The Overwhelming Task of Reading Philosophy

[Anonymous No.16560627]

So to begin with, I do have a background in philosophy at a higher education level. I feel I comfortably know a decent (but simplistic) overview of Western Philosophy from Post-Socratic to Analytic works.

Since leaving school, however, I've decided to go back and read through full works in their entirety first-hand, instead of general excerpts and survey overviews that are usually done in courses.

The problem I'm finding though, is that chronology in philosophy is seemingly quite crucial to truly understanding various authors in regards to what they were specifically responding to.

Every time I look into reading more Schopenhauer, everyone says to rist read Kant. Then when I want to read Kant, everyone says to first read Hume. Then for Hume, first Descartes; then Aquinas; then Aristotle; then Plato.

I just feel so overwhelmed by the content that I have to cover that I feel there will always be another person saying "I've misunderstood X because I didn't read him in the right context."

How do you tackle going about reading such a huge corpus of works that are seemingly dependent on one another?

[Anonymous No.16560747]

>>16560627
Start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.16560751]

just start somewhere you wont understand anyone youre first read through anyway
besides there is no chronological order
starting with the greeks is just a meme

[Anonymous No.16560775]

how are people so retarded? it's very simple, start with the greeks

[Anonymous No.16560793]

>>16560627
You just develop your metaphysics by reading primary and starting w the greeks. Once your metaphysics is developed enough then you can really start wherever

[Anonymous No.16560910]

the history of philosophy has ultimately been building little sandcastles out of dry sand on top of a concrete block of spkepticism. only skepticism remeains, and even that might wear off one day.

[Anonymous No.16560928]

>>16560910
what lies beneath skepticism?

[Anonymous No.16561061]

>>16560928
dunno

[Anonymous No.16561068]

>>16560910
That's a bit odd considering platonism, intuitionism and nominalism (in formalism) still exist and drive math today.

[Anonymous No.16561079]

>>16560928
Beneath the sands of skepticism lies bedrock of truth that is Islam mashallah

[Anonymous No.16561080]

>>16560627
We usually start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.16561096]

Also start with the greeks doesn't mean start with Plato or with the presocratics. It means start with Homer.

[Anonymous No.16561115]

>>16560627
Follow your interests and supplement whatever you're reading with a shit ton of secondary sources (SEP, Wikipedia, Gregory Sadler videos, probably some other ones as well). The idea that you must begin with the beginning of western philosophy and read 2000+ years worth of writing spanning the life work of hundreds of different individuals just to read a book Schopenhauer is ludicrous. Just read Schopenhauer and consult good secondary sources when something doesn't make sense. If you stick with it you'll probably eventually end up wanting to read Kant as well for the additional insight it will lend into the ideas that interest you, but absolutely do not feel obligated to start with him. If you maintain the delusion that you need a comprehensive understanding of the philosophical context in which every work of philosophy was written, you will find that the rabbit hole never ends. Therefore the only reasonable course of action is to let your interests guide you and to utilize the huge amount of work other intelligent people have done to consolidate, condense and summarize the great ideas of philosophy.

[Anonymous No.16561117]

>>16560928
spkepticism

[Anonymous No.16561121]

>>16560928
Irreducible complexity

[Anonymous No.16561131]

>>16561115
I knew you were a pseud from the first sentence when you recommended SEP. Your next sentence only made it clear no one should take your opinions seriously

[Anonymous No.16561151]

>>16561115
>I too start calculus before knowing algebra by supplementing it w yt videos and wiki articles
Bugman mindset

[Anonymous No.16561164]

>>16561115
No one says you should read 2000+ years of writing before reading Schopenhauer. You should read 2000+ years of philosophy and skip Schopenahuer because that's not philosophy.

