Ask HN: Learning about philosophy

I preface with that to say that my recommendation is to pick and chose which parts are of interest to you and then dive in further to the source material. If you take the approach that you must start at Aristotle, you run the risk of burning out before getting to areas that might be life changing to study.

I got my start by grabbing all of the “Introducing...” [1] series of graphic novels about subjects I commonly heard referenced but didn’t understand. From there, I dove into the underlying texts of everything I found interesting.

Again, I didn’t gain an academic understanding of the subject, but I came away with a wildly different worldview than when I started. Life’s too short to be an expert at everything, but that doesn’t have to stop you from exploring on your own.

[1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Postmodernism-Graphic-Gui...

These books have some pretty deep illustrations, not just cartoon drawings of the subjects. One favorite of mine was a scene showing Monet painting haystacks, frustrated that a worker had left a ladder on one he was studying — I think the implication was Monet wasn’t _really_ trying to capture impressions of the haystacks as they appeared throughout the days and seasons, just his preferred impression.

You won't find a better place to begin that the Alain de Botton School of Life series (though perhaps could use a more balanced Western to Eastern ratio). Start with Kant, see if it tempts your interest, and you should be able to consume the whole lot in a short sitting:

https://www.youtube.com/c/theschooloflifetv/playlists

For a deeper dive, there is a classic series of audio lectures that used to be sold via mail-order and arrive on cassette tapes! You can find many online (narrated in Charlton Heston's authoritative voice no less):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncS8x4RUjlso...

Then take to twitter to communicate directly with giants in the field: Slavoj Zizek, Daniel Dennett, Alva Noe, and many others are active

https://twitter.com/PhilosophyNow

And finally you'll be ready to dive into the Arxiv of Philosophy Papers: PhilPapers

https://philpapers.org/

Best of Luck, Rupi ;)

Works surprisingly well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6VTQZNULlA

And sticking with western philosophy, if you are suggesting Hegel and Nietzsche. I would also bring you into the (late) twentieth century with Deleuze & Guattari. But I also wouldn't recommend them to a beginner.

I also think as a start, knowing these figures, perhaps even tasting their work, lets you read around them. You see the way their ideas spread out into the world. I sometimes think there are more different takes on Nietzsche's work than ideas in them!

You can also read back and trace a line of thought through various philosophers from say, Deleuze back through Bergson, Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, Liebniz, all the way back to the Stoics. To understand Dennett, you need see the impact Descartes has on modern thought, and you can trace that kind of thinking back through to the Socratics. You start to see that these philosophical threads actually shape people's entire view of the world around them, and in some way the world itself.

That really depends on who you read. If you read only a secondary source instead of the primary source, and that secondary source happens to have misinterpreted the primary, you're going to be misled.

If you read the primary source you're at least going to have the chance to make up your own mind, even if it's difficult to do so... and even if you can't, you might at least see that what the primary source actually says might not be as straightforward and obvious as the secondary source maintains.

But please don't think I'm against secondary sources altogether. They can be a useful adjunct to reading the primary sources. Ideally, though, you'd have multiple secondary sources (ones that disagree with one another), so you don't fall in to some one person's reality tunnel.

This is especially important in philosophy. I can't count the number of times I've read secondary sources which I consider to have completely misunderstood the primary sources they were commenting on, and how frequently secondary sources disagree with one another (especially on the more "difficult" philosophers).