To read this guy you have to read this guy

>Time changes everything
>Doomed

That's a philosophical question. Keep asking questions and keep reading and in twentyfive years you might know a bit of philosophy, a bit.

Just read what you want. "Start with the Greeks" is largely a meme

Irresponsible post, desu. user, how is OP supposed to apprehend the form of the good if he doesn't understand the concept of forms? And should OP just go on believing the world isn't made of triangles?

You people disgust me sometimes.

You posted the answer. Unfortunately, to get Socrates you first have to read the presocratics and very little of their work survives, so you should probably just give up.

Start at the start.

Go all chronological.

Start with the future and rewind all the way back to the beginnings of earth my man
I know thy can do it ;)

You do know that your pic is a not a real quote, right?

Just READ what seems interesting

if it seems to you like you are missing something then read an introduction by an expert
just don't waste time

Start by learning Akkadian.

GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKS
Specifically these. Yes, Iliad and Odyssey aren't philosophy, but a lot of Greek thought is couched in their mythology, or is a response to it.

Is the Iliad a hard read? English is not my native language

Start with Sargon of Akkad. Listen to all of his youtube videos first. He's the only philosopher left in the world

There is very likely a translation into your native language

>not starting with the actual Sargon of Akkad

It's garbage.

You don’t need to read anyone but Plato. If you aren’t satisfied by what he offers, you don’t understand it. You don’t have to read anyone before him to make sense of it.

Every time the same question. If for some reason you are hyped to read something (anything), just read the fucking thing! In the while you grind your way through the great books and, once you know better you reread the fucking thing!

>tfw you will never understand Plato because you can't read Socrates and the pre-socratics (beyond fragments)

Western Philosophy was doomed from the start

This. Repeat with a difference

Choose your end goal, then trace their major influences back to Plato. For Žižek: Marx

Godamn what a disastrous idea

Well, the Fagles translation is pretty easy, go for it.

A more poetic translation like Lattimore would be more difficult.

Pre-socratics -> Plato -> Aristotle -> Seneca -> Plotin -> Augustin -> Anselm -> Descartes -> Spinoza -> Locke -> Hobbes -> Berkeley -> Hume -> Kant -> Schelling -> Hegel -> Kierkegaard -> Nietzsche -> Wittgenstein -> Heidegger

That's literally it. Enjoy the next half of a century.

Oh yeah, throw in Marx after Hegel.

Start with "A History of Western Philosophy" by Russell

>"Start with the Greeks" is largely a meme

Enjoy building your knowledge on a shitty foundation. Whitehead is right.

Don't read this garbage. If you just want a pre-digested history of philosophy, go for one that at least tries to be intellectually honest with the positions he disagrees with and read Copleston instead.

There is literally no philosophy worth reading after Aquinas and the Scholastics

ASSYRIANS

Pre-Socratics -> Plato -> Aristotle -> Seneca -> Plotinus -> Augustine -> Anselm -> Aquinas -> William of Ockham -> Descartes -> Malebranche -> Spinoza -> Locke -> Berkeley -> Hume -> Kant -> Schelling -> Hegel -> John McTaggart -> G.E. Moore -> Bertrand Russell (epistemic work) -> Bertrand Russell (logical work) -> Gottlob Frege -> Early Wittgenstein -> Carnap -> W.V. Quine -> Late Wittgenstein -> Paul Grice -> Michael Dummett -> Donald Davidson -> Richard Rorty -> John McDowell -> Robert Brandom -> Jurgen Habermas -> Charles Taylor

>Lacan
>just freud
WEW
Lacan is a chimeric mixture of Kojeve, Heidegger, Hegel, Saussure, Bataille, Jaspers, Freud, and even Salvador Dali

Book list for pre-Socratic philosophers?

by starting with that guy

Oxford Presocratics and sophists

Most stuff we have by the early greek philosophers are fragments so it's better to get a book like this that's more an overview of everyone, it isn't like plato where you should be getting the complete works of one thinker

Greeks, Greeks! The Greeks!

Read what you fucking feel like. Don't fall for the meme. Just read a scholarly intro with whoever you decide on and you will be fine. The pseuds say start with the greeks but they never get past them (if they ever start) because they don't actually like what they are reading.

>philosopher
Sad

are you kidding me? plato is entirely free-standing, and aristotle only leans on plato. any time those two bring in some homeric concept or pre-socratic philosopher, they fully outline the person's argumemt or myth's relevance — e.g. aristotle responds to zeno of elea's motion paradoxes AFTER he outlines the original paradoxes.

maybe you'll miss some subtext in plato's symposium by not knowing who alcibiades is and how he was depicted in that play by aristophanes, but the general thrust of the philosophy is right there on the page.

JEWS

Are plato and aristotle fair to the presocratics and especially the sophists? There are also elements of the presocratic philosophers that they might not have deemed important, or misunderstood.
Sometimes it's not really stated which philosopher they're reacting to, even when there is a definite person they're reacting to.

On the other hand you're right. You don't really NEED to read the presocratics to understand what plato is saying. I think it's probably a richer experience if you have more background. It's pretty short to read anyway and is interesting in its own right.