Asklemmy

43899 readers

980 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

I want to learn Philosophy. How should I start ? (lemmings.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Lately I have found an interest in philosophy. I would love to dig deeper into it when I get the time.

I just started reading Seneca's Letters from a stoic and plan to read Tao te Ching next, as I always wanted to implement thoughts from Stoicism and Taoism in my life.

I'm aware that, randomly reading different philosophical works won't give me much in-depth knowledge.

I want to know what's a good way to go about it and the resources I could use.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] GraniteM 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you're already at the Tao te Ching, then the Tao of Pooh is a very popular exploration of Taoism using Winnie the Pooh as an exemplar of Taoist principles.

In that vein, there are about a zillion "X and Philosophy" books, where X is a pop culture franchise, e.g. "Star Trek and Philosophy," "Star Wars and Philosophy," "Watchmen and Philosophy." All of these are collections of essays by various authors discussing philosophical subjects through the lens of popular culture. I find that it's very useful to have a set of characters and plots with which you're already familiar to use as a vocabulary to talk about heavier philosophical subjects.

I don't know as I would recommend going directly to the primary texts first off. Some of them can be read on their own merits by someone otherwise unfamiliar with the subject, but many are written in archaic or academic language that can be daunting. A class or book club can help in that regard, but just sitting down and trying to read Aristotle all by yourself may not be the easiest of going.