Asklemmy

43899 readers

1210 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]

46 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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As a person that started by randomly reading different philosophical works, I'd actually start with general overviews. Like, you might be interested to know that the Tao Te Ching is a response to the strict rituals of Confucianism. Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy is an excellent book in this regard. It's like putting all these different Chinese philosophies side by side, seeing how they grew out of each other, and you get to decide which you agree with and why.

I think the context is important because you get an idea of why they said what they said. The Tao Te Ching kinda seems like it's own book, a unique ahistorical perspective of living. But, if you think that (as too many people do), then you don't understand its limitations and its strengths. So, if you don't know what problem Confucian rituals are trying to solve, then you won't really understand why the Tao Te Ching eschews rituals in favor of "living in accordance with nature". It'll just sound like some hippy nonsense (which is, admittedly, very attractive on its own).

You might do the same for Stoicism, though I don't know any resources like the above for stoicism.