Philosophy Readings

Recently, I've developed an interest in philosophy (knowing me, it probably won't last long). My current reading list includes several newspaper and magazine articles and Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Any recommendations as to what I should continue with? I doubt I could even remotely understand Plato's Republic or any works of that level of depth. Anything even remotely philosophical is fine; there's no specific school of thought that I want to focus on.

There's a series of books that are essentially Cliff's Notes for major thinkers that might be worth checking out. It sounds funny, but they're basically graphic novels that give an overview of the major facets of the philosopher's work.

They're not going to give you a thorough understanding of a philosopher, but if you don't have much experience with philosophy, and you're not the type who is likely to pore over a philosopher's works, they're pretty good for gaining a broad understanding of their ideas. I first heard of the books through one of my philosophy professors who gave me one as a sort of tongue-in-cheek gift when I left for grad school.

They're called Xxxxx for Beginners, e.g. Foucault for Beginners.

For a serious answer, Coppleston's series on the History Of. Incredible set of books for the amateur reader of philosophy.

For a snarky answer, The Audacity of Hope.

Plato's Republic is not difficult, btw, compared to most philosophers.

Check out Plato's Symposium, that's pretty simple. I also enjoyed de Montaigne's Essays and John Locke, for some basics. Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals" is really interesting but a bit denser, as is my favorite, Camus' Myth of Sisyphus.

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

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Plato's Republic is not difficult, btw, compared to most philosophers.

Check out Plato's Symposium, that's pretty simple. I also enjoyed de Montaigne's Essays and John Locke, for some basics. Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals" is really interesting but a bit denser, as is my favorite, Camus' Myth of Sisyphus.

I luv teh Symposium. Had to read it my freshman year. Great read.

lol @ plato = simple.

Heidegger.

Yeah, for plain-language philosophy, the Socratic dialogues are hard to beat. By sussing out every blind alley in every argument, even trying to resolve a question like "what is courage?"- interesting enough in and of itself- also becomes an object lesson in critical thinking.

They're also- unexpectedly- sometimes quite humorous.

what is it that you want to learn?


if you want to read plato, start with alcibiades I or apology. Better the former than the latter.

Originally Posted by LabelKing

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Heidegger.

"What is called thinking" is actually a great place to start, and not nearly as intimidating as something like Being and Time.

Of course, there are some philosophers who manage to write with some amount of panache (Nietzsche and Kierkegaard) and others who tend to be more dry and academic (Kant). While a hobbyist should certainly know of Kant's philosophy, perhaps it is not necessary to dive into his ouevre head-first.

I also recall Hegel's Phenomenology of the Soul as being a fascinating read.

I'm going to quote my own post from a while back:

