Can I dive right in to Babby's First Edgy philosopher or am I expected to be familiar with the Greek faggots first?

the iliad would help you understand honor/strength-based morality also

Which of Plato's works will give me a solid foundation for his most prominent arguments and ideas?

I actually read much of the bible back when I identified as a Christian. Would you say that general knowledge is enough?

yes, that's fine
apology, phaedo, symposium, republic, timaeus

>old god

Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

Guess you should read the Bible again, or maybe I don't know, get a degree in Theology before you start acting like you have the slightest clue about anything in the Bible.

just using the opportunity to expose 90% of this board

"Old" is in quotation marks for a reason, theology-pro.

>webcomics
Wew Lad

>Halfway through Thus Spoke Zarathustra
>Running out of steam, not sure what he's talking about sometimes and don't understand significance of some conclusions but enjoy specific parts of what I've read
Should I take a step back and read Plato?
I think I have comprehension on most of what he's saying, the writing itself isn't difficult, like I know from what part of the book comes and understood what he said at the time. I just wonder if I should gain more perspective before continuing

fuck off christfag
the god of the new testament may have changed his mind about being a vengeful prick and not being one may be the fulfillment of the old, but his personality (or presentation thereof) has changed

God doesn't change.

Go ahead and explain your reason.

if it's your first nietzsche and you want to actually understand try reading other nietzsche first, like bg&e, gom. i read zarathustra next to last and i think that was the way to go
but before that i would try and read some plato

Because God doesn't change but his presentation does, which leads many people to use the misnomers "old testament God" and "old God." Using that term to refer to such misconceptions is more clear if you put it in quotes.

dear friend, this isn't the time to proselytize
we're trying to help our friend understand what nietzsche was on about, not the nature of god
if you don't share that goal, then you may be better off starting a theology thread

I already have The Gay Science. Is that good to start with?

Nietzsche plagiarized Max Stirner

Obvious bait is obvious

yes, that's fine

>obvious bait is obvious
>I'm actively engaging with the responses
Whoakay

So based on this thread thus far I've created the following reading order:

Plato - Republic
Plato – Apology
Plato – Phaedo
Plato – Symposium
Plato – Timaeus
Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche – On the Genealogy of Morality
and then onward

This look good?

I wouldn't try to find too much insight from Nietzsche. He has a few good quotes but his ideas on the roll of suffering are largely disbelieved and even disproven

>disproven

Wew

You really value Nietzsche over "those Greek fags"?

Aristotle, georgias, homer

republic after apology and phaedo
rest fine

I suppose I don't really know yet. But I'm very interested in philosophy, and good ol' Neechuh seems like a good starting point.

I jumped the gun, I apologize. I'm working on not doing that.

Just read Kant.

It will save you a lot of time.

Well, he is not.

The fruits of the spirit. Love so great it can't be hidden. Veeky Forums Christposters exhibit none of these.

He really is mostly a waste of time.

>implying Nietzsche denies a path to teleology

Why do people who haven't read his work feel the need to make comments about him?

>implying

Why do you say that? There are those who read exclusively Nietzsche.

He's only worth reading to know what a bad philosopher is. His metaphors are way too obvious and his logic is questionable at times. The world's ultimate angsty teen.

I don't get it isn't the first point the doctor make one of the Nietzschean core beliefs?

His ideas on the importance of suffering specifically

No, those people do not exist.

But masochism

Writer you mean then?

Well yes but his logic problems where the main headline

>A genius is the one most like himself.

To be fair he has some sick quotes

Stolen from Max Stirner.
> Nothing is more to me than myself

It wasn't actually a Nietzsche quote. kek

Fucking jazz musicians

What interests you about philosophy? Some particular topic or approach? Knowing a bit more about your interests (and background, if there's something you think is relevant), could help a lot to determine whether Nietzsche would be a good starting point. (My guess is that he isn't, but I'd have trouble recommending other starting points without knowing more. I guess for theoretical philosophy very generally, it's hard to go wrong with Descartes's Meditations and Objections and Replies and then Hume's first Enquiry, then maybe Kant's Prolegomena. Or if you're more interested in how we should live kind of questions, maybe Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", Thomson's "Defense of Abortion", Mill's Utilitarianism and Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals would be good.

For pretty much anything, the plato.stanford.edu is a good resource. Read relevant articles and maybe follow up with some of the bibliography.

yikes ths post

Not ironic, not funny.

see

My answer to this may come off as sloppy and uneducated, so bear with me.

Essentially, philosophy interests me because it draws into question everything that people take for granted about morals, justice, free will, and their place in the universe. I want to be able to dive into, challenge, and in some cases reinforce my current belief system with valuable arguments. Nietzsche appeals to me in the same way he appeals to a lot of young people.

His writings were part of the modernist movement, which seems like a much preferable period to read work from than, say, a time when theological beliefs were taken as absolute truths by many artists and intellectuals. Additionally, some of his most popular ideas such as "God is dead" (I'm aware this doesn't mean what most people think it means) and the "Übermensch" are very appealing to me, and I would like to know more about what he has to say.

I don't know what you're trying to argue. The whole reason I phrased it like that in the OP is that there is a stereotype of people who have familiarized themselves with exclusively his work and live their lives accordingly. See the movie Little Miss Sunshine for a caricature of such a person. See for another such caricature.

