>read plato
>yeah this is great I love socrates, I want to fuck Alcibiades, Meletus is a bitch, perfect unchanging forms are the best!

>read the first paragraph of Nicomachean Ethics
>what the fuck is he talking about?

now what

Filtered

>>24477566
when every other sentence needs several lines of footnotes I think this was a mistake.

>>24477561 (OP)
To read Aristotle you must read Heidegger, and to read Heidegger you need to swim in the swamp of philosophy, emerging -with prayer and hope- with a constitution apt for the task. Afterwards you'll have to realize that you won't understand Aristotle unless you understand Nietzsche, and you can't understand Nietzsche unless you try at it with Being and Time.

>>24477594
>unless you try at it with
I didn't understand this so I guess I have no chance of understanding Aristotle.

>>24477561 (OP)
Read a book ABOUT Socrates/Plato first, retard. Secondary sources exist for a reason, no philosopher in history intends their books as eternal a-cultural best sellers. All philosophy is WRITTEN in a social context that often intends the reader to be from the same same social situation
tldr; read a secondary book, diving in unprepared on most philosophy is a great way to waste your time

I skipped Aristotle and went right to Plotinus and have no regrets t b h. All the pseuds here told me "ooooh but no if you go into Plotinus without reading Aristotle, you will be filtered, Plotinus uses Aristotelian philosophy too!" Well yeah and it's easy and fun and inspiring and not dreadfully boring and pointless like Aristotle.

>>24477686
>this guy doesn't even know who wrote Nicomachean Ethics
>didn't even bother to google it
Ladies and gentlemen... the state of /lit/.
Also your opinion is wrong btw.

>>24477561 (OP)
The greeks are all retards.

>>24477714
>t. actual retard

>>24477686
Fuck you, nigger

>>24477709
>Also your opinion is wrong btw
I don't think his opinion is necessarily wrong, as life context is usually important to really understand an author (look at Wittgenstein, an author one would expect one could read without secondary bibliography is responding in a large manner to the questions surrounding him in Vienna at the time, questions that help one understand his point in a deeper way -https://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Vienna-Allan-Janik/dp/1566631327-) and authors positions usually change over time (look at Wittgenstein once again), but he's wrong regarding Aristotle in virtue of our hermeneutical distance. See pic related, from Heidegger's Nietzsche.
It's just a general advice one could give about any piece of text that's separated from our time, that's why, even if >>24477686 is a retard that didn't bother to google about Aristotle, he's giving sound hermeneutical advice. Hell, I'd argue we need hermeneutical ways to understand texts written just 100 years ago. Thinking our meaning is the same meaning of the ones behind us is naïve.

>>24477742
In principle I can agree, I used to think Descartes was a pretty absurd individual but the secondary literature made me realise exactly why he was the way he was, and why what he did was important.
I will also be honest and say up front that I don't trust most academics to be qualified interpreters of Plato. In fact, academics are rarely qualified to interpret any great philosopher, as Schopenhauer rightly observed. Their input can just as frequently obfuscate the true meaning of a work as illuminate it. Especially in Plato's case, who is, besides, probably one of the few authors whose message is genuinely perennial.
If you have natural talent and also an affinity for a given thinker, it is always best to read their work on your own first. Reading secondary sources first may be better if your intuition is poorly suited to that thinker. Personally, I am very glad I read the Platonic canon first before I engaged with the secondary literature, much of which I am not very excited about.

>>24477561 (OP)

>Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is
thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly
been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a certain difference
is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from
the activities that produce them. Where there are ends apart from the
actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.
Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are
many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel,
that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts
fall under a single capacity—as bridle-making and the other arts con-
cerned with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this
and every military action under strategy, in the same way other arts fall
under yet others—in all of these the ends of the master arts are to be
preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former
that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference whether the activities
themselves are the ends of the actions, or something else apart from the
activities, as in the case of the sciences just mentioned.

What could possibly filter you in this paragraph OP? It is crystal clear.

>>24477561 (OP)
Everything soulless, materialistic and pedantic about western philosophy comes from Aristotle first.
Just keep with Plato, bro.

is this edition good or should i get something else

>>24477594
>>24477709
lol no one takes this agp vtuber tranny seriously, the biggest sign that philosophy is sophist bullshit

>>24478272
I genuinely have no idea what you are trying to say.

>>24478272
Say something about this other post of mine, faggot >>24477742 engage, unless you're a buck broken midwit.
>>24478281
faggot sperging out over a reaction image.

You should read the Greeks by H.D.F Kitto before starting the greeks, if not the entire book, definetely the parts about greek life and thought.
Nicomanean ethics clicked for me after seeing Kitto lay out a bunch of key concepts about them.
Also, Aristotle is as simple as it comes. His thoughts would be better organized on a graphs or list, but instead it's all in a single paragraph. Read slowly.

>>24478315
I have that book actually

>>24478333
Then why didn't you read it, silly anon?

>>24477561 (OP)
You ought to start Aristotle with Organon (categories, on interpretation etc.)

>>24477594
Heidegger said you need to read Arostotle for 10 years before you can understand him lmao

>>24477561 (OP)
Nicomachean Ethics really drags on

>A moral life consists of virtues which are the mean between extremes. This applies to courage, temperance, etc. Sometimes one extreme is preferable to the other so that the mean is closer to that extreme, however the mean is always the most preferable. If you practice good virtue eventually it becomes innate and easy.

Okay cool

>Now here's another 9 long ass chapters where I apply this to every single virtue and examine a thousand specific cases but still not fully enough because the autistic philosophical community has found one or two holes in my thought despite the fact I clarify, repeatedly, that for philosophy one only has to be accurate in a broad sense and not down to the minutiae

Just insanely tedious and it's only partially Aristotle's fault but also the fault of publishers who need to make books bigger than they ought to be.