How does someone without a college education get into understanding philosophy?

youtube.com/channel/UCEtxsMx4qsoitFwjBdLU_gA

>fundamental nature
>language is representational

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

What fucking year do you live in? 1930?

buy an anthology. You do the homework on which one you want, but get an anthology to start

>youtube philosophy Penn Jillette

no

Read.

What does he mean by representational? And what do you mean by it's not representational?

Maybe it has some kinda academic meaning I don't understand but language seems pretty "representational" to me in that various utterances correspond to (i.e. "represent") objects, actions, etc.

Am I wrong headed in this thinking?

Read a philosophy textbook. Most college libraries will eventually circulate their books and give away free books because a new edition came out.

The Philosophical Journey is a decent text

plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/

iep.utm.edu/ord-lang/#SH2d

plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#PhilInve

I'm pretty sure there are some ancient philosophers from a southeast European nation you are supposed to start at.

this desu

Read a fuckload

Start out with newbie guides like "Read the Greeks :^)" or "Read The Republic and then read Locke lol :^)", do all of them, but always go beyond them, assimilate them and you'll gradually see how fucking condescending and shitty they are. They're written by Redditor Philosophy BA undergrad faggots who are assuming that the average reading public wants to sprinkle a little bit of bourgeois Plato soundbite on his usual diet of YA garbage and glossy-covered pop filth.

Just read a lot. You're living in a society of pigs. Laypeople are mentally retarded and illiterate compared to the "reasonably educated average reader" of the 1960s and earlier. MENTALLY RETARDED. People who study philosophy academically are barely educated by any meaningful standard. Having a PhD in philosophy means getting inflated B's (so really, C's) in piss-easy "So You're a Retarded Bourgeois Baby and You Want To Roleplay as a Public Intellectual" training courses, then getting into a program where you do more of that exact same thing, then eventually taking """""comprehensive""""""""""""" exams that are meant to qualify you as a teacher but really all they do is force you to skim over a few dozen books and you still can't even hold basic fucking conversation with anyone who actually knows anything, seriously the process is worthless than sucking the penis of your rich uncle's friend to pass your Confucian bureaucrat exams in 1655, and then you do a research project on FREGE'S PHILOSOPHY OF ETHICALLY COMBING YOUR HAIR that begins with
>Philosophers have totally neglected Frege's insights on COMBING. I will rectify this problem.

And then you work at Starbucks, and go on Reddit and write pontificating condescending recommendations to well-meaning plebs who also work at Starbucks and want to become philosophically educated.

Don't listen to bourgeois dumbed-down condescending nonsense except as a first faltering baby step to developing your own goals and exploring vistas on your own. Don't listen to shallow unambitious retards. Don't listen to people with pet systems. Set out to read everything and to develop actual insights and to actually transform who you are. You should want to read EVERYTHING and you should BE EXCITED ABOUT THIS. Any time you catch yourself becoming content with how you can rattle off a few plausible-sounding esoteric tidbits, force yourself to become vomitously horrified at that realization until you permanently associate it with traumatic pain. Otherwise you will plateau and it will fade into being Just A Hobby like everything else in this useless fucking post-capitalist existence.

>niche writers

It's spelled Nietzsche bro

Probably good to have a look online about different philosophers and see what interests you. As someone who grew up in a christian society and struggled with feelings of guilt about 'sin' and stuff, I was drawn to Nietszche's beyond good and evil, and that was the first philosophy I read from there. Find something relevant to your own personal interests. Once you read one book, you'll probably have a bunch of questions about other writers and schools of philosophy to look into.

education is a detriment to true understanding, consider it a benefit if you somehow avoided the prison that is formal education

be yourself, find yourself in the moderate freedom that is afforded you outside the necessity to make money at a job

if some faggot wants to make you feel inferior based on your educational credentials just tell him/her they are a slave to their own programming and thats the size of it, leave it there and walk away

Learn what fascinates you, and there is much in life to provide a proper mystery worth exploring and in turn being enjoyed through

>understanding philosophy

You need to be guided through philosophy. Always read primary texts with commentaries by serious scholars.

holy.....

You don't "get into" understanding anything.

If you're truly starting from ground zero, I suggest:
>getting a low level intro boon like "The Philosophy Book" or similar which gives you a brief history, introduction to key people and ideas
>choose a philosopher or school of thought which interests you
>read the most accessible or interesting (not necessarily "best") from that person(s)
>with cliff notes/ what ever the kids use these days
>look into their influences and who they influenced
>lose the sparknotes and start doing accessory research on themes/ideas you find interesting
>go wherever from there

The fuck do you think college education is?
Some sort of magic pill or injection they give you and suddenly your mind is opened? Or an occult initiation?
But start with the greeks.

Also it's always worth it to research the best version/translation of a text before buying/reading. I'm very fond of Oxford World Classic editions but a lot of people also like Penguin Classics and Norton Critical.
>read the annotations

Everyone will tell you to start with the Greeks and they're right to an extent but it may not be pleasurable nor an efficient use of your time, depending on what you're after.

>applause intensifies
wholly and not partially this. all of it.

>Don't listen to bourgeois dumbed-down condescending nonsense except as a first faltering baby step to developing your own goals and exploring vistas on your own. Don't listen to shallow unambitious retards. Don't listen to people with pet systems. Set out to read everything and to develop actual insights and to actually transform who you are. You should want to read EVERYTHING and you should BE EXCITED ABOUT THIS. Any time you catch yourself becoming content with how you can rattle off a few plausible-sounding esoteric tidbits, force yourself to become vomitously horrified at that realization until you permanently associate it with traumatic pain. Otherwise you will plateau and it will fade into being Just A Hobby like everything else in this useless fucking post-capitalist existence.

perfect.

sophie's world (the arial sections)

go back to original sources on anything you want more detail on. then just read comedies.

I hope this becomes pasta

Why is the history of an idea relevant to the idea itself?

This is a resentful post. You both take a shit for people trying hard, then take a shit on people not trying hard enough, then go deep into muh wrong generation, then sliding into "philosophy doesn't pay the bills so it's garabge but DON'T BECOME A TOOL MAN FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS"

At some point with everything you do you will stop getting excited about doing it, it happens to everyone in every activity, then you'll break the plateau and be excited again, then nothing. Being "obssesed/possed" by something is a meme.

That's a nice insightful analysis, user, people should be reminded more often that only opinions about the form of a message are valid, and not about its meaning. Thank you for your hard work!

When the energetic form tries to hide the fact there's no substance I'll attack the form.

Because ideas are based on other ideas. Philosophical works (as any works in any subject) do not introduce and build from the ground most of their meaningful content, but rather rearrange the ideas and concepts that were presented before, and make new structural connections in that set of ideas. If you disregard the history of the idea, you'll be able to understand that from A follows B, as some smart German fellow wrote about it, but you will know nothing about what A or B were for that fellow. For him, they were full of information and structure, while for you, they are merely placeholders. Therefore that saying that the fellow spent 10 years devising, carefully considering the structures of both A and B, is meaningless to you.