>demonized by Jews

Not really. In fact Theodore Herzl, father of Zionism, was a huge Nietzsche fanboy. He got caught up with the Nazis, true, but this wasn't really until the 1930s.

Were you the guy who made a thread about jumping into Zarathustra? I fucking told you so. Almost everyone I know who jumps in blind feels this way after the second part. My litmus test for whether you understood him or not, ask yourself which was the most important parable of section 2. If it is not the Tarantulas, you probably missed something in comprehension. Tarantulas is a distillation of the core of the purpose of his project.

Stirner and Nietzsche only have surface level similarities. Stirner was focused on merely identifying that everything is a social construction, aka spook meme and advocating that people liberate themselves from these spooks and be haunted no more. Nietzsche says that actually, spooks and real things, lies and truth, both have their place and the mere fact that something is a social construction is not enough for us to disregard it (unless we are powerful enough to become a value-creating ubermensch).

Granted I haven't read the ego and its own in its entirety, but this is generally the consensus. Stirner is a narrow thinker while Nietzsche is very broad. Nietzsche was also meticulous about citing his influences, doing so by pointing out how they were wrong in order to free his spirit from their influence.

These are some cool opinions and all, but it doesn't change that there are many more and less qualified members of the philosophy community that value Nietzsche very highly. You can't just tell somebody he's outright worthless or without insight.

It might also be worth considering that I am an atheist and from what I have read a subjectivist as well. Nietzsche seems to work around theology instead of using it to reinforce his arguments and he's definitely a subjectivist. He seems to deal with life after one has already come to the conclusion that there are no objective truths, and that's what fascinates me.

panel 1: that's Nietzsche's problem with morality, it's ambiguity. Whose morality? Who is enhanced by adopting such morality?

Panel 2: not sure where Nietzsche disagreed with that

Panel 3: there are truths... but only in the form of perspectives. Free will is a Judeo-Christian construct which has plagued philosophical thinking since.

Panel 4: Nietzsche argues that greatness, and the act of being a creator, necessarily requires pain and suffering. We must be put under great pressure just as carbon may be hardened into diamond in Earth's core. It's not that some are born innately weak, as the comic implies, but that through suffering is how life may achieve extraordinary accomplishments.

Entire comic: god is dead meme, ubermensch meme, ad hominem.

>opaque metaphors and unquestionable logic make for good philosophy

That seems like a perfectly good reason to be interested in philosophy.

I'm a little pressed for time, and I'd like to come back and make more and more detailed recommendations later, but I wanted to say a few quick things. First, I understand the desire to begin by reading those who don't start with God's existence and then go from there (though I also think there's a lot to learn from various theists throughout history, too). Nietzsche is definitely one of those, but there are also a lot of others, including many ancients, some early modern philosophers, and most 20th and 21st century philosophers. One thing worth noting about this is that, though there certainly are plenty of moral skeptics and anti-realists around, most philosophers don't think that the non-existence of God has much to do with whether or not there are any objective moral truths. See, e.g.,
youtube.com/watch?v=SiJnCQuPiuo
for a representative example.

Second, if you want to read someone who gives interesting arguments to challenge your and others' deepest beliefs, I recommend Hume, Hume, Hume! Deeply troubling critiques of belief in real causation, of the rationality of induction, of reason itself, of inferring moral facts from natural ones, of free will, and, though this is less troubling to us now, of arguments for God's existence. Depending on what you're most interested in, probably the best thing to start with is his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, then move to parts of the Treatise and to his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Finally, it's worth distinguishing between non-objectivist views about morality, perhaps a minority view, but not one that's viewed by most philosophers as, non-objectivist views about normativity more generally (which implies, e.g., no objective prudential reasons--no reason from your own interest to do one thing or another--and no objective epistemic reasons--no reason to believe one thing over another, or to not believe contradictions, etc.) and non-objectivist views about all truth whatsoever. Most philosophers think these latter kind of views are non-starters, more or less for the reason Plato gave against Protagoras's view in the Thaeatetus: they seem self-defeating.

Thanks for the Hume, this man seems extremely highly regarded and I've actually never even heard of him. I've added those to my list.

And are you saying that it's important to distinguish between non-objectivist views on morality, non-objectivist views on normativity, and non-objectivist views about truth whatsoever? I would consider myself a subscriber of the first of those categories and unsure about the other two. Where would you say Plato, Hume, and NIetzsche would fall on the spectrum?

You have to remember that Christian thought is extremely influenced by Platonic thought.

Yes, there is certainty a lot of light between them but ego of his own is where the most similarities lie. I'm not saying Nietzsche is COMPLETELY unoriginal but there are bits of his work believed to be stolen.

Genealogy of morals is a good place to start.

>Were you the guy who made a thread about jumping into Zarathustra?
No. I found out about the book after someone mentioned it on Veeky Forums. I don't remember any of the parables really but skimming it now I remember Tarantulas to a degree, especially the part about how life is trying to rise ontop of pillars and the people who lie in the name of morals and conformity hold back those who want to rise. I liked the piece even though I didn't get some of the metaphors. Do I get a gold star?

>I found out about the book after someone mentioned it on Veeky Forums.
Wew lad, there's your first problem.

I knew you were going to say that