/philosophy/ - Philosophy

I don't think there's any way to correctly study philosophy. You should just start looking things up that you think are interesting, Stanford has all right articles.

If you start reading philosophy about things you don't really care about (or it's not relevant to an article you want to understand better), philosophy will look dull. You should only read stuff if you want to expand your knowledge and such.

You should know some basic stuff about philosophy before you can really learn more, though. You should know stuff like ethics, aesthetics and build from that point on.

That's how I've started reading philosophy and it has worked out all right for me.

I would suggest:

0 Dont be a generalist. Find a single tradition, history, or group of philosophers are stick to them.

1 Study something really fundamental like Logic, or Ontology. If you get good at a fundamental area of philosophy everything falls into place for the other less-fundamental areas like ethics or epistemology.

>>740
>>736
thankyou. seems like a good advice.

start with the greeks

>>740
>Dont be a generalist
This seems like good and bad advice at the same time.

It's good advice because sticking to one school of thought or one question or one approach concentrates the vast field of philosophy and makes it more accessible, while allowing one to gain deeper understanding quicker.
It's bad advice because one of the strengths of philosophy is its plurality. Navigate purposefully through the realm of philosophical inquiry, but don't avoid other fields, especially not when they complement or challenge the field you are interested in.

>>762

Well, maybe it wasnt clear, but by 'dont be a generalist' I didnt mean, dont study other fields. I did mean dont study other traditions.

Its not like there is a single field of ethics (for example), that all the different traditions have taken different stances on, or come at from different angles. Different traditions just have nothing to do with each other, and when both comment on ethics the only comment element is something very superficial. If you are well studied in one tradition youll really be totally naive in another tradition.

If you try and be a generalist, you wont be well rounded, youll just be generally mediocre. Trying to keep in mind some deep historic tree of philosophers wont be to your advantage. You really can gain a lot from a little bit of philosophic scholarship if you put the work into it.

>>735
It depends on your own preference, so I will just tell you about my relationship with philosophy.

I have always been interested in history and culture, and the connection between those. So I read myself through the entire history of western philosophy, from the Greeks to the 20th century philosophers. Reading this made me understand history so much better than any history book ever could. And then somewhere I read about Nietzsche, and since then I fell truly in love with philosophy.

Everyone picks what they like from philosophy. Just pick a starting point, any starting point and go for it. Though you might want to stay away from the works of philosophers like Kant and Spinoza, if you really want to read them, start with a book about them, not the original works. Some philosophers can be very difficult to read, especially for beginners.

>>826
>Spinoza
>hard to understand

Dude, what? Spinoza is hard to read, but that's because his style is a horrific bore. His actual structure of argumentation is an analytic dream. There are few things which Spinoza did not make very clear. Kant and Spinoza simply can't be compared. I haven't read Nietzsche, but most of the articles and lectures I've read treat him as a mess to understand for someone that isn't adept at picking pickling out his actual argument from his writing style.

>>827
>analytic dream
Believe it or not, but not all people find that easy to understand. When I look around me, most people seem to have troubles with Kant and Spinoza. Of course that's not the case for everyone, that's why I said that everything in my post is from my personal experience.

And yeah, your point about Nietzsche is valid. To me it makes sense, but not necessarily to everyone.