How to start with the greeks

Pleb alert.

plato is a shit-meming little pseud faggot, the good greeks are aristotle, epicurus, and that guy who told alexander teh great to fuck off out of his sunlight, whathisface. It's possible socrates but he sucks when filtered through shitlord plato

kys

If you weren't a psued you'd know that the best pre-Socratic and the one that influenced Nietzsche the most was Heraclitus

Maybe you just don't know how to read seriously. Learn from Mr. Strauss if you need to.

Try Phaedrus, and being more patient.

How did Heraclitus influence Nietzsche?

>doesn't know diogenes' name out the top of the head
Fucking pseuds, I swear to god

Haha, Plato's dialogues and Republic are so fucking retarded. I mean Republic is full of self evident stuff and retarded leap of faiths and the dialogue bits are a complete laugh full of retarded way of mixing words and acting daff intentionally by Socrates

I gave them zero fucking worth. I felt trolled.

Its because you don't understand. Literally.

This.

The Republic is one of the greatest books ever written. You have to get some historical context to appreciate it though. Having an original copy isn't good enough, you need annotation and analysis.

>aristotle is better than plato

The ultimate pseud opinion

I once asked a similar question in a thread a couple years ago and I got this.

Good luck. SEP is also a good source which can be used.

Fuck me, forgot link.
docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/pub

start with the greeks, friend

They both believed everything is fire.

Not the Nietzsche reference (I'm a different user) but here's a Hegel one:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#Heraclitus

Start with the Chinks

This. Was the first classic I ever read and it was entertaining even without a contextual guide. And I don't even really like classics generally

You should have started with the Mesopotamians.

>another crossposter memeing diogenes
Fuck off.

On a side note how do you cite this stuff, like book 2 section 5?

Probably something like this

Plato, translator. (publishing date) title publisher book II section V

Stephanus pagination, those little a b c d e on the side of any good translation. For example, the allegory of the cave starts at Republic 514a

This.

get gud at starting with the greeks

FUCK PLATO
youtube.com/watch?v=gqKobRWnvZQ

start with pre-history

>he didn't start with the sumers
Haha you got memed good lad

OP, the hard truth is philosophy is not a subject for everyone.

I would suggest pressing yourself further in your studies and contemplation, to see if your interest ignites through further thought on the implications of Plato's teaching, but if it does not, don't fret.

A keen interest in the abstractions of human reality is not a gift which was given the majority of men.

>plato is a shit-meming little pseud faggot
Wtf I hate Plato now

The thing is, I do interest myself on it. The reason I got in this board was to get some guidance, because I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra as an experiment and found it really interesting, and wanted to gain a deeper understanding of philosophy in general. I recognize that it wasn't the smartest of moves to just get headfirst into such an advanced piece as a begginer, but I had very little idea of what I was dealing with.

The issue with reading these early philosophical works is that they don't seem exceedingly interesting. They deal with realities that are very different from our own, and their interpretation of human nature and the natural world in general seems so silly when compared to the discussions we have today. I umderstand their historical values and their importance, but I just feel it's very hard to get into their rationality and follow it through, and they don't really make me surprised in their breakthroughs.

Although I think many of my issues may have to do with the fact that I read philosophy like literature, not like an actual study.

>they deal with realities very different from our own

No, they do not. This is why Nietzsche began his assault on philosophy by addressing the Greeks.

This is why Oxford is publishing works in neuroscience which are still dealing with the arguments which took place in Plato's Phaedo - between Socrates, Critias, and Simmias (global.oup.com/academic/product/how-the-mind-comes-into-being-9780198739692?prevSortField=1&sortField=8&start=0&resultsPerPage=20&type=listing&prevNumResPerPage=20&lang=en&cc=ca#)

As others have said before me, because it is true, all the questions man has, and is, wrestling with were either asked by Plato, or suggested through the negative of his inquiries.

Can man ever really move beyond contemplation and discussion of things like the nature of Good, Beauty, Afterlife, Ethics, and so on?

Not in our lifetimes. Not thinking men.

Should one merely take the word of past philosophers without passing their arguments through the critical eye of your own mind?

Of course not.

If you would, then, critique their arguments, you must give them thorough examination, and remove, as much as possible, the biases of teachers, but trust in your own ability to make judgements - as there is no other means by which to come to belief in anything at all.

We do live in a different world, but philosophy is ultimately mankind attempting to get outside the subjective realm of humanity and into that Platonic realm of Pure Objectivity.

>I think many of my issues may have to do with the fact that I read philosophy like literature, not like an actual study

Philosophy is the pursuit of truth - of absolute knowledge.

It is precisely what Plato describes in his Republic, and implies in other works.

It is the striving for Absolute Objectivity on any given subject - which is the basis for modern scientific method, and for all philosophical thought.

Of course, man cannot reach the purely objective level - even in science. We are always confined to the subjective level of our perception - limited to the capacity of our brains, and the bodily tools we use to draw our conclusions.

Still, it is the effort to get outside of this limitation which drives scientists and philosophers to search for objective truth. It is a quest which began with the Greeks and those who begat them, and we continue to war with many of the same conundrums.

You must study philosophy like a study, for it is one. All philosophy is a war against ignorance, and war is not something one participates in casually. It necessitates the absolute use of one's faculties in their entirety - for only by this method can you maximize the probability of reaching your goal in victory.

Likewise, I would suggest reading literature as analytically as you would study philosophy, lest out of laziness of thought you end up with poor tastes and weak comprehension.

>Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche is a classical philologist for whom the Greeks are his job description.

He cannot shut up about how awesome Aeschylus and Sophocles are. He got his motto "Become what you are" from Pindar. On the Presocratic front, he sided against Parmenides who talked shit about Heraclitus.

The answers he was looking for to respond to nihilism, Socratic rationalism, Christian philosophy, his contemporary Wagner, etc. he found in those silly Greeks.

Read Strauss's lectures on Plato's Gorgias and Republic.

leostrausstranscripts.uchicago.edu/

He'll take you step by step (but leaving a lot of nuances up to you to investigate), showing you the basic gist of arguments, what the source of their reasonability is, and whether the ideas are relatable today.