Why do we start with the Greeks?

what's that?

Start with Thales, stop with Democritus.

because Veeky Forums is 100% pleb

if you dont start with the epic of gilgamesh might aswell kill yourself

Even if you read stuff like the Canterbury Tales or Paradise lost to even more modern stuff there are always references to greek stories and people

>because Veeky Forums is 100% pleb
At least some people here are studying the humanities at Harvard and Oxford so not everybody is.

There's something called a canon.

People abide by it.

Because Renaissance thoght had to distance itself from Medieval thought and so identified with Classic thought, and we haven't left that paradigm and are still reading the same old fucks, or the commentary on them, or commentary on the commentary on them, or you get the idea, all under the delusion that if we keep doing the same thing over and over we're going to get somewhere™.

Alternatively: the empire never ended.

That's a long breadboard

>Are you saying someone who hasn't read the Iliad can't fully understand and appreciate Kafka or Orwell?
They could understand and appreciate Kafka and Orwell but they'd never fully appreciate Alexander Pope for example. Besides, Kafka and Orwell are pretty low-brow, desu.

Thucydides.

exactly my thoughts when people say greek literature is the beginning of western canon.

Conceptually a great book but honestly just as annoying to read as most Greek work.

Because every book directly or indirectly borrows from the geeks. If you read the classics, this is very obvious. You want to understand what are they referring to when they talk about the illiad or the odyssey

So you mean read the epic of gilgamesh and then continue with the greeks? That's basically starting with the greeks.

You don't actually need to know that kind of stuff.

Cause Atlantis got sunk and the library of Alexandria was burned down.

> Alexander Pope
Good taste user

This.
Gilgamesh (and sumerians/babylonians) is more connected to the bible though?

Why do you think the Hebrew Bible has 24 books? It mirrors the Iliad. Of course the epic of gilgamesh is more connected to the bible, but to fully appreciate the bible, you have to start with the Greeks. All those works are connected. Start with the Greeks (or Gilgamesh if you really want to, but in my experience you don't need to have read it beforehand and appreciate it a lot more after having read the Greeks).

I have risen above your petty rules and constructions, for I have not started with the greeks, but I have fuelled my hunger for knowledge by picking the tastiest treats in the order that I have chosen.
I, who have made myself an unique one, who has seen the fertile lands of science and reason, have come here to this place of cruel rejection but also of elder communal wisdom to seek answers in the subjects that are of heavenly matters.
And here, as I tower over you, my fellow greekposter, I am reminded that like a prophet, as one a writer is nothing but vanity, but in large numbers even shitposters can produce truthful knowledge.
For this reason and this reason solely I call upon you: answer my call en masse or singlehandedly, but know that the latter part does little to advance my cause in the living life.

You don't 'need' to read at all. But if you're going to live, you should probably do some reading. And if you're going to read, there are certain things you should probably read.

They started western civilization. Simple as that.

Because I want to understand what Hegel is talking about.

>But what is the true relevance? Are you saying someone who hasn't read the Iliad can't fully understand and appreciate Kafka or Orwell?

Conversely can someone who has read the Iliad understand and appreciate Orwell or Kafka?

>he thinks a brand name prevents someone from being a pleb

Those people are probably the ones that say you must start with the greeks.

if you need to ask this you aren't going to make it.

Western culture is based off the works of the Greeks and Romans so it only makes sense to start with them. Also, there is a larger density Greek texts than texts from basically any other culture from that time period. The Chinese are probably the only other culture that produced anything significant at that time but we here in the West like to pretend that the East doesn't exist.

This. Even the romans copied the greeks.

>but we here in the West like to pretend that the East doesn't exist.
Can't blame people for paying less attention to what happened geographically and culturally distant from them. They're pushing it just by caring about things that happened far away in time. Let the chinese study chinese history.

Explain the pic! Can't see anything right. It looks like the HDMI cable is split in the breadboard and gives signal to the Display and to something else. Those, I assume, shift registers will drive the 7 segment numbers from below, but how? And wouldn't it be easier to do this through the GPIO?

Because, up until the 20th century (WW2 at the latest), there was a continuous intellectual tradition as taught through the Classics (a now defunct/dead field of study, in and by itself) where students could appreciate the Western intellectual tradition. It began with the Greeks, then the Romans, then the medieval/renaissance era, and then modernity from around the 17th century onward.

In Cicero's Selected Works (Michael Grant), for example, he makes a compelling case in the introduction for what I've just said. Cicero for example, right up until the 20th century, was a favourite philosopher of Erasmus, Luther, Queen Elizabeth I, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Frederick the Great and Samuel Johnson (to name a few). The Greeks/Romans/etc found there way into all political/philosophical life.

We once had an intellectual TRADITION (and still do, if you seek it out yourself) - and the Greeks are at the start of it.

Aristotle literally invented thinking