[Anonymous No.16561172]

>>16561131
I have literally only encountered the "start with the greeks" meme on 4chan, and almost always from retards who I guarantee haven't read anything at all, because anyone who actually has a modicum of philosophic competence knows it's terrible advice. Reading and understanding every major work in the Western philosophic corpus is the project of a lifetime, not a prerequisite for someone who is first getting into philosophy. Not that I fundamentally disagree with the idea that you should "read everything," it's just significantly more practical and rewarding to begin with what interests you and to continue to let this feeling guide you through the web of philosophic thought, utilizing tools like free comprehensive encyclopedias when applicable. Anyone who cares enough about philosophy will find that within a number of years they will have been pulled to reading the cornerstones of Kant, Plato, Hegel, etc.

[Anonymous No.16561196]

>>16561151
You realize that literally everyone learns math from secondary sources right? I'm not sure there's a single person currently living who learned calculus from the Principia Mathematica, but only after mastering all of Euclid's Elements (in the original greek, of course, as the translations don't capture the finer nuances of his proofs, you DO know ancient Greek don't you anon?), Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing," all of Euler's 500+ publications, as well as the major works of Gauss, Leibniz, Descartes, Pascal, Fibonacci, Pythagoras, etc. This is the mathematical equivalent of telling someone to "start with the greeks."

[Anonymous No.16561234]

>>16561196
It's not a matter of secondary sources and that you're considering philosophy to be historically learned is where you are missing the point.
To learn calculus you must learn Arithmetic then Algebra. It's an asymmetric relationship.
To learn philosophy (metaphysics) you must learn the foundations of it. Starting to learn Schopenhauer by himself would be like learning ethics by themselves. You can never contradict it because you have no tools to. If you only learn physics without math then you can't question the math you just assert it. If you learn calculus without trig then you can't ever question the formulas given. In fact you can't come up w newer ones.
The point of learning philosophy historically is an aside. You're not actually engaging in philosophy (which contradicts the main point) if you read Schopenhauer just as.

[Anonymous No.16561262]

>>16561172
You don't know philosophy because you think it's just a smorgasbord of historical interests. You read to understand metaphysics. You can't engage with the metaphysics of Kant, for example, if you have no idea what its use is for.
Why care about the mind being split into 3 things or analytic vs synthetic divide or a priori/posteriori etc if it doesn't engage reality? You read someone because you think their metaphysics engages reality more than say the current metaphysics which is given to us, or at the very least in that it has something which is a good tool or map that you can use while putting that tool in a proper spot of your metaphysics.
Plato, and Aristotle, have the most mapped out metaphysics ever. There's nothing that is as expansive as their metaphysics (I exampled their use in math). Their ethics, rhetoric even politics is solely understood through their metaphysics. To start outside them is ridiculously foolish and worse is not philosophy. It would just be like reading a biography of them.

[Anonymous No.16561297]

>>16561164
This is the correct answer

[Anonymous No.16561315]

>>16560627
Philosophy builds on itself, that's true. But it's still possible to read and get something out of philosophical texts without knowing the full pedantic history. I've gained something new from Kant after reading other philosophers and going back to Kant.
If you aren't an academic, it's totally fine not to read in order. It's just going to give you a headache and a lot of unnecessary history if you stress out over reading it in order. There's even a lot of philosophy I haven't been able to understand until I've experienced something unique myself in life. That's just the way it is.
Philosophy is a constantly changing body of work by people trying to make sense of their world. You should do the same. Try and find something specifically that you want to know more about and read texts related to that. When the author references someone else that sounds related and interesting, read them next. Don't over think it. Everyone else already has for you.

[Anonymous No.16561332]

>>16561115
I had that same attitude for a long time until I was forced to admit to myself that you indeed have to start with the greeks.
That Whitehead quote about Plato is not a meme.

[Anonymous No.16561349]

>>16561332
Plato's important, but I don't think anyone needs to always go from Plato to Aristotle to Aquinas and so on.
But yes, everyone should read and possibly start with Plato.

