So is this where I start for philosophy?

NO. Start with the trial of Socrates.

Nnnnnnyyyeeeuuooooooo.

Start wherever the fuck you want, retard, philosophy is not a precise science with a necessary body of fundamental knowledge.
Most of Plato is supremely boring.

>>9160801
it's a good start. Book I will play the role of an introduction.

Don't read philosophy. BE a philosopher.

>>9160801
It's also where you end.

>>9160801

maybe warm up with the hackett edition of five dialogues by plato.

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>book called Republic
>it's about building a totalitarian state

>>9160801
>>9160825
Both of these are aggravating to read. I feel like most of Plato's writings are half re-written history and half fan-fic, as if Socrates actually said "Fuck this" when he was told to drink the hemlock and Plato couldn't cope with his idol's supposed "hypocrisy."

Although that's as likely to have happened as the things Plato actually wrote

>>9160895
Plato wasn't even present at the trial.
He always obviously used Socrates as a purely literary character, it's possible that 100% of all dialogues is pure fiction

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>>9160919
That actually makes a lot of sense, because...

Well, I mean, what if Socrates was so compelling a character because it was *ironic* to the Greeks that he would be discoursing on philosophy...

Maybe it was ironic and funny because...

Well, I mean, look at him.

Socrates had Down's Syndrome.

Plato was probably paying tribute to this colorful local character in the form of an ideal version of him in which he was not a retard but a brilliant philosopher, but the ideas that came out of his mouth were all Plato's.

It makes total sense now.

>>9160919
He wasn't "present," in the sense that he didn't write himself into it? That gives his work a little more "objective" authority, don't you think?

It's true that they could be purely fictional, and it's certainly better to read them that way (i.e. for the texts themselves rather than to tease the historical significance out of them), I just think its funny to imagine Plato as a rampant buttranged autist who couldn't handle his teacher acting against precepts

>>9160939
I sort of realized he was a fictional character after my first reading of any Plato. So many foils meant to be weak as dandelion in their philosophical arguments.

>>9160939
DELETE THIS

>>9160889
>republics can't be totalitarian