History is fucking weird because it's accessed on so many levels (pop stuff in general, non-scholarly/retail books, decently accessible scholarship, really hardcore scholarly stuff), it's hard to know where to start. I'm also biased because I'm a History guy who veered into Philosophy.

It depends what you're interested in. If you're ultimately interested in having a good feel for history in general, at some distant later date, I would recommend that you start by "learning how to learn" history, so you can then re-apply that at your own pace. Broad reading is fine, but really broad surveys tend to be ineffective for actually learning broad history. If I were you, I'd start by picking a period that interests me, like the French Rev (though that's a particularly tricky one), and then reading a reasonably "exhaustive" syllabus within that era or area. What I mean by "reasonable" is somewhere between an undergraduate syllabus worth of readings on that topic (which these days means little more than a topical, interest-based surface skim) and an overly dense mastery of the topic.

So for example, I'd take an undergrad syllabus for a "Greek history" class, follow it, but then on top of the course I'd also read 2-3 old, magisterial history books on top of the class readings, plus some topical ones. This is a few thousand pages probably. On top of that, I'd inundate myself in Wikipedia, documentaries, a few books chosen just for sheer interest, etc. An example regimen might look like
>An online lecture series
>The primary sources used by the lectures (Herodotus, Thucycides, maybe one other)
>The secondary material used by the lectures (maybe one textbook and several articles)
>Another, more serious, but still enjoyable (literary or significant) general history of Greece
>Some more specific interest-driven stuff that caught my eye
>Some more primary sources that caught my eye (say, the major Athenian plays)

By the end of this, probably several thousand pages of reading and months of work, you'll have a good feel for Ancient Greece (e.g.). Now you'll know how it feels to have a feel for a period, for its scholarship, for how scholars construct that scholarship, for how modern books tend to be dumbed-down and topical, for how pop books tend to be even worse. Now you can reapply that knowledge to another era, which may be totally different - Renaissance Italy, let's say. But now you'll be more efficient, and it'll go much faster. And after few of these, concepts and facts will start to interconnect and interlace, and you'll find yourself already knowing half of what you read - suddenly you find that doing Roman history is a lot easier and a LOT deeper after having done Greek history, e.g.

That moment in learning about history, when you reach critical mass and it becomes exponentially easier, is the hardest thing to convey. But this is how I'd try to force it to come about in a younger version of myself.

i was once like you; i shared your concerns about the deficit of history of philosophy that many of the world's universities had adopted over time; but you must understand that you have no point of reference to judge what's good and bad philosophy, especially if you've only "started studying it the past year or two". seriously, the "history of philosophy is paramount" and "why are the contemporary academics of analytic philosophy neglecting muh irrelevant schelling and hegel?" will at some point wear off. as it is with physics, there's a reason why one's undergrad education shouldn't dwell too much on history of philosophy: you don't expect young physicists to spend semesters on newton's principia, do you? it's been extended and corrected by hamilton and lagrange; the principia is now read by historians only. by and large, the purpose of an university is to get you up to speed with the contemporary knowledge, techniques, etc. etc.

here's a better alternative: learn what your contemporaries have to say, go back to history of philosophy if you have to, and realize that much of the < 20th century thinkers were confused beyond repair.

>>7991851
>there's a reason why one's undergrad education shouldn't dwell too much on history of science
typo. fix'd

>>7991851
This.

>>7991851
why do you assume my desire to learn world history, to the service of further pursuits, is to discern the 'good' from the 'bad'? I don't think philosophy, especially, can properly be understood without history, if even history is not here to be understood in the strict sense. without an understanding of the problems facing a particular writer at the time they were to write, how is one supposed to understand their solution to said problem? Additionally, if one reads philosophies outside of the order in which they were written, the ideas one thence acquires lose their fluidity and coherence. certainly, one, if the wiser, can stitch this coherent element back into the ideas he acquires, but why is it that universities are so intent on depriving students of this crucial aspect?

while you tell me that learning what my contemporaries have to say, and then going back and reading earlier philosophy *if i have to*, is a better solution than to acquaint myself with the history of philosophy, I don't believe that one can properly understand or digest what one's contemporaries have to say if one is not already privy to what the philosophers before them have said. how is one to recognize the wisdom of one's work, without first having struggled to grasp those same ideas? how is one to admire the precise articulation of an argument, if one has no recognition of weaker arguments trying to express that same fact? were thinkers <20th century confused? yes. are we? certainly. were they wrong to the point that their works are devoid of value? not in the slightest. it's like hegel said, m8, the philosopher who only seeks truth and falsity in the history of philosophy is bound to view only false philosophies, not understanding them to be the development and progression of our grasping of the truth, but as mere right and wrongs. thank you for your comment, but i disagree entirely with your statement

>>7991818
great post.

>>7991818
thank you so much for posting this. - op