I'll admit it I'm only 18 and I while I always liked

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>>7449051
>It's very slow and tenuous reading and I feel like I need to re-read everything 3-4 times before I actually understand what's being said.
This is fine OP, read with a pen in your hand and underline something you find interesting or what you'd like to know about a section and ask someone who has read it or ask online, even a professor

There's a shit ton more Greeks to read before you get to Epictetus... Read the Edith Hamilton's Mythology, then Homer, then probably the Tragedies, then maybe Plato. If you're going to read Stoics, then Senneca is the obvious entry point (once you've read all the other stuff). For general lit, the starter kit in the sticky is actually pretty good, or as good as any. Read all that & a year from now you'll be doing great!

>>7449056
If that's the one with Siddhartha, Brave New World and Great Gatsby then I've read pretty much all of them.

Everything besides catch 22 and Lolita.

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Dude philosophy is going to take a lot of time to read. Relax and enjoy the ride. It won't be like reading a novel, you will need to read critically and you might spend 5 hours just analyzing a few pages of Kant, if you ever get to that point.

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>>7449062
this
>mfw the first time

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>>7449056
Also I'm guessing your talking about this picture.

Should I just drop Epictetus and start following this? Will it make it so I understand Epictetus when I come back to it?

>>7449070
What do the different colored lines correlate to?
Yellow I'm guessing is essentials.
Orange is supplementary reading.
What's green and blue?

>>7449070
Yeah that's the one. Yeah, just having a clear grasp of the basic myths & stories will clear the decks significantly & allow you mind to hold the concepts more clearly. Mythology starts out with the very basic stories, but by the end it covers the cool stuff (& highlights the growth in the sophistication of the myths, which later leads to Socrates questioning their validity). Hamilton's commentary is both incisive & highly amusing too.

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>>7449077
Green=History
Blue=Philosophy

Thucydides is fucking great btw. Spartans v Athenians is epic.

>>7449051

>How do I educate myself on how to read difficult works?

Forget all of that right now and work on building your concentration up for longer periods of time - only read what interests you. The key is staying interested. You take this on like it's a thankless task and it might turn you off reading for years to come. When you get better at concentrating in general you can start your systematic grinding of certain thinkers and schools of thought. But right now all you need to do is pursue whatever interests you.

>>7449087
I'm ADHD though, concentration is never gonna really be easy.

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>>7449100
If you can't concentrate on the rage of Achilles, then you're fucked anyway.

>>7449100

Then difficult works should be your last concern right now. Just chill and have fun reading whatever for the time being, because building concentration is essential for the next level.

You don't have to start with the Greeks, senpai. It is only a meme. Read something you're interested in and see where it leads you. You'll have time to get to the Greeks later.

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>>7449051
if you are interested, this is a bit more "complete". Also, I am starting with the greeks too OP, I am currently at Mythology and its great. My plan is to follow this shit exactly. Before I started this, though (not saying it is necessary but I did), I read an Introduction to philosophy book (general philosophy) and then the history of Helenic society.

>>7449210
Nice work anon! You can say startwiththegreeksisameme forever, but they underpin almost all of western literature, it seems perverse to just mooch around reading Catcher in the Rye. Obviously you can read any books in any order, but following a clear ground work like this places you in a vastly superior position to appreciate anything else you read. In addition, the Greeks are also really, really awesome, so you're sidestepping a massive treasure chest of great works if you don't START WITH THE GREEKS!!!!!!

Try reading better books, maybe. It's not difficult to read just difficult to understand how somebody can write such dumb stuff. If you want to read philosophy don't start with the Greeks -- that's the worst advice -- especially for somebody who admits to not being too smart. I'd suggest tackling philosophical fiction if outright philosophy seems like a chore. Get through your basic Dostoevsky, Kafka, Sartre, etc. first. Or read pop-science books.

>>7449070

Don't drop Epictetus.

I was in exactly your position at the same age and I preservered in reading him. Within a year or two I began to notice marked improvement in my conduct, character and intellectual ability. Read the stuff others have recommended, but also continue with Epictetus, reading just a chapter a day. Its worth it, I promise you that.

P.S.

The meditations of Marcus Aurelius are a more simple version of Epictetus, you might find it useful.

>>7449244
>marked improvement in my conduct, character and intellectual ability.
lol

>the things christians say

>>7449249

I'm not Christian, and I think Christianity did more harm than good to humanity.

>>7449258
My apologies. What did you take from him then? The only thing I found useful was his whole point, and only because he reiterated it numerous times to the point where it almost became charmful, was the "stop worrying about externals". Half of it was literally just calling other people, especially ones that disagree with him, idiots.

>>7449272

Here are just some of the things I gained from reading him:

I learned that good and evil lie only in choice, and that everything outside my choice was neither good or evil.

I learned the definition of a human being and the defining aspects of humanity, and consequently how a human being ought to act.

I learned how to order my thoughts in an organized and rational manner.

I learned what kind of thoughts were useful and beneficial to me, and what kind were not.

I learned what belongs to me and what does not.

I learned a rational spiritual understanding of the nature of the universe, and my place and purpose in it.

>>7449295
Great, now I have to read Epictetus...

Have you Epictetscans read Seneca? Are you reading the stoics, or just randomly hooked on this guy?

>>7449225
ayyy lmaooo

I agree, not only because they were the first, but as you said, they influenced too many people. Basically everything that comes after the greeks go around the same thought some greeks had/quote the greeks/debate the greeks and their questions and thinking.

>>7449466
ah, and complementing, their influences can be found not only in philosophy or even literature, thats the best, many movies/series/works of art in general references the greek (not only the greeks ofc but anyway), and when you see, for instance a movie and after reading some books you rewatch the movie and get a reference from what a fella said in 1500 before Christ it feels amazing.

>>7449446

I've read only a few of his letters, and none of them seem as concise and succinct as the Discourses of Epictetus. I found little of value in them tbqphf. I'd advise beginning with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius for a very general introduction to stoicism and then reading Epictetus.

>>7449484
I'll check out Epictetus. I really enjoyed Seneca, but failed to get on with Aurelius - he seemed like an about-to-fail emperor spouting platitudes on the bank of the river in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I'd been to deep in Roman history at the time, but I failed to extract the philosophy from the apologia...