Philosophy for a total beginner

>>8378836
that's shit

don't listen to complete chronology memers

read

Think - Blackburn
The Story of Philosophy - Magee
The Logic Manual - Volker Halbach

These should give you "the gist" of the main guys. What are you more specific interests?

Do you want to read the main guys? Any specific topics you want to read on?

>>8378836
How do you read Socrates before Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon?

>>8378854
>What are you more specific interests?
To be honest, I don't even know enough to be able to answer that question.

>Do you want to read the main guys?
I guess. My main issue is that I don't feel I understand the point of it? I'm not saying there isn't one of course, but that my understanding is that narrow.
Every time I read anything I can't get away from the feeling that it's total bullshit and I know the issue's on my end given that this is a respected (of course, the oldest) academic field.

... I enjoyed Walden though.

http://historyofphilosophy.net/

>>8378889
>the point of it
new perspectives about stuff, basically
you dont have to submit to any of them, unless you want to

>>8378896
I like the idea of that.

>>8378893
Might just go through this with a notebook to start out with.

watch ZIZEK talks

>>8378832
Do something random buddy, ya wanna be like all the pseudointellectuals on /lit/ all reading the same books and shit. Nah. The truth is /lit/ somehow has become a circlejerk suggesting the same books over and over again.

Here's an idea: read none of the books that /lit/ suggests. To make it easier you could not read the books you see, say, more than three times suggested.

When you read other stuff, you might think: hey this philosopher talked about [x] and it was interesting. You could always do that.

>>8378926
or his guide to ideology, is made for plebs

>>8378889
>I guess. My main issue is that I don't feel I understand the point of it?

read the books I recommended then

Philosophy is useless. Learn science. Science invented literally everything and discovered everything. Philosophers thought the Earth was flat and Earthosphere until science proved otherwise. Today, philosophers are actively harming humans by saying nothing is real and turning women away from science with their misogyny. You wouldn't be living right now if it were not for science. What would you do if someone saved your life? Dedicate yourself to them, right.

>>8378967
I sorta agree. But why not hedge your knowledge tho? Say 90 percent of stuff you read is science, the 10 percent ya read is philosophy.

>>8378832
You'll likely be more at home with the analytics, but if you intend on understanding philosophy as a whole you'll want to literally start with the Greeks. It's not a meme. It'll get you going. I'd suggest beginning by reading some of the Pre-Socratics, particularly Parmenides and Heraclitus. You can find their fragments along with the others (including Sophists) collected together. You'll want to go with the Oxford edition.

>>8378971
he's memeing you dip

>>8378832
>I'm a mathematician, so
Kripke.

>My limited understanding of existentialism made it seem so... Obvious? Which I know it isn't.
Yes it is that obvious.

>I know I'm missing out on something really great here.
Nope. Emotional intuition all the way down.

I would recommend listening to the first 50 or so episodes of "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" They'll give you a good primer, and show you why philosophy is roughly how it is today. Ideally you'd be reading the works at the same time, but as you're so new, don't worry too much about it.

>>8378995
I wouldn't.

Just read a history of philosophy.

>>8378981
he's too new for this, he needs something way more basic than just diving in with obscure texts with no context to see how they are relevant, he'll just get caught in the "it all seems like bullshit" trap he mentioned.

>>8378998
Is that a particular book you are recommending? or just a general tip? I recommended HOPWAG because it is pretty easy to just sit and listen to a podcast, instead of having to read a ton of stuff. As he's so new.

>>8378984
Who says I ain't meming too alright.

>>8379006
Magee's book covers all the main fellas and periods and can be read in a day or two (it's very accessible and great for laymen)


I'm not against HOPWAG, but sitting through a lecture of Plato's Epistemology in Theaetetus may throw off a newcomer. It's a great supplement to learning however.

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>>8379006

>>8378995
OP here, really enjoying them so far.
I think I was too quick to dismiss early thinkers on the basis that we know (or believe) most of their theories to be way off. But I was dismissing the importance of the way they reached those theories.

>>8379020
fair, I just don't like general histories because they tend to cause, as a side effect, devalueation of reading the text itself. Whereas I thought HOPWAG would instill excitement in actually reading the primary sources and recognizing their relevance to the greater project.

>>8379006
>"it all seems like bullshit" trap
>trap

>>8379031
Magee's book actually recommends the reading of Primary Sources.

In each section he lists the key works of the philosopher he's treating, and at the end of the work he has a decent reading list of primary sources.

>>8379040
That's good, but he can recommend it all he wants and dilettantes are still going to rely on mostly just second-hand knowledge. Still, I guess they were never going to read the primaries anyway, so it doesn't matter.

BTW OP, I did my undergrad in Math, and am now doing masters in phil, and your background in Math will serve you extremely well when (if) you ever get to the analytic thinkers (e.g. basic logic, set theory), as well as in reading Plato (e.g. geometry). You'll need a good theoretical understanding of these fields, and not just a functional one, though.

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>>8378967
just in case you arent memeing

>>8379122
Bill Nye is repenting though

"I was legitimately criticized for an offhand remark about philosophy, so I’ve been reading books about philosophy, trying to catch up. The process of science, you could make a reasonable claim, is actually natural philosophy."

>>8379122
>>8379124
There's nothing even that offensive about what he said, he simply stated he was skeptical.

>>8379131
He's said some other things

>>8379131
i never said it was offensive, is just pedestrian

>>8378832
Read Sofie's world. It's a kids book but it's literally the perfect start.

>>8378832
>made it seem so... Obvious?
And in this day and age it is.

>>8378832
I'd say Harry Potter is a good starting point

>logic
top meme

>>8379131
He, like every other atheist deadweight, is skeptical of everything but their own ideology.

>Plato's Theory of Forms go straight over my head.
> the more logic-based stuff makes sense to me

>He gets the lingua franca of formalising logico-ontological stuff but fails to apply it in reading Plato
>He doesn't translate Plato's oeuvre into Category Theory and First-Order Logic sentence by sentence to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term
>He probably couldn't even prove compactness theorem for Zeroth-Order Logic without hand-holding

I call bullshit on "the more logic-based stuff makes sense to me". Math majors are known to be godawful at Logic, perhaps even more so than computer scientists, linguists, and philosophers.

why do I never see someone suggesting school texts?

>>8379432
what do you mean?