Trouble reading philosophy.

[mono]

I've tried reading philosophy and I can never seem to finish the book I start. I tried reading an anthology(Blackwell, I think) of philosophers where it had a bunch of different philosophers with brief writings of their works and I just didn't understand it. I then tried reading one of John Locke's essays and I didn't get that, either. Am I starting at the wrong point or am I just not intelligent enough to grasp what's being said?

My advice: do not dive right into philosophy. I have seen far too many individuals burn themselves out on philosophy by jumping right into deep end of the pool, attempting to read Descartes, Kant, Locke, Berkeley, Nietzsche, Plato, pre-Socratics, and co. Instead of picking up the first copy of Being and Nothingness by Sartre, try some of the commentary books, as some of the 'second-hand' philosophy can have a lot to say, too. I would even think it safe to say that Joseph Campbell, Paul Woodruff, Leonard Shlain, and James Carse have taught me things about philosophy that I would have never learned myself from its original sources.
Shorter philosophical essays can create some ease on your brain, too - that way, your cerebral cortex does not have to fully envelope the hundreds of pages of The Republic. A few notable essayists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Michel de Montaigne, and David Hume had some shorter works, as well.
Lastly, fiction can contain immense quantities of philosophy. Fyodor Dostoevsky instructs a lot on existentialism, Albert Camus and Franz Kafka on absurdism and ethics, Herman Melville on virtually everything, and Leo Tolstoy on spirituality.
Good luck!

[Etienne]

Oh yes, I mustn't be well read enough. Excuse me.

Well that or you didn't understand things correctly I guess...

[0=2]

You want a game you can't lose? Have you tried solitaire?

I don't claim to understand all of philosophy as you seem to and I don't even claim to have the ammo to take down all of your points. Some may be perfectly valid for all I know. I don't mind being weak from time to time either, oh ubermensch, Hulk Hogan, Sgt. Rock, whoever you are, but there's no point playing games I can't win at all, like trying to communicate with ranting monomaniacs who don't really pay attention. You patently didn't understand the point of my post, which was not to accuse you of rejecting philosophy completely, but to ask why you didn't want people reading western philosophy in particular. I'm not going to beat myself up to get my point across to someone who seems more interested in proving his or her lofty, contemptuous and unimpeachable superiority than having an honest debate.

Right, because you have something BETTER to do with your life than play games...

See, I love philosophy, because like everything else we create, use, perpetuat,e and solidify realities terms on, it eats itself after a short while. Please, the forums purpose is argument. There's nothing outside this "game" this win lose mentality to this place. You didn't come to reach understanding or "discuss", and if you did that's quite terriby sad considering the sheer lack of original thought in this place. It's regurgitation matched with regurgitation. We're covered in our own bile constantly...

And you expect me to take it seriously?

"Correctly"? I didn't understand "correctly"? Yes, my interpretation must carry soe intrinsic "wrongness" for it to bear different results than yours.

I think the fact that such chaos can spawn in this regurgitorium of used up vortices and corpulant thought is pretty, and funny, and pretty funny...

But I don't take myself seriously for engaging in it. You people probably shouldn't either.

[blp]

But I don't take myself seriously for engaging in it. You people probably shouldn't either.

No, I'd say not. The only real problem I have with what you say here is the gap between theory and practice. You do seem to be taking it seriously, even to the point of shrilly arguing against positions no one's actually taken. If it's all a game, why aren't you more playful? Why are you treating it like a war?