[Anonymous No.16561352]

>>16561315
I disagree whole-heartedly. If you're reading philosophy to not think then you're in the wrong subject. You certainly focus on what you want to read and get out of it but you can't skip the greeks. It's impossible to get anything out of anyone else besides jerk-off material or le random factsman if you haven't read plato etc.
That's perfectly fine if you're looking for random facts or want to know a biography of a philosopher but if you want to read philosophy as philosophy you have to start w the greeks. If say Indian or Chinese early philosophy becomes formalized then you can start there as well but reading philosophy and skipping plato/aristotle etc is just shooting yourself in the foot.

[Anonymous No.16561365]

>>16561349
You can skip the scholastics if you want even the enlightenment but you literally have to start w the greeks. Nobody is saying be literally historical. The resume with the romans chart is about history, which inevitably includes philosophy. It's not how you read philosophy

[Anonymous No.16561382]

>>16561352
There's a reason why in school I haven't heard of anyone immediately starting with Plato. Usually its stuff that students already have an understanding of, at least in the states. I first read John Locke before anything else because it's commonly cited by historians or the founding fathers. It's easy to read Locke and relate it to history. I don't think I lost anything reading Locke before Plato. I didn't read Plato until later in my academic career.

[Anonymous No.16561404]

Since you're so clueless about history of philosophy, start with manuals, then switch to primary literature. You're not going to read everything you need to understand Kant, you have to resign to the fact that a good chunk of your workjng knowledge on the history of philosophy will come from secondary literature.
t. Currently doing a PhD in philosophy

[Anonymous No.16561411]

>>16561382
Yes the issue with philosophy in academia is their focus on churning out lawyers. They start w politics and ethics and they don't know anything except pick your psychopathic justification with no means to argue against it.
Reading Locke isn't anything but propaganda. Why is it the individual that matters in terms of ethics, rhetoric, metaphysics etc? These are covered in Aristotle.
What is natural law? This is covered in Plato.
The current education system for philosophy is nut to butt with science if analytic. It's a dried up corpse which doesn't contribute anything in spite of being the foundation through many philosophical battles to develop those. They've become so irrelevant and through their own means. There's almost nothing in modern philosophy that a philosopher can teach a scientist. This was obviously not always the case. That they just dive into politics or becoming a lawyer is terrible and not philosophy at all.
If you haven't read Plato and developed your own metaphysics which can comment on things and develop new ideas then you are definitionally not a philosopher. What is your metaphysics worth if you can't use it to put plato, aristotle, kant, hegel (and literally everything by definition of metaphysics) in terms of your metaphysics? Philosophical zombies?

[Anonymous No.16561412]

>>16560910
Skepticism is self-refuting.

[Anonymous No.16561432]

>>16561404
You start with developing your own metaphysics (which you already have and which is based on modern bias) by starting with plato then aristotle then parmenides/heraclitus then read a hop so you can engage with them in terms of your metaphysics instead of a collection of facts. You don't have to read all of them, preferably choice works that you can best engage with, then move forward.
You don't read philosophy as a history unless you're doing a PhD in history.

[Anonymous No.16561439]

>>16560627
Start with Descartes

[Anonymous No.16561451]

>>16561439
Why? So you can be a political junkie? I'd set you up with a PhD in philosophy if I could.

[Anonymous No.16561478]

>>16561382
I have a theory of value and am working on my own logic. I can debunk physicalism in my sleep. What are y'all doing? What's the point of y'all?

[Anonymous No.16561494]

>>16561478
Critical theory

[Anonymous No.16561498]

>>16561432
Plato and Aristotle can be properly read by auto-didacts only if they have an advanced knowledge of ancient Greek. If anything, they're harder to understand than modern and contemporary philosophers. Getting accostumed with the Critique of Pure Reason is easier than getting accostumed to Metaphysics, or Parmenides+Sophist+Timaeus+Laws.
Also I would disagree with the idea for which first-timers should try to "build their own metaphysics". Whatever will come out of OP for the next decade will most likely be either trash or shit that has been refuted hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. At this point in one's education, it is better to just listen and carefully study the works of people who actually spent some time thinking on these matters. I don't to be too polemic, but if anything, it seems to me that your method is excellent only if you're goal is to churn out cranks and wackos.
>You don't read philosophy as a history unless you're doing a PhD in history.
Dunno what you mean by this. History of philosophy manuals just present the works of past philosophers in a summarized form. Unless you want OP to read Schopenhauer in his mid '50s, he will simply have to resort to these shortcuts. Notice, also, that I haven't suggested that they can be a perfect substitute for primary literature in the long run. Rather, I made that suggestion only as a way to make whatever primary literature OP is intereted in accessible.

