What are some good starter materials for studying philosophy?

Well, you way want to read some of the starters out there, like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These guys started out philosophy really and they pointed traditional philosophy where it's going. Really, I think most philosophy out there is pretty widely differentiated. A lot of the major differences relies in questions concerning the divine and, also, whether reality is real, whether there is an extra-mental reality we can really experience as wholly outside of us or not. The Gorgias, though is a phenomenal work by Plato but with Socrates as the main character. Really, it sums up the whole battle between Sophism and other philosophies that is playing out now. Sophism, for example, taught the whole carpe diem thing and that you should just exploit others as long as you can climb to the top of the pile. Socrates thought that Truth and virtue is what the good life is all about. Really, Aristotle is my favorite, next to Thomas Aquinas. Of course, Aquinas is a monk, but his works are very logical, quoting Aristotle more than the Bible, I believe.

My Philosophy professor has an intro to philosophy on the intenet at http://www.paulhorrigan.0catch.com/ that you may want to look at. He knows his stuff very well and is cited by several websites. He gives a good sense of the divisions of philosophy and some of its history. I would still read Gorgias though. Great stuff.

Almost forgot, if you want to look into more modern philosophers, Descartes and Kant would be good. Marx is pretty much a must, too, even if you don't believe in him, some of his ideas are.........quite interesting (The Communist Manifesto for instance).

I recommend you reading "Sophies World" by Jostein Gaarder. Here you'll find a model of classic pedagogical technique packaged in most tasteful modernism. From the Socratic dialogues up to and including Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ultimate collaboration. The book is for children of all ages, so don't expect detailed synopses of the world's major philosophers, systems, or contexts but it's ok if you don't know nothing about phylosophy

It's hard to say what you'll be doing in your first year.

Where I teach we do Plato & Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau & Locke in first year. Kant & Hume don't come until second year.

It'll do you no harm to do some background reading on any of these guys. HOWEVER, you will be taught all this. It is more important for you to arm yourself with the skills for <doing> philosophy. We call these skills Critical Thinking. Pick up a short introduction to learn how philosophers <argue>.

[Edit: I like !@#%$%^&!'s answer! There's no harm in jumping in at the deep end to see how wet you can get!]

Calm down; there are lots of people like you. I, for example, have this masochistic need to add to my workload to the point that I only get an average of 3 hours of sleep on weeknights. (I took 5 ap classes junior year and 5 senior year including bc calculus.) Just try your best and please don't let grades become the gauge with which you calculate your self worth. That's simply not accurate. And don't try to make something like "get into Harvard" the goal of the next five years of your life. Honestly, Harvard is overrated. When I was in middle school, it was my dream to get into Harvard, but I didn't even apply to it when the time came b/c I knew I didn't want to go to a place like that. There's more to life than grades and college and school in general. Perfect grades don't make you a genius and imperfect grades don't mean you're not a genius. They're just letters and gpa's are just numbers.

Try to figure out what kind of Philosphy first. Do research of popular "philosophizers." You can look online or even go to the philosophy section of your local bookstore. After you look at the different types of philosophy you may want to focus on that topic.

My favorite is political philosophy from the 1700-present.

Good luck!!!

The purpose of philosophy is to know the Truth.

There has been so many speculations regarding this subject.

Life is short,and studying philosophy will just be a waste of time.

The purpose of life is to know God,in His personal form,His Absolute Form...Read the Bhagavad Gita as it is by Srila Prabhupada

Well, there are several schools of philosophy to study. First you need to decide what aspect of philosophy interests you. I am a fan of existentialism (study of existence) but you may be interested in other areas. Go to www.half.com and look for books on "introduction to philosophy." Those books have writings by different philosophers that are organized by school of philosophy. (Epistemology, existentialism, art and beauty... etc.) Hope that helps!

I say dive right into the postmoderns and not understand a word of it. Like, start with the biggest Derrida...OOOOHHH, or Baudrillard (then you can say later, "I started with Baudrillard," and people will be like, "that's effing harsh," and you'll be like, "Yeah. Uh-huh. That's right, biznitches, recognize.")... anyway, the biggest, most evil lookin' book you can find and read it all the way through, fast, and not stopping when you dont understand something. Something huge and horrible, so you feel like you've killed a dragon when you finish. Then start working backward in the tradition and find out how many things you misinterprited, and how many of yer ideas were actually good and fresh.

Make lots of notes IN PENCIL in your books.

I think it's Plato because his books (dialogs) are easy to read and to understand. And of course, it is the beginning of philosophy. Enjoy! :)

Please visit "The first Tones of Freedom" at http://agneya2.blogspot.com/

OR

http://harshad.wordpress.com/

You will find ancient Hindu philosophy mixed with new age spirituality.

Good Luck.

You will definately benefit from these sites a great deal.