Why is it we Start with the Greeks? I feel for those of us in

>>9463769
shutup man, the meme goes

start with the greeks
resume with the romans
meme trilogy
[spoilers]my diary[spoilers]

now you have learnt your lesson delete this thread and go read some greeks

>>9463769
The NT was written in Greek, Shakespeare alludes to the Greeks and miltons paradife loft owes more to homer than the bible.
The Greeks are the foundation of almost all western art.
You can start where you want but lots will go over your head if you don't have a basic understanding of the major Greek myths and philosophy.

>>9463769
all roads lead to Greece. It's true anon, I used to laugh at the Greek meme but it is too damn true. But you're also right about the Bible. Not having read the Bible is a criminal offense if you're a wannabe scholar/intellect/blahblahblah

Its a meme phrase but its 100% true for anyone who wants to read and understand philosophy and literature.

>>9463769
because the KJV quotes the greeks, as does shakespeare, and milton, and what you mean to ask is why you don't start with beowulf and move forward towards chaucer, and the answer is because you're too shit to even start with the greeks.

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Starting with the Greeks is passé

Start with the Han

>>9463769
Is there a mingle with the medievals chart or do we skip straight to eloping with the enlightenment

>>9463772
>meme trilogy
???

START WITH THE SUMERIANS
and
BEGIN WITH THE BABYLONIANS

If you haven't read Epic of Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish, you aren't qualified to talk about literature

Because those books are predicated on the Greeks you mong. Yes, even large portions of the New Testament is predicated on the Septuagint and filtered through the lense of Hellenistic culture.

By the way the KJV is absolute dogshit

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>>9463820

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>>9463833
We need one for religions

>>9463769
>Why aren't we starting with the KJV

Why are protestants so retarded?

>>9463855

Dianetics isn't a religious book. It's a scientific thesis on the mind and it's really interesting. It's an alternative to psychiatry that actually works.

>>9463811
you do realise that none of those books were penned under the Han?

>>9463945
oh the troll.

Start with the Neanderthals.

>KJV
The Logos, Barnabas and Paul getting called Zeus and Hermes, theoxeny in Mt 25:35-40 and elsewhere in the NT
>Shakespeare
"Duke of Athens"
>Milton
More Greek gods

The trick is in repeating Start with the Greeks so many times people like you would miss out on them solely out of spite.

>>9463818
>skipping Dante, Hobbes and Machiavelli
There is no need for a chart after the Romans because Bloom did all the dirty work in his Western Canon for literature, and this guy:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/mobilebasic?pli=1
for philosophy.

>>9463950

I'm not trolling. Try actually reading it and see for yourself. There's a very good reason its became so popular in the 50's and stayed popular. Self auditing is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9SyNpirdo

>>9463769

>/lit/ recommends starting your reading career by reading the works of a bunch of south European shitskins


Fuck that, give me Aryan works for superior Aryan minds.

>>9463945
>eat enough speed you think you're a clam
>an alternative to psychiatry that actually works.
it's interesting scientology has the same definition of "actually works" as psychiatry when usually they're keen to avoid that sort of thing.

>>9463935
this. they act like Jesus wrote it himself.

>inb4 muh unicorns

>>9463969

I don't care what Scientologists have to say because I'm not a Scientologist. I'm just a fan of Dianetics because helped me out in big ways.

>>9463974
Dianetics literally is about eating enough speed to regress to becoming a clam. L Ron really should have credited his son better on that one.

>>9463985
The clam pill is the only way to fool the mighty lord Xenu.

>>9463945
>scientific thesis
Ok, which journal did it get published in?

ITT suppressive people. The sea-org will arrive shortly. You done goofed. Make your time.

>>9463993

Who claimed it did? I wonder if you're under the assumption that something must be published in specific sorts of journals in order for it to be scientific.

>>9463820
Really?

>>9463855
>meme religion

redundant.

i'm with the greeks now but where do i go philosophically after aristotle? i've been advised to jump to descartes but that seems like too massive a leap.

>>9464012

to the Romans

>>9463988
>anon won't even read a book if it's written by a crazy tyrant about drugs
L Ron wrote better penny a word schlock than Dickens did most of the time. It's genreshit, but above your shitposting level to even read it. All the books you could have posted pretending to have read them, and you chose something below a Vonnegut novel to lie about. Is this what ugly girls do now that mediocre girls have taken over Vonnegut? Scientologypost? How disfigured are you?

>>9463769
>Why aren't we starting with the KJV,
Because the Old Testament is not the foundation of European culture, and because the New Testament was mostly restricted to well-educated priests and monks for hundreds of years, leaving only excerpts and tidbits for the populace.