Originally Posted by Dedalus

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I'm going to go against any recommendation of reading philosophical primary texts at this point in your life. Instead, read these: The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy - read it, would recommend it. Sophie's World - have not read it, heard good things about it. Russell's History of Western Philosophy and Problems of Philosophy - I think these predate Wittgenstein's major work Philosophical Investigations, and I wouldn't trust it to do the Continentals any justice, but Russell was a great mind in any case. If you're still interested in reading primary texts after that, you'll know where to go and have a better idea of the context that the works were written in. Context is terribly important in reading philosophy. I know too many people who started with reading Plato, didn't get past than the Moderns, which is a pity, because some of the most interesting philosophical problems come after that.
And then a post (not mine) from another forum I lurk on: Ancients This is some interesting things. Who'd have thought that we'd still be talking about their thoughts 2500 years later? Not them! Anyway, read some Plato and Aristotle. Just because Hackett is great, they publish a nice anthology of ancient philosophy (under some name that I can't remember) that includes a bunch of pre-Socratic fragments, a ton of Plato's dialogues (including the entirety of Republic), and a great set of selections from Aristotle. Read what you like, but from Plato, at least read the Timaeus, Phaedo, Crito, Meno, the first part of the Parmenides, Apology, and Republic. From Aristotle, focus on the Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics, but pay attention to the Physics. If you only read two works, read the tetralogy of dialogues (I'm cheating) concerning the death of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, and Phaedo. Also, read selections from Aristotle's Metaphysics; primarily, the bit on change. Moderns For reference, the modern period begins with Rene Descartes, and ends with Immanuel Kant. Confusing, but there you go. With Descartes, you should read the Meditations and the Discourse on Method. Get the Cambridge edition of the Meditations since it has a selection from the Objections and Replies, which will help explain what Descartes was on about. Leibniz is an amazingly influential figure, and I think that you might want to read the Monadology. It's short, and I'll look through my Leibniz selections and see if I can dig up anything as interesting as that, but it's no big deal if you read nothing else of his. This gets you two of the three rationalist thinkers (the other is Spinoza, who is pretty cool, actually) Let's move to the empiricists. Berkeley (pronounced Barkley) is pretty awesome, so you might want to read Three Dialogues. It's a special English brand of crazy. Still, it's a good romp and it's fascinating. There's also David Hume, who is the patron saint of early analytic philosophy. Just take up his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He's got a way with words, too, and you'll enjoy it. If you only read two works, read Descartes' Meditations and Hume's Enquiry. Kant Well, here we are. The big one. He wrote a ton of major works (the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason, among others, are seminal works of philosophy), but all anyone needs to read is the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. You might want to read the Critiques later, but they are not necessary at all. If you have an interest in ethics, read the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. This is all the Kant you'll need. The Prolegomena, though, is damn important. At this point, you should be on good enough ground to read almost anything in contemporary philosophy, but be warned: most everyone you'll want to read read much more than what I've recommended. Still, unless you find one figure so interesting that you want to read into their works, this is a good enough foundation for beginning a study of philosophy. You should go back and read other things, but you don't necessarily have to. I recommend starting with modern stuff with some fun things like Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science is a philosophical amusement park), Peter Strawson (Individuals is such an interesting little book), Ludwig Wittgenstein (he'll destroy all your preconceptions about philosophy), Martin Heidegger (okay, not as fun, but read What is Metaphysics?, since Being and Time is murder), Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus is a brilliantly uplifting work), Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained is good, and Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves are interesting if you're curious about free will) and Richard Rorty (Read, at least, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature). Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, and Thomas Nagel are pretty interesting, as well. If anyone is curious, I can type up a survey of analytic philosophy, but I'm too lazy to do that now. The Preliminaries First of all, you need to do three things: find a symbolic logic textbook, reread Hume's Enquiry, and keep in mind the analytic/synthetic distinction that Kant developed. For a logic book, go to your philosophy section of the library and look through them until you find something that looks good to you. You don't need to become an expert, but you do need to be able to follow a logical proof. This looks like it might push you in the right direction. The Foundations It all started when Frege made some major developments concerning mathematical logic. He was a mathematician, but his works are important. Of course, they are more important for their historical value, but nonetheless they are crucial. Read Anthony Kenny's book on Frege for a good introduction. It's all you need. If you must read Frege, the essay On Sense and Reference is a place to start. Unless you're deeply interested in Frege, you don't need to read his works on formal logic, since the notation is really archaic. Kenny does a good enough job of it, anyway. Then, we've got good ol' Bertrand Russell. He was a ******* smart dude, and wrote a lot (and lived very long), but I think the most you need to read to be acquainted with him is the essay 'On Referring,' which is fantastically important and you'll at least see veiled references to it for the rest of your philosophical life. Of course, if you're more interested, read the lectures Philosophy of Logical Atomism, which sets forth his idea of an ideal language. He wrote a ton, but I can't name anything else off the top of my head. I'm not that fascinated with Russell. While Frege and Russell were preoccupied