I'd like some help in knowing what I need to learn before reading this book.I've been interested in Simulacra & Simulation for a long time, but I don't really have a solid grasp of philosophy beyond the rudimentary stuff or a good understanding of anything I might be missing, like knowledge of the author. I do understand the basic concepts of pre/modern/postmodernism, but that's basically all. Honestly, with this and pretty much any "theory" book, I wanna get stuck in but I worry that I lack fundamental context and prerequisite knowledge. Is there anything I gotta know before I start reading this? How do I generally know if I'm gonna be missing out on understanding stuff before I read a book? It's the same with the greeks: I wanna read the Iliad, Odyssey, the republic etc - but I don't know shit about ancient Greece besides individual philosophers and a very basic understanding of the Peloponnesian war!
>>25243558Imagine being this guy, he's worried that he won't be able to read a work "correctly".
>>25243560lol, I understand why it sounds weird. I have OCD and I am very neurotic about experiencing things optimally or correctly. Still, it's a fair thing to worry about. There could be lots of missing context to a work that will make it unintelligible or just less enjoyable.
>>25243659Philosophy is just hypotheticals, subjectivity and observation. It's not challenging work at all, just read it if you're interested and make your own assessment.
>>25243663ok, fuck it. I gotta stop being so neurotic about making sure I did the "work" before reading a book.
FUAAAAAAAAAAARK MY STOMAAACH HUUUUURTS!!!!!!
>>25243558Take notes. Write your own impressions of your first pass, and note down things you're stuck on. Look up [thing] or [historical event] or [other author's thing] that he refers to. Read the footnotes, which provide further hints and context for things you may not be aware of. Allow several months to pass, or perhaps a year or more. Then read it again sometime. If you found the book interesting, consider reading something else, which is either closely related or slightly related. All of the above are good ideas for reading any book that you want to understand in depth.I like to do my notes as text files on the computer, which I'll bash out as I'm reading, as I feel like it. That way the notes are easy to punch up (just like writing a post on here), you're not hurting your hand, and you're not messing up the book with annotations which just stop on page 18 like a used undergrad book.