The whole ideology of "the bible is the foundation of western culture" is Protestant, and it's not about restoration or reconstruction.

It's a new project of construction and change that was introduced during the Reformation, and is basically revolutionary in character.

The idea of wiping the slate clean of Christian-influenced Roman and Germanic folklore is revolutionary, utopian, almost Jacobinical.

In fact, it was the first form of blank slatism or socialist thought. The idea that we can and should destroy all traditions and replace them with a rationally constructed "natural" society.

The difference is that the Protestant revolution is based on pig-headed fundamentalism, and the Jacobin revoluton is based on pig-headed rationalism.

>>9464014
any specifics?

>>9463769

'these books make up a greater portion of common parlance than the Greeks ever will'

This is not true.
First of all, the Shakespear meme is only alive in the UK and the US. He's not that read outside of english speaking countries (Milton is almost unknown)
Second: it's full of Classics influences in these authors.
Third: they were possibly better at philosophy than almost anyone after them, with the exception of German philosophers.

The modern worldview, scientific

I don't even feel like finishing this post
fuck you

>>9463998
Of course, you're right, a self-help book written by a sci-fi author is rigorous scientific work. Fuck peer review.

>>9464027
Epicureans and Stoics

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>>9463855
there already is one

>>9464030
>>9464022

Perhaps we should figure out what constitutes a good starting point. Is it more important to familiarize yourself with "the common parlance" (this may be difference depending on location), or to start from the beginning of the Western Canon and move up? The former seems more appealing while the latter seems like a chore

>>9464035

Yeah Hubbard wrote science fiction. So what? Isaac Newton used to eat mercury. Neither of these two facts make their scientific work less valid. Dianetics has been peer reviewed by millions of every day people. Why don't you personally try to test it and invalidate it? I think you're afraid it might work. That's your reactive mind holding you back.

>>9463948
I meant Han as in Han Chinese people not the literal Han Dynasty

>>9464022
The reformation was the precedent for socialist thought? Holy shit, what do i read to learn about it?

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Fuck this board, why is everyone faggots now.

>>9464044
The other two aren't memes, but City of God is long, hard and obscure enough to have potential.

>>9464159
It's quite literally the opposite. The reformation placed the idea of an individual relationship with God before the church, thus renouncing the power of the church and all modes of collectivist thought.

I have no idea how he came to the conclusion that the reformation facilitated socialism

>>9464263
the reformation was the first and ultimate 'break with tradition'. it was the starting point for all subsequent progressive politics.

not-so-incidentally, the reformation and the french revolution were both spurred on by pamphleteering

>>9464306
What about the periods between the greeks and romans, and the romans and catholics? Weren't those "breaks" too, or did they just copy from the previous one?

>>9464681
they didnt purposefully do away with the major tenets of their civilization--their civilizations were conquered/collapsed. the reformation was an intentional break during a period of [relative] stability, same with the French revolution.

Greece Hellenized Rome much more than Rome Romanized Greece; paganism was common practice in Rome more or less until the end. Christianity only really took hold in the 4th century which was also when the empire lost all of its power. Christianity in Rome largely (and organically) adapted to the existing religious infrastructure, unlike the totally artificial cult of the supreme being .

>>9463769
>Why aren't we starting with the KJV, the common book of prayer, Shakespeare, Milton, etc?

because its all influenced by aristotle and plato and the neoplatonists

>>9464753
I dont understand what this "totally artificial cult of the supreme being" is.

>>9464159
It's difficult to express because it's such a broad perspective.

But basically:

Christianity triumphs. As a mystery religion, there is a state of absolute separation between those who know the mystery and those who do not, unlike in paganism. An absolute break with the past is made.

Renaissance -> Rescuing classical texts -> Latin linguistic purism (Roman pagan orators placed above Medieval latinists in stylistic value)

Atmosphere of recovery of the past, rediscovery of the truth.

Ex-Rome is discovering a glorious past. Austria, which remains Catholic, cashes in with the Privilegium Maius et al. which gives them a fake connection to the Roman Empire. Other German lands feel left out. Biblical scholarship gives them something to do with their nervous tension. Ex-Rome is rich, dominates the Church hierarchy, and has lots of olive oil for Lent and locally grown communion wine. German lands are mostly poor, lack olive oil and wine (except Austria), and are left out of the Church hierarchy. Resentment brews.