[Anonymous No.16561508]

>>16561494
I don't doubt it. They're just interested in free unineetbux and ivory tower gatekeeping and politics and ethical abominations of arguments. They're a disgusting group of people that have managed to make themselves entierly irrelevant while promoting the university lawyer business system.

[Anonymous No.16561534]

>>16561498
What's your theory of value? http://sjruruchunchun.com/blog/on-economics-or-on-opportunity
You can't refute mine.

>don't teach ppl to think just to listen
How I say you should manage, and keep in mind the cranks that come out in philosophy is academia's doing, is by debating their ideas in separate topics. If you can debate your metaphysical interpretation in abortion, and it comes out right, then you refine your metaphysics. Philosophy is not a spectator sport that you want it to be.
Reading Gorgias does not require more knowledge than cpr. We engage with objective vs subjective fact, objective morality vs subjective etc in politics as it is. You can read Plato (I can tell you right now that dropping cpr into Greek society wouldn't have made as much sense as Plato so unless you're accessing them of all being turbo geniuses your point is wrong).

Yes I agree so you don't read philosophy as a history you read it as a metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.16561547]

>>16561534
I'll add onto this, Plato wouldn't be a philosopher, Thales wouldn't, if they just memorized philosophers preceding them. In some cases presented this is impossible and would never birth the field which birthed fields after. You engage through your metaphysics. You do not. You're part of a business cycle that is the university.

[Anonymous No.16561553]

>>16561547
what is metaphysics?

[Anonymous No.16561566]

>>16561553
A framework for how the universe works like physics is a framework for how material causation works. So it's a system that defines ontology, truth, ontological dimensions like monism etc, ethics, epistemology etc. Epistemology takes axioms in metaphysics. You assert your existence and the existence or non existence of other objects. You assert rationality in the case of descartes. Starting with Locke's individual is schizophrenic and only band-aided by political propaganda. You literally have no idea what you're talking about by starting with Locke. I've seen more relevant work in philosophy on this cite than anything I've read by contemporary ph academia.

[Anonymous No.16561579]

>>16561553
I hope that was an honest question then you've permanently cemented y'alls reputation. Ivory tower, do-nothing, capitalist pigs.

[Anonymous No.16561586]

>>16561579
If not then you've*

[Anonymous No.16561592]

>>16561547
>>16561534
Crank detected
Just out of curiosity, are you the schizo who always post about Proclus?

[Anonymous No.16561604]

>>16561592
I'm right. You can't prove me wrong and I can prove you wrong no matter how many degrees you get. In any subject.
I wish I could say that because I want you to continue to be biased and wrong. Instead it's not me. You're just some bitch without a theory of value or means to critique any. And your whole system is propped up by this inability you all have.
Cope bitch all my shit will affect humanity.

[Anonymous No.16561613]

>>16561604
So, are you the Proclus-poster or not? Or maybe you are a new local schizo? I don't remember any raving about theories of value

[Anonymous No.16561615]

>>16561592
You're some nobody bitch who is awarded for sucking dick. I'm working on a parmenidean logic system. You bitches can't even explain 1+1=3 on Twitter and everything surrounding that conversation outside political topics. I can, I did and everyone says they weren't explained that before. Wtf are you doing

[Anonymous No.16561618]

>>16561615
Take your meds

[Anonymous No.16561621]

>>16561613
Yes because you can't read anything besides literal things. This is why you say philosophy is a spectator sport. You actually give me an out already outline in that reply. You won't know it tho ph PhD faggot.

