Probably more useful for understanding Popper than for understanding the people Popper writes about. Not that understanding Popper isn't worthwhile, but this should definitely be supplemented by other sources if you want to understand any of the historical figures Popper talks about. Admittedly, I'm having trouble thinking of a really good history of philosophy without an agenda of some kind; perhaps the best way to go is to read things like this (or Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, another notoriously inaccurate work mentioned elsewhere in the thread) and remember to always take it with many grains of salt and do further research on anything that seems important.
Hello LessWrong,
I just (finally) finished Good and Real, by Gary Drescher. It was a very stimulating read, and I'd like to continue learning philosophy on my own. However, I'm running into a bootstrapping problem. I don't know what I don't know, and therefore, I don't know where I should get started. I've tried searching the LessWrong archive to see if anyone has made a post outlining a curriculum for someone looking to teach themselves the fundamentals of modern philosophy and logic, but either my Google-fu is weak or no such post exists. So, what should someone who is looking to reduce the inferential distance between themselves and modern philosophical thought read, and in what order?
Or, do you all think this is a quixotic quest that I should give up on?