with logic, G.E. Moore had no use for the complexities and contempt for natural language that they had. He was a 'common sense' philosopher, and he's actually rather interesting. Grab a few of his essays, such as In Defense of Common Sense and Proof of an External World. If you are interested in ethics, you need to read Pricipia Ethica. Yesterday. As a response to his ideas (which are incredibly compelling), read O.K. Bouwsma's Moore's Theory of Sense Data (a short essay), if you can find it. It'll help you understand Moore as a philosopher. Some context is in order: Russell and G.E. Moore were reacting against a very specific movement in British philosophy: British idealism, exemplified by J.M.E. McTaggart (the M. stands for...McTaggart) and F.H. Bradley. Moore allegedly instigated the revolt against Hegelianism and sparked analytic philosophy, but I'm not too up on that bit of history. Wittgenstein was interesting. You don't need to read the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but you should. It's essentially ideal language philosophy with an eye towards dissolving philosophy and a bunch of bizarre references to Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. Yeah. Read it, since it's interesting, but get some commentary on it. I can't recommend one, but realize it's really complicated. If you read only two works, read the Moore essays and On Referring. Logical Positivism The less we talk about this, the better. They were essentially a bunch of German philosophers who worshiped Wittgenstein's Tractatus and elevated science up above all other forms of inquiry. The problem? Not a one had any idea how science worked. Still, it's important, so you might want to be familiar with it. Rudolf Carnap had an essay, The Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language, which you should read. It will explain why many analytics ignore and condemn continental philosophy (it's utterly maddening how much influence these guys have had), as well as give you a good view of what positivism is. Then, read A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. Now, run very far away and never make the same mistakes these guys did. Ordinary Language Philosophy Finally! Something productive! This stuff is quite a bit different from the other philosophies, since it ignores the whole quest for a logically perfect language and tries to make sure we use our own language properly. Here, we get J.L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle, Peter Strawson, and a whole host of others. Ludwig Wittgenstein (the later) might be put here, and he certainly has affinities with these guys. They wanted to stop us from making mistakes (in Ryle's terminology) or keep us from confusion (in Wittgenstein's). We need to learn how to talk before we can tackle philosophical problems, and I think a particularly clear example is Strawson's Individuals. He talks about how we end up talking about people, not as minds and bodies, but rather as individuals. He builds a metaphysics from it, and unlike the positivists he didn't think that metaphysics was nonsense. This is not a view universally held, but I think it's a good contrast to the positivists. Anyway, some canonical books you should read are J.L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, Strawson's Individuals, and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Read the Investigations, at the very least. America Many Americans got in on the act, especially after Carnap and Co. had moved to America from Germany. W.V. Quine, for instance, was incredibly important, and you should read a few of his essays: Ontological Relativity, Epistemology Naturalized, and Two Dogmas of Empiricism. The last essay is his most important work, so read it. You thought nobody could disagree with Kant on the analytic/synthetic distinction? Quine did. He's really interesting, and you should read these essays. Get some collections and dig in. He's good. Other Americans include Hilary Putnam (changes his views biweekly), who, along with Quine, came up with the indispensability thesis in philosophy of mathematics. He also helped develop functionalism, semantic responses to skepticism (resulting in semantic externalism), and the causal theory of meaning, among other things. Saul Kripke is a major figure, and most of modern metaphysics makes reference to his book Naming and Necessity. It's complicated, and requires a bit of modal logic, though. You could probably get a good amount from David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind and then go back through it. Don't read Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Ever. Thomas Nagel's The View from Nowhere is important and the ideas are good, and the questions he raises are ones every philosopher should grapple with. Read it. There's also John Searle, a student of J.L. Austin, who wrote a book on speech acts and a book on intentionality. Good stuff. As for some personal favorites, Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson are brilliant. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature will change the way you think about philosophy, even though Rorty's views have changed since then. He's a rather idiosyncratic thinker, so you should not accept his readings of philosophers as anything other than Rorty's readings. If you are sincerely interested, read the philosophers he writes about. He's great, though. Davidson was relatively close to Rorty, and you'll see this pretty quickly. There are some nice collections, and Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation as well as Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective have some great essays. Epistemology Since I hope to get into a graduate program to study this, here's my thoughts on the subject. There are a few major themes that keep arising in contemporary philosophy that become quite clear here, such as internalism/externalism. The major schools are foundationalism (represented by Roderick Chisholm and C.I. Lewis), coherentism (represented by folks like Keith Lehrer, William Alston, early Laurence Bonjour, and to some extent Quine), reliabilism (Alvin Goldman and, I believe, Alvin Plantinga), and various rather idiosyncratic brands of epistemology. Naturalism (Quine is big here, as is Goldman and Hilary Kornblith) tries to turn epistemology into a scientific discipline, pragmatism (Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam, among others) tries to revive James, Peirce, and Dewey in attempts to understand philosophy, and contextualism (Wittgenstein, primarily, though Keith DeRose is big here) puts our beliefs in context. The latter two views are deeply connected (David Annis, a contextualist, though he's quite different from DeRose and I think that he's closer to Wittgenstein, puts