[Anonymous No.16561626]

>>16561618
Take your meds schizo. Gtfoh w ur bitch degree. I'm right, I won. Go suck your professor's dick.

[Anonymous No.16561628]

>>16560627

Okay but why do you want to read philosophy if it seems like such a chore?

[Anonymous No.16561635]

>>16561613
You're the newfag. Quit trying to get 4chan points since you can't develop anything or critique anything except literally. I've been here and I posted it. I haven't seen you bitch.

[Anonymous No.16561640]

>>16561621
>>16561626
Strong Terry Davis vibe

[Anonymous No.16561643]

>>16561640
Get your wannabe 4chan posts out of here. You claimed you're in academia and I called you out and you couldn't reply. It's not your subject bro.

[Anonymous No.16561651]

>>16561643
You called me out on what? You just posted schizo ravings.

[Anonymous No.16561656]

>>16561651
>he can't read
No wonder you think Plato is too hard to start with.

[Anonymous No.16561669]

>>16561618
They asked Plato to send philosophers to help him. Nobody is asking you. Nobody in academia can even offer anything. Your whole system is just a business scheme for lawyers. All your contemporary academia is embarrassing. You got Hollywood actors looking at you funny. You go cuck to scientists. Nobody wants you here. They don't want you.

[Anonymous No.16561679]

>>16561656
>>16561669
So, you've still got nothing? What a schizo. No wonder you think that Plato is easy to read

[Anonymous No.16561693]

>>16561679
I got my theory of value and I'll put my whole reputation on it. You can't critique it

[Anonymous No.16561701]

>>16561693
Good for you

[Anonymous No.16561708]

>>16561701
Suck my nuts w ur bitch academia degree. Working on lots of shit. You look out for it boy

[Anonymous No.16561730]

>>16561708

[Anonymous No.16561747]

>>16561730
Cope bitch

[Anonymous No.16561825]

>>16561172

You have only encountered "start with the Greeks" meme on 4chan? How about the curriculums of all respectable philosophy degrees in the Western world? How about the personal education of various influential figures throughout history? Face it, in order to truly appreciate what is being attempted in Occidental philosophy, one has to trace the development of this mode of thought back to the ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ. In their own language. The same goes for any other writer. You have to first reconstruct his historical milieu and learn the source language of his writings, and only then approach the text. Everything else is simply observing someone else's interpretation, which might be interesting on its own, but it can never fully supplant the interaction with the actual thing.

[Anonymous No.16561964]

>>16561534
Your invitation of a refutation is disingenuous. You want us to delve into your labyrinth of assumptions and presuppositions and to engage with your logic as if it's an inductive step that proves because it holds for the base case, it will be true for n+1. The only thing you have proven is a basis for value. You write as of there's some cosmic universal truth that you're uncovering, but you gloss completely over resolving the issue of the establishment and maintenance of the value system. Really, the entire argument breaks down at this point, because it then becomes apparent that, like every other system, it comes down to a completely arbitrary value judgment made by a human being. Functionally, in terms of the system's relationship to any objective value (if extant) the social credit system, and the necessary governmental systems accompanying, are indistinct from any other system which draws its values from the arbitrarily human. This is, of course, assuming we care about any hypothetical tie to truth or objectivity in the first place. If we do, we can't just stop at an internally-justified statement which is coherent and logical primarily within its own scope. The fundamental problem, then, becomes less of the nature of value, and more about the methods we use to distinguish societal valuations from one another. More precisely, it becomes the measure by which we are able to separate our values from human "arbitration" and tie them to objective truth, the search for which being obviously a core goal of philosophy, with truth being the bedrock of logic. Your argument does nothing to resolve this dilemma as it does nothing to resolve the basal issue of a human-contingent value system (in contrast to an objective, human-agnostic value system).

