Start with greeks

Homer is worthless. Socrates is a pseudonym of Plato

...just start with Descartes and go from there, no one will notice you know nothing about Aristotle and Medieval philosophy, nobody cares.

>Homer is worthless
Not from a cultural perspective, which is why people read him.

yet another start with the greeks meme
one doesn't have to start with the greeks but return to them to start

start with pre-socratics, heraclitus, zeno, anaximander, protagoras, pythagoras and co

>There are maybe 10 pages of extant pre-Socratic fragments.
>MAYBE
>10 PAGES
>FRAGMENTS (Who is Diogenes Laërtius?)
Every work made by Plato or by Aristotle is done with the sheer goal of refuting a pre-Socratic. If you think you're helping the slacker you aren't. Besides, your lack of certainty shows how much you really "know".

I agree with you about reading a history book on ancient Greece and Homer. But is it really important to read all the latter ones?
Theogony, History of Peloponnesian War, the tragedies, to go into Plato?
I think if you want to grasp a great amount of knowledge about the Greeks, it is valid. But I don't know if you just want to get Plato and Aristotle.

Just my personal opinion, but anytime Aristotle differs from Plato he seems to misunderstand him.

Nevertheless:
>Metaphysics seems to contradict itself at every point
Metaphysics are really hard to understand, you just have to invest a lot of time into them. But they are really good and interesting.

>Shut the fuck up, pseud. There are maybe 10 pages of extant pre-Socratic fragments.
I agree. Presocratics are nice, but I doubt they're mandatory to understand Plato.
You might argue about the Pythagorean influence on Plato, and you might be right - nevertheless, everthing which found it's way from Pythagoras to Plato doesn't seem to be really important nowadays - just a bunch of wild, metaphysical speculations; the quality of Plato lies elsewhere.

Exactly. Virtue ethics isn't really a big thing AT ALL nowadays, right?

Fuck, this board is getting shittier by the day with all these half-assed morons

The most pleb opinion of all time. You just ooze pure fucking retardation.

Read slowly. Aristotle is dense and combats abstractions with even more challenging abstractions. Give it the attention it deserves and consult the Pre Socratics as well

There's a prerequisite amount of cultural and historical knowledge one needs to have if one wants to comfortably read Plato. How are you supposed to understand Socrates' choice unless you fully understand how important the polis was to the average Greek? A real scholar would read much more than that, but a good base of about 10 Greek works are necessary if you want to immerse yourself enough in the culture to better understand the prevailing thoughts and attitudes of the time.

>How will you be able to understand any of those two without reading the Pre-socratics is beyond me
do your philosophy books don't have back notes? mine had pages explaining sophist philosophy that was being refuted in this or this instance
I mean, I only really needed the Iliad and Odyssey, and EVEN THAT was noted.

so you just read Iliad and Odyssey before starting with Plato?

I've read the pre-Socratics as well as Plato and Aristotle. Much of what remains of the pre-Socratics does not help with understanding what Aristotle constantly references. In fact, if you compiled a book of extant pre-Socratic works, most of it will be doxographic references of Aristotle himself.

Gonna hijack this thread to ask: having read The Republic and having a general grasp on Plato and also having read both Illiad and Odyssey, where should I go besides Aristotle? I want to tackle either Epictetus or the Gnostics/Neoplatonists

>Epictetus
don't bother with stoics because of soul numbing they are. it took me one year after reading epictetus and aurelius to get back a healthy emotional pattern.

>A real scholar would read much more than that, but a good base of about 10 Greek works are necessary if you want to immerse yourself enough in the culture to better understand the prevailing thoughts and attitudes of the time
Or just read Plato and a companion commentary piece on Plato (i.e. the introductory notes in the front of every modern edition of a collected work)

The amount of 'erudite' elitism on this board is ridiculous - its really not that hard to understand Plato. The average person has already been exposed to most of his archetypal ideas, because Western society is so heavily built on Greek philosophy and political theory.

That just makes the stoic teachings sound very effective.

Elaborate. Does stoicism attempt to kill desire like some Buddhists sects try to do?

So why even start with Plato to begin with? Just start with wittgenstein and read the footnotes, right? xD

If you really think footnotes do justice to the Pre-socratic teachings then we don't really have anything to say to each other besides insults.

