system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do I know what to read first?

Before you read Hegel you should read Kant. Before you read Kant you should read Hume. Before anyone, Aristotle. 

Or should you? What I want to do is read Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Hume, Wittgenstein: I want to understand modern social political and philosophical ideas. But how do you know when you have to read someone before you read someone? I ended up going all the way back to Aristotle and giving myself a year's worth of reading before I even got to what I wanted! Help!

EDIT: thanks for the responses, I should just note that I'm about to start a masters in social anthropology. I'm not a 'beginner' in philosophical reading in the sense I've been doing it solo for some years, but I am a beginner in the sense I've never had training in the area, and never had a foundation of knowledge laid, I just picked up books and read them, almost at random, hence why I'm looking for an essential foundation now, or if it is necessary at all.
gpt
You could start wherever you'd like, and if you find yourself confused, go one step earlier, and repeat the process. If you end up confused at Aristotle, you could try Plato, at which point social and political philosophy in the West more or less bottoms out, so hopefully you aren't confused by Plato.