Reformation -> Classical scholarship applied to Biblical texts -> Protestant religious purism (Old Testament placed about Medieval tradition in religious value)

This amounts to a second absolute break with the past in European history. All traditions are thrown out the window - but not immediately. Local saints are celebrated - but guiltily, with the suspicion that they will be discovered to be a golden calf. A shadow is cast on all folklore and custom. Well educated rationalists have the power to pull rabbits from a hat, and discover new imperatives from a book that the populace must submit to due to their natural validity and natural purity. The essential dynamic of naturalist tyranny begins, but in a scriptural-scholarly form.

Blurring of the lines between religious purism and classical purism. Republican Rome, Cincinnatus et al admired with religious fervor.
Non-hierarchical subsistence farming described in the Old Testament blurs with the legends of Cincinnatus and the rustic moralism of Cato the Elder.

Commonwealth of England -> First blank slate Jacobinical state, based on destruction of the past and reconstruction based on intellectual principles.
The benign hypocrisy of medieval monarchy vanishes, and the bourgeois era of self-flagellating concerned citizens begins.

Republican Rome and pre-monarchic Israel merge into the concept of the state of nature. Hobbes, Rousseau.
Most educated people read Ovid, who describes the first men as naked and fructivorous. Book of Genesis widely read.
Man in a state of nature is considered and imagined by many. Basing society on a master plan of rules and rationalism becomes a common idea, based on the continued efforts to imitate Republican Rome and the first societies of the Old Testament.

>>9464263
The Catholic church and medieval society were extremely hierarchical. That's the opposite of collectivism.

If you want collectivism, attend a Baptist orgy.

>>9464774
>A shadow is cast on all folklore and custom. Well educated rationalists have the power to pull rabbits from a hat, and discover new imperatives from a book that the populace must submit to due to their natural validity and natural purity. The essential dynamic of naturalist tyranny begins, but in a scriptural-scholarly form.

So the scientist becomes the tyrant because he makes himself absolute via naturalism.

>The benign hypocrisy of medieval monarchy vanishes, and the bourgeois era of self-flagellating concerned citizens begins.

I associate Orwell and Wilde with that.

>Basing society on a master plan of rules and rationalism becomes a common idea, based on the continued efforts to imitate Republican Rome and the first societies of the Old Testament.

So, laws become absolute and are supposed to be rational and self-evident.

Am i getting any of it right? I've only just begun with the Greeks and I'm, in general, very ignorant about history, philosophy, religion etc. So, thanks for this and i'd ask you for any reading material, but as you said this was very broad and the reading would probably be extensive.

>>9464913
I want to say "well, basically," but then I would write another essay.
It's a shift from tradition to the conscious reconstruction of society, and Protestants ere the first to really turn their societies upside down based on scholarship and theory. That leads to types like Robespierre and Mao.

Recommended reading. This is difficult to keep short, but if anything, it's better to focus on a few good books out of the millions of terrible ones.

These are all "secondary" in that they are responses to culture and not primary building blocks of it, but you can get a sense of what to prioritise by observing what these authors prioritise.

The Birth of Tragedy. (Rationalism versus tradition.)
Genealogy of Morals. (The group psychology behind culture.)
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. (This sounds unbearably dull, but it's not. It deals with how literature survives and is understood and used.)
ABC of Reading. (Pound is an incredible critic. All of his critical works are worth reading. If you're new to literature, his poetry will be indigestible, so avoid it for now.)
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. (Durkheim explains the origin religion in a way Nietzsche never quite manages.)
Totem and Taboo. (Freud is terrifying but a genius. To a certain extent it overlaps with Elementary Forms.)

>>9464974
So, from having a society that just came to be organically, Protestants thought they could make it better, artificially, from the ground up?

I'm at chapter 4 of the Iliad. Time to start with Nietzsche.

>>9463820

MODS

>>9464765
google 'cult of the supreme being'

>>9463831
Which version of the Bible is best?

>>9463958
>marxist
Not even once.

>>9465069
Grow up
Am natsoc and I don't say cancerous shit like this
Read a god damned book, get your head out of your ass

>>9463820
Shut up and lurk for 3 more months.

>>9463820
hello newfriend, welcome to the board

>>9464186
Isn't City of God only like 500 pages?

>>9465927
depends on the publisher obviously but my copy is like 1100 pages

>>9464027
1. Stop reading philosophy ONLY chronologically. You'll either give up or kill yourself
2. Go to Descartes and the other rarionalists afterward.

The Greeks are the foundation for every aspect of western cultural, let alone literary tradition. It's ridiculous to start anywhere else, honestly

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>>9464051
My fucking sides!

>>9467074

What are you laughing at?

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>>9465050
Depends on what you want to you want I guess

>>9468677
>what you want I guess
Didnt reread before posting :/

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>>9465050
probably pic related