It can have that effect, if the reader confuses desire with satisfaction.

If you can't read a few canonical Greek classics, then you probably shouldn't even bother with Plato in the first place. You might as well just go to contemporary sources for a summation of his ideas.

eh
Haven't read anything Buddhist, so can't answer that. But:
I read the Stoics when I was in my formative teenage years and I probably misunderstood them to a big degree and have an aversion to stoicism in general.
I'm just cautious when stoicism is in question. Teenagers lack onto it without really getting it.

you are a literal retard
tell me, have you learned several Orphean secrets before starting with the sophists?
Have you deciphered linear A and B before that?

Sophists can be understood by just footnotes

>If you can't read
Watch those strawman arguments - surely your supreme intellect is beyond them

What writing about the presocratics still exist literally are footnotes you mongoloid. Aside from Zeno's paradocxrs, which are still incomplete and wholly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Reading about early Greek attempts to use reason to explain phenomena without a scientific method is neat, but its not a very elucidative subject.

neither

"start with the greeks" is a defense people use to obfuscate their own worth as much as it is a piece of valid advice for aspiring philosopher. be sensible. if you don't understand a primary work, consult secondary sources and discuss it in productive company. even podcasts, historical or discursive, can be helpful for contextualizing what you're reading.

people seem to fetishize the prescription of the canon more than the canon itself.

shh you're ruining it

also is captcha getting a sense of humor or what. dumb robots.

Read Laws, which is Plato's revision of Republic. It's hilarious how everyone ignores that Plato rejected the Republic himself

If that is true why does Paul Ricoeur's theory of narration (most popular theory on truth and on opinion) is so interlinked with pre-Socratics, hmmm? Why do the greatest philosophers of the XX century all suck pre-Socratic dick, hmmmm? I bet they just read the footnotes, am I right anonymous? xDDD

I mean there are several books around 500 pages or more about the pre-Socratics but we should all agree that a few footnotes are suffice :)

P.S: Fuck off, slacker. If you're going to promote mediocrity do it in your pigsty.

Took me 5 seconds to rebut your gruesome claim, pseud. Picture fucking related

>I mean there are several books around 500 pages or more about the pre-Socratics but we should all agree that a few footnotes are suffice :)
yes they would, pseud, because I don't have the time to fully commit to philosophy and still want to grasp their ideas. You really think that Wittgenstein had read EVERY philosopher that came before him?

Then why bother? Just read the philosopher killer (tm) and leave my board forever. Ironically, you claim to never have read the Pre-Socratics but you know that they're useless or at least not worthy of reading while never have read them: you're the only pseud here, yet you accused me every single time of being a pseud. Your existence is sad.

Why bother with anything? I don't have the time to read every sophist or pre-socratic philosopher. I have the time to read several Plato's dialogues and the Republic. The footnotes were very generous and went on for three-four pages explaining what Plato was talking about and how that idea came to be.
Okay, so philosopher X draws heavily on some sophist. Wouldn't I, having read let's say Aristotle know that X is denouncing some Aristotelean idea?

And about calling you a pseud
That was wrong of me. I apologize.

Currently reading "Prior Analytics". I suppose it's less difficult for me and more of a situation where I stop reading every few paragraphs and wonder if I could've figured out some of these concepts without reading.

I tried "Categories" once and gave up. Came back recently and it made much more sense. Also read "On Interpretation". If you have trouble with either of those, I would just go slower.

Also, what's the deal with everybody insulting each other and OP? Can't you just contribute positively to the thread? I'm being completely serious.

Veeky Forums has been pretty mouthy this week. saucy lads don't know when to quit. however i've noticed this hasn't decreased the quality of conversation such as it was. lots of greeks posters with sincerely held beliefs, or lots of nooblets stepping into the arena and trying to learn. Pic related.

>mfw I started organon today

Everything's either incomprehensible or so simple that it doesn't need to be read (such as how simple expressions like 'man' can be neither true nor false). It seems like he's inverting Plato's theory of forms, but I'm just sure I grasp his justification of if that's even what he's doing.

This post made me physically cringe. The presocratics are literally characters in Plato's dialogues.

