selfbump.
Seriously asking for advice here, guys. Just need somewhere to start.

You can read it by itself and it'll still be enjoyable, but to understand all his references, it is a start with the Greeks.

>Heraclitus
>Plato
>Diogenes
>Aristotle
>Aristophanes (The Clouds)
those will get you started, but you might want to consider getting a history of philosophy like Durant. Sophie's World is a good alternative if you're coming from only reading YA.Your other choice at this point is to carry on with his influences and read Schopenhauer and Spinoza. (Note: he argues against a lot of Plato and Aristotle, and some of the others, especially since he sees modern Christianity to follow the path Plato>Kant>Schopenhauer)

Then, you have to read most all of Nietzsche before ASZ.

/lit/s a slow board you don't need to bump.
>tl;dr- it's fun to read even if you don't understand it, but you're gonna have to work to understand it

Ok, thanks. I tried reading it ages ago and the only reading I've done in philosophy is a bit of Socrates and Descartes for a intro to philosophy class i took a couple of years ago. Thanks.

>>8242287
You forgot to tell him to read all of Nietzsche up to Zarathustra at least. If you don't get Zarathustra read it alongside BGE. BGE was basically intended to get across the same ideas in a more accessible format.

Just know that Zarathustra was in no way written to be straightforward, very, very few people understand that book in its entirety. Only Ulysses is more jam packed with western canon memes. You can enjoy Zarathustra alone and get many of the ideas out of it but without the lion's share of the canon at your back you will miss most of the dank memes which distinguish it as a work of literary excellence.

And there is no harm in reading Zarathustra first, taking notes, then seeking out sources in the canon to answer questions it leaves you with. Zarathustra is the kind of book that merits several re-readings throughout one's life.

>>8242326
I was considering reading it first and then wikipedia'ing the crap out of the stuff I don't get but I don't have a lot of time nowadays to do that. Going to have to take it a book at a time.

Also, now that I'm here... is trying to understand Hegelian Dialectics worth my time?

>>8242352
If you just want to go into philosophy for a little dilettantism absolutely fuck no. If you want to go deep down the rabbit hole of 20th century philosophy it is necessary for many of them. Lacan and his heirs like Zizek in particular. And to have any clue what Hegel is talking about you need Kant.

Nietzsche is nice in that when he fucks with people he hits at the root, he very rarely nitpicks the particulars of people like Hegel or Kant, he just drags poor old Kant out for a joke once in awhile and I think in The Gay Science Nietzsche explains his position on Hegel. But almost all of his attacks are aimed at Plato and only hit other philosophers as collateral damage since he sees Plato as the point where the value system informing philosophy became distorted.

>>8242674
Ok, thanks for the candor and the advice. I really don't want to read this stuff just to try to show it off (as if I had anyone to show it off to).

Just want to understand what's going on without ditching my major for philosophy. I'd double major if I had the time and the resources.

>>8242244
Start with the greeks.

>>8242287
I'm basically going to be reiterating this post and this one >>8242326.

Read the fragments of the Presocratics, read the classical tragedians and Aristophanes, take a big bite out of Plato. I think you can pretty much skip Aristotle through Kant for Nietzsche, but be sure to read Schopenhauer (including his interpretation of Kant). Beyond that, read Nietzsche's published works (you can probably skip Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely Meditations) until you get to Zarathustra. Bear in mind that the final part of Beyond Good and Evil was written after Zarathustra and added afterwards.

>>8244417
Oh, I forgot, if you really want to see where Nietzsche is coming from, read Lange's History of Materialism, which Nietzsche read and reread a ton throughout his life