find similar minded people and discuss it with them. they will have their own insights on parts you don't understand and vice versa

Why not give use to our very, very loney /phi/ board? You know it wants it. You know it wants it bad.

There's a steep learning curve to philosophy. Just read alot of it, look up terms that you aren't totally sure about on http://plato.stanford.edu/index.html , and maybe hang out on philosophy forums (I personally don't regular any myself, but I imagine it may be useful if you find a decent one.)

It's natural OP, you're just now starting to realize that much of philosophy is one big scam. There's some gold nuggets of ideas and ways of looking at things here and there, I won't deny that, but these guys couldn't make a living unless they could write these long ass treatises and try to explain these relatively simple and cool ideas. They would get up in front of people and just ramble on about nonsense and try to tie it all back together. People ate it up because even having a cursory understanding of what they were saying made them feel superior.

OP, you're frustrated, because you're not taking the fucking time to actually learn, instead looking for Cliffnotes everywhere. Not everything is instant gratification, you insolent child. There is also the possibility that you're just kind of dumb and require things to be dumbed down a bit. In the latter case, just keep looking for everything to be explained to you. Lazy, stupid fuck.

>>69236
This sums up a ballza portion of continental philosophy. Then again I really wouldn't begin my journey in philosophy reading Nietzsche. I'd berate you for saying it's all a scam but then again I sat through enough Derrida lectures to know better.

Why not try to look into logic or ethics? Logic can feel a lot more like math especially when you get deeper into it, but the learning curve is more linear and if you like to debate it certainly helps to understand how and why a statement is false. You don't need to learn a lot of buzzwords outside your first introduction on the subject, but it's a bit more work than your typical philosophy reading. Ethics is arguably better geared toward real world shit but in my opinion it's the least rewarding to learn.

At the end of the day, it's best to dive in to something that you enjoy and go from there. If you hate it and you can't focus on what they are talking about after two sentences than something is wrong and you gotta try to put things into context.

http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/

This podcast is godlike for helping you get the basic idea behind a lot of the earlier philosophy stuff if you are just getting into it, but chances are you aren't gonna find use for it. I just like to plug it whenever this kind of stuff pops up.

For some apt critique of Zizek, see this post on The Last Psychiatrist:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/09/the_legend_of_steven_colbert.html

>If you're having trouble with that line of thinking, you'll have trouble with his whole philosophy, aptly summarized on page 3 of the Introduction:

>[/i]In today's post-political democracy, the traditional bipolarity between a Social-Democratic Center-Left and a Conservative Center-Right is gradually being replaced by a new bipolarity between politics and post-politics: the technocratic-liberal multiculturalist-tolerant party of post-political administration and its Rightist-populist counterpart of passionate political struggle-- no wonder the old Centrist opponents (Conservatives or Christian Democrats and Social Democrats or Liberals) are often compelled to join forces against the common enemy.[/i]

>I'm not going to make the dozen easy jokes, I'll say simply this: when writing becomes so complicated that only the initiated can understand it, then it is meant only for them. Who is he going to convince by hyphenating every third word set? Nobody. It's masturbation, though considerably more difficult.

In other words, if you can't make sense of it, maybe it's because it just doesn't make sense. I too find that I love parts of Zizek and the rest is gibberish and it's generally because it is gibberish.

As far as Nietzsche goes, it definitely helps to have some context and guidance. Taking a philosophy course, maybe just an evening course at a community college, could serve you well with some basic groundwork for interpretation.

Alternately, just keep plugging away at it until you get something out of it. It's important not to look at these figures as infallible or something that you must understand - wear your critical-thinking hat - but read and think and try and think some more and read again. If Nietzsche isn't working for you right now, try Kant or Kierkegaard or Sartre or de Beauvoir or Camus or Adorno or whoever the fuck... see what clicks, then go back and try Nietszche again and see if it makes any more sense to you. Alternately, pick up a biography of Nietzsche to get a bearing on his life and the historical, political, and cultural context in which he was working and then try tackling his texts.

tldr follow your heart OP

>>69259
>making sense
>throws books in fire

First give us an example of what is confusing you.

>>69238

The analytic/continental divide is bullshit and is purely arbitrary in its labeling. If you think that you can express these ideas more clearly and concisely, then by gosh you should be a philosopher yourself. Sadly I think it's more likely that you read a passage, concocting a half-baked paraphrase of it as you go, and call it a day rather than bothering with any intricacies.