I want to note here that a human-agnostic value system does not imply a human-apathetic or a human-antagonistic system. The hypothetical, objective, human-agnostic system is the one which is the key to effective governance without overly trampling on the human beings it governs, and it's the system your argument comes up very short of advancing. Resolve the issue of human arbitration of values in the system and you'll have something that's worth the way you're treating everyone in this thread. By failing to resolve this issue you fail to resolve the core issue of "who gets to decide what," which underpins the issue of governance itself. The social credit system has its positives as well as its negatives, but at its core it's just one of many systems of its kind offering only a different varietal of the same bullshit.

[Anonymous No.16562019]

>>16561964
>saying a cosmic truth
I'm just saying what's more true. I'm a monist.
>it doesn't justify objective value
Yeah because it's not doing that. It presents an ordering of value from more universal to less. So I say we value things more universally applicably in ways separate from a material representation for wealth. This could be argued in more in that it's more objective on a scale by universality. Which would resolve your point completely, in that what humans do more universally is what we're interested in. I really dk how that escaped you.

I say materially valued objects are necessarily of some value by their physical nature, perhaps being scarce or useful, but this doesn't apply towards everything that is valued of a material object. In fact, while I don't mind anchoring it by those extant values that are inherent to any economic system, most of how objects, in capitalism, are valued is by a democratic means, so a socially determined value just under a materially (as a socially determined value is by definition not as universal as materially determined, i.e. why scarcity is always contended with in theories of values). I do outline the issues with that.

[Anonymous No.16562029]

>>16560627
>ctrl+f no mention of the project

can you actually imagine taking advice from someone who took less than a minute to type down a post on an imageboard? google the lit philosophy project. distrust interested advice - these replies are full of those who want to see themselves justified

[Anonymous No.16562030]

>this thread is still up
>don't even have to open it to know it's pseuds circlejerking instead of reading
Hey retards reading this and actively participating in this thread: kill yourselves.

[Anonymous No.16562044]

>>16562019
Also what I am pushing for is changing the value focal point away from socially and materially determined values towards universally determined values and I give benefits of that. For example that race, gender etc are socially determined to be important. The issue with socially determined is they can't be rigorous. Even physics can have some material measurement. Because they aren't rigorous you never know when it's complete except by social determination (which is horribly determined you might know the social determination factors of a lynch mob). This explains why we're more free by having more black civil rights and no Chinese civil rights and, to a lesser degree, Native civil rights.
Basing this on a more universally determined value, say education per my example, you can determine literally where these benefits start and stop.
I certainly go deeper but that answers your point about the paper's stance on objective value.

[Anonymous No.16562048]

>>16562029
>>16562030
Cope the marxist section was scrubbed and it's just a guideline for history of philosophy not philosophy itself.

[Anonymous No.16562113]

>>16562019
I think I understand it better now. It doesn't resolve politics (crystalized human subjectivity) because it doesn't try to. Under your framework, it actually is human-agnostic in the sense that the human values are actually wholly immaterial -- there's no moral or ethical distinction at all between authoritarian China and an idealized free America. I've got serious reservations about the world it'd inevitably create given how easily it facilitates authoritarianism, but I can't find anything wrong with the argument strictly within its own scope. I would like to give it some more thought and a better response but I don't have time. I've never seen an argument like this for a social credit system and I think it merits discussion by people more competent than I am. Thanks for the effortposts, and for presenting something challenging.

[Anonymous No.16562154]

>>16562113
Thank you so much appreciate the discussion.

[Anonymous No.16562174]

>>16561115
This.
Get good editions of primary sources so that you can read a good translation with footnotes, then consult secondary literature (SEP, IEP and Herder are all free and online).

[Anonymous No.16562234]

>>16560910
Kant refuted scepticism.

[Anonymous No.16562360]

>>16560627
Really, I just want to read Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, before Schop. Can someone please tell me the 2 or 3 required readings from Plato and Aristotle that are required reading? I've read The Republic already.

[Anonymous No.16562426]

>>16562048
what a tool

[Anonymous No.16562480]

>>16562360
Nevermind, I just bought Platos 5 dialogues, that should do it for now.