START WITH THE GREEKS

>START WITH THE GREEKS
This is the single most retarded piece of advice on this board. You should start with your contemporaries and work your way backward. Starting with the greeks is like starting to jog by entering into a marathon.

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As if the Greeks hold a candle to Shakespeare, who don't you know - INVENTED the human

Yea Forums realizes that nobody except Yea Forumsbros takes this guy seriously, right? His early Romantic scholarship (The Anxiety of Influence, The Visionary Company) is still relevant, but he hasn't done any serious work in decades

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>not starting with the Sumerians

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where do I start with the presocratics? I've read Homer.

>As if the Greeks hold a candle to Shakespeare

This is true: Shakespeare is superior to the Greeks.

>who don't you know - INVENTED the human

This is a stupid theory made by a guy who, in spite of being probably the most well read person in the world, dosen't have any drop of creativity in all oh his being.

The First Philosophers by Oxford Classics is great.

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You don't read the Greeks because they are superior, you dumb piece of nothing

>when studying the history of formalized thought you shouldn't start from the beginning and follow the "conversation" through the centuries in a coherent manner. Rather You should start by reading contemporary retards without even the context that make their ideas have a modicum of sense.
Lets file this under Yikes and move on

1/10 made me answer.

>what is individual preference

>not just reading the wikipedia on western philosophy like Chad because he is too busy replying thots on tinder to give a shit about the details

BASIC GESTALT

>starting with the people who still haven't been wrong is retarded
Plato easily shits on everything after him. Just because he doesn't use calculus to prove his points doesn't mean he's wrong

Ionic school. They're not linked in ideas and contradict each other but it gives you most of the names Attic/Athenian philosophy is going to drop
>Start with contemporary philosophy
Shitting with your clothes on, I see, OP

He gets mentioned a lot in my undergrad English program

No most of them are too stupid to realize he’s a fucking meme who makes claims without backing them up with evidence

I did the whole "start with the greeks" thing but with music and it really helped my sense of the bigger picture and how things developed over time. It's find to read some later works but eventually you should start with how it all began

>tfw they sent a wild demon to kill Gilgamesh
>tfw they were so impressed with each other's strength that they became best friends
Anons are really missing out on Gilgamesh and Enkidu's friendship.

>he believes in progress

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I didn't know he looked like that. What a cheery guy.

>he believes our understanding of reality has been the exact same through all of human history

>Starting with the greeks is like starting to jog by entering into a marathon.
I just signed up for a marathon because I thought it would help motivate me to start running. It's 3 weeks from now. Was this a bad idea?

You probably shouldn't start with the Greeks (which is to say the first authors you read shouldn't be the Greeks because you'd be too new and inexperienced), but if you're trying to get through the Western Canon then a good foundational knowledge of Greek / Roman mythology is quite helpful because they'll be frequently referenced later on.

If you can’t run a marathon without training you must be obese or a faggot. There are 40 year old soccer moms with 40 lb guts who run sub 4.

>when Gilgamesh thotpatrols Ishtar
Beautiful

A full marathon? If you're not in shape you may find it difficult to finish. That being said you don't have to finish and can still use it as a motivator to make running a habit with the goal of improving in your next marathon. Good luck user.

How many recreations of Ancient Greek music even are there? How certain are we that we're recreating it properly?

Asking for a friend

start with the Romantics tbqh

>implying there was a continuous conversation and they didn’t all hate each other

I don’t think OP was talking about contemporary philosophy vs fucking Aristotle or whatever, because if so OP is a faggot, but more don’t tell someone who’s never read creative work to start with Sophocles, which I... agree with?

I think "start with the Greeks" assumes a certain minimum, unstated baseline.

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>The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

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What's that mean

Name one (1) contemporary author worth rerading.

>the whole of our arguments are from telepathy: We know what you mean better than you do and have a God-given right to put words into your mouth at our pleasure.
I'm so sad the fucking nazi lost the war because you both belong in a gas chamber.

The opposite of the faggot OP's point. People are often intimidated by the reading of reading old books when it's not as actually as hard as they think and more rewarding.

I think start with the greeks is assuming you already like reading. For people who don't actually fucking read books, start with Harry Potter or (forgive me for using this in the same sentence) Tolkein or something. You have to enjoy reading and be in the habit of it before you can read the philisophical history of the human race.
Fuck "Start with the Greeks" was the answer to the question "I want to get into philosophy but I don't know where to start." Not a self improvement tip that goes along with "delete facebook" "hit the gym" and "stay hydrated"

You're thinking of Goku and Piccolo

I started with reading Yea Forums posts

I started with The Cat in the Hat