>The most pleb opinion of all time. You just ooze pure fucking retardation.

Formal logic is too easy. Sorry you didn't get my brain, slow reader.

good luck once you start running into post-kantians and early Hegel. aristotle is their fucking jam and youre in for some trouble if you only start with early moderns.

Starting with Plato was an excellent choice. Much of Plato's thought is centered around Homeric lore, so if you haven't already read the Iliad and Odyssey, you'll be in for a treat.

In regards to the Presocratics, their teachings are fragmentary and ambigious. They are not particularly important to understand either Plato or Aristotle as both these luminaries have a self-contained philosophy; which is not to say that you can't benefit from reading them anyhow.

With Plato and Homer, you'll also have an excellent foundation to study Plotinus, should you wish to go in a mystical direction.

The Organon is the cornerstone of Aristotle's thought and the entire foundation of his method. It has been notoriously difficult to understand throughout history, so don't feel disheartened. In the Medieval cirriculum - both before and after Aristotle's Organon was rediscovered - the traditional treatise to commence with was the Isagoge of Porphyry, a short work that explains the technical jargon of the Categories.

Unfortunately, Medieval logic is a small niche in the academic world, so we, as an English speaking audience, have very few translations to do with. Thomas Maloney has translated two in particular: The Art and Science of Logic by Roger Bacon and the Summa Lamberti of Lambert of Auxerre. I have the former, which I'm quite satisfied with – I suppose the honorific of "Doctor Mineralibus" was well justified. It was treatise written specifically for new students of Aristotle, though I'm not too sure about the Lamberti.

An important thing to remember about Aristotle is that he firmly believed that theoria was the highest good of mankind. In a purported letter, as attested to by Simplicius and Plutarch, Alexander the Great lamented that Aristotle made plain the great teachings, to which Aristotle responded that they were published and not published, as only his auditors could understand them. The book in question was the Metaphysics. Obscurity was a veil employed by Aristotle, likely to sharpen the intellect of his readers and listeners.

Thomas Taylor wrote a dissertation on Aristotle, condensing and illuminating his teachings in a short work. He was a staunch Neoplatonist, which plays prominently in his writings – depending on your inclination, it can be either good or bad. Don't confuse it with New Age though; he was an avid follower of Proclus. Like Iamblichus and Boethius before him, he advocated a complete concord between the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.

Aristotle is heavy reading, but well worth it for the access you'll gain to engage with Western literature.

>SUMERIANS >
Just watch Ancient Aliens bro or check out the books of Z. Sitchen

Can you state exactly why they are important? I read a small book on Heraclitus then all of Plato. I also knew who they were from listening to a history of philosophy podcast. All of that was around a year ago though so it's not like I know the exact differences between Anaximander and Anaximines. About 30 pages into the categories now.

One internet for you namefag

> Socrates > ... > Plato

what?

>lexander the Great lamented that Aristotle made plain the great teachings, to which Aristotle responded that they were published and not published, as only his auditors could understand them
So are there Aristele's pupils work out there to open up his works of cryptic paradoxical gibberish?

Agreed, foregoing the Greeks is pleb-tier.

Just start with Heidegger tbqh

>being this much of a contrarian faggot

First of all Stoicism is extremely straight forward. But it's understandable that a teenager would struggle with them. However, if you didn't understand the texts, why are you cautious of them? Also, I don't think teenagers should really be reading philosophy.

>Socrates is a pseudonym of Plato
Xenophon and Aristophanes sure seemed to think Socrates existed..

>people are actually trying to autodidact their way through Aristotle
Lmao jesus fucking christ. You know all of his works are just lecture notes?

Aristotle doesn't have literary value. Secondary literature does a better job at delivering the content of Aristotle's writings than Aristotle does.
Prove me wrong.

Yeah this is what I was thinking. Wouldn't it be better to watch lecture on Aristotle than to read his works since his works are just lecture notes?

>socrates
socrates didn't write shit you shit

>Shut the fuck up, pseud.
Says the buttwipe dismissing the pre-Socratics. Heraclitus > Plato, hell I like Thales and Anaximander more than him.

Why does philosophy need to have literary value? Aristotle was concerned with truth, not pretty prose

It's because it's basically lecture notes.