious? how low can /lit/ descend?

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:16:13 2015 No.6598450 >>6598441 OP don't follow this advice unless you want to know nothing

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:19:39 2015 No.6598461 >>6598450 Structuralism is total bullshit and has been dead for decades.

Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 12:22:22 2015 No.6598465

>>6598442
Metaphysics, especially Kantianism, is a waste of time, a dead end. You are better off reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. If you are looking for an aesthetic appearance, read Berkeley. Just get a basic idea of Kant from http://plato.stanford.edu/ or watch Bryan Magee videos on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/kN5XzaWumV0
https://youtu.be/RPNNmWLmH2E

Anonymous Wed May 27 12:22:36 2015 No.6598467

One option, although it'd make you somewhat of a dilettante, is to read summaries on Wikipedia or Spark Notes to get a basic grasp of philosophical language—and major philosophers' ideas—and then to simply read the primary works of whomever interests you the most. For instance, if you were interested in Nietzsche, you could read summaries for Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer—and probably Nietzsche himself—and then you'd be able to read Beyond Good and Evil without much trouble. Then, if you wanted to, you could move onto Foucault without finding too much difficulty.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:24:03 2015 No.6598473 >>6598461 oh so, what is the thing that killed it? post-structuralism? are you kidding me?

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:24:30 2015 No.6598477 >>6598467 I should add that this is what I did. I was able to read Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals, and The Anti-Christ, without having any problems.

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 12:27:20 2015 No.6598480 >>6598446 Philosophy is shit.

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 12:32:47 2015 No.6598495 Another good starting point: http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Way-Life-Spiritual-Exercises/dp/0631180338

Anonymous Wed May 27 12:36:20 2015 No.6598512

Start with A Brief Illustrated History of Western Philosophy by Anthony Kenny to get your bearings.

Then read Mythology by Edith Hamilton for background, before moving onto the Illiad and the Odyssey by Homer.

Then read in this order:

The Republic - Plato
Oresteia - Aeschylus
Oepidus Rex - Sophocles
The Aeneid - Virgil
Metaphysics - Aristotle
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
the rest of Plato's collected works
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle
The Code of Hammurabi - Hammurabi
The Categories - Aristotle
City of God - St Augustine
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius
Secretum - Petrarch
The Metaphysics of the Healing - Abu Ali ibn Sina
Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes
Summa Theologica - St Thomas Aquinas
Meditations on First Philosophy - Rene Descartes
The Divine Comedy - Dante
Ethics - Benedict Spinoza
Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
Phenomenology of the Spirit - Hegel
The Prince - Machiavelli
Either/Or - Soren Kierkegaard
Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The World as Will and Representation - Arthur Schopenhauer
The Ego and its Own - Max Stirner
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
God and the State - Mikhail Bakunin
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
The Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin
On Liberty - John Stuart Mill
Walden; Or Life in the Woods - Henry David Thoreau
Being and Time - Martin Heidegger
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
Cartesian Meditations - Edmund Husserl
Logical Investigations - Edmund Husserl
Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
The Roads to Freedom Trilogy - Jean-Paul Sartre
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
Philosophical Investigations - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Man and His Symbols - Carl Jung

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:36:55 2015 No.6598514 >>6598473 It collapsed under the weight of its one bullshit.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:38:05 2015 No.6598521 >>6598512 This is too much stuff and it's all over the place.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:38:06 2015 No.6598522 >>6598512 No Frege or Russell? Also, OP, ignore the chinks, camel fuckers and christfags.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:40:35 2015 No.6598526 >>6598514 the message you are seeking is "I don't understand them so therefore they are bullshit"

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:40:47 2015 No.6598528 >tfw starting to like Twiggy

Anonymous Wed May 27 12:41:22 2015 No.6598534

>>6598521
>it's all over the place.
That's the point, you don't want to get bored with just straight analytical or continental philosophy. You need some diversity, that's why I included some metaphysical fiction.

>>6598522
>No Frege or Russell
Rendered unnecessary by Wittgenstein.

Anonymous Wed May 27 12:45:32 2015 No.6598549

OP read sophia world, you don't need anything else to appear intellectual for philosophers, it's impossible to actually speak philosopher problems face to face because there is no enough attention span to keep your partner interested in what you are saying.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 12:59:25 2015 No.6598596 >>6598379 >Nietzsche did not even read the Critique of Pure Reason. I call bullshit on that one. You really think that he never once took at look at it? In his entire life not even once? Come on.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 13:00:59 2015 No.6598604 >>6598596 It was notorious that he didn't read stoicism, because his critique of it is ridiculous and off point

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 13:02:26 2015 No.6598608 >>6598534 >Rendered unnecessary by Wittgenstein. He says using a computer.

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 13:05:40 2015 No.6598623 >>6598596 >You really think that he never once took at look at it? In his entire life not even once? Come on. Nietzsche had one of the finest calibrated bullshit detectors in history so probably not.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 13:51:42 2015 No.6598834 >You could also start with Camus since he is easy to understand, although Sartre is superior. lmao

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 14:04:02 2015 No.6598873 >>6598379 >You could also start with Camus since he is easy to understand, although Sartre is superior >although Sartre is superior >Sartre is superior holy shit this can't be serious

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 14:12:21 2015 No.6598906 >>6598465 >across the vast expanse of space ... tips echo into eternity

>>	Twiggy !!ErZLYHNhXgZ Wed May 27 14:24:07 2015 No.6598952 >>6598873 >>6598834 They're both shit but Camus is shittier.

Anonymous Wed May 27 15:22:28 2015 No.6599166

>>6598465
Do not listen to this tard wrangler. There is literally nothing wrong with metaphysics, any philosophical worldview requires a metaphysical foundation. Philosophy is a long conversation, so you'd be better off starting at the beginning, with Thales.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 15:23:08 2015 No.6599170 >>6598305 Reading Wikipedia is actually a really good way to get comfortable with different philosophers and how they connect to each other

>>	mini eggs Wed May 27 15:28:38 2015 No.6599192 >>6598305 >Camus >Foucault I mean, I've read all there works, and like them lots, but "philosophers" ? I guess sort of Foucault, still hesitant to apply the label. Only read the presocratics and wittenstein tbh, the house on poo corner is a must btw

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 19:11:27 2015 No.6600399 >>6598432 I'm an anthropology minor so I got that on deck. I'm really just interested in Western philosophy, because that's the field of the humanities that I'm most lacking in.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 19:15:11 2015 No.6600420 >>6598512 Thanks so much. I've read about ten of those already, do you recommend I re-read or skip?

Anonymous Wed May 27 23:18:57 2015 No.6601358

>>6598319
99.99% of secondary material is a shitty *replacement* for the primary texts themselves and will produce a very very very shallow and distorted understanding. secondary literature becomes good when you read it secondarily.
not to mention that a lot of it is written in a really boring way that doesn't reflect the attitude or passion of the primary text, this attitude or passion being the crucial part for understanding why the text was written at all.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 23:22:07 2015 No.6601366 >>6598305 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/edit

>>	Anonymous Wed May 27 23:33:04 2015 No.6601409 >>6598379 >If you want to know about them, use this website: http://plato.stanford.edu/ Only useful for analytic and pre-18/19th century philosophers, with some exceptions (depending on who's the author of an entry).

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 03:02:59 2015 No.6602085 >>6598446 By conversing with tripfags.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 13:09:13 2015 No.6603636 >>6598305 START WITH THE GREEKS

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:13:19 2015 No.6605037 >>6601358 Yes, that was the only reason I could come up with.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:15:45 2015 No.6605052 Read Hegel, die by Hegel With Hegel you can fuck around with whatever philosopher there is

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:23:52 2015 No.6605093 >>6598512 > Not forgetting Ibn Sina I like you.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:31:06 2015 No.6605120 Read the history of western philosophy by Russell.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:37:53 2015 No.6605147 >>6598319 >something >well, what I think he tried to say is that something, which in my opinion is refering to... Nope, first source is always best source.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:40:42 2015 No.6605163 >>6605147 This. Some guys get ideas mixed because they read more than the "best work". They obviously change their mind sometimes.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 18:45:17 2015 No.6605187 >>6598305 If you want "tackleable" then start with Camus. "Sysiphus myth" is a good option. Don't let those plebs around this place who didn't understand it discourage you from reading it.

Anonymous Thu May 28 20:03:57 2015 No.6605599

>>6598305
>Kant, Hegel, Russel, Camus, Foucault, and Sartre
You won't understand them. Stop fetishizing philosophy, if you really want to acquire knowledge instead of being le smart guy xD start reading about history of philosophy and then study the greeks. Despite the memes, starting with the greeks is the correct way to understand philosophy.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 28 20:42:26 2015 No.6605770 >>6598623 >one of the finest calibrated >not saying "one of the most finely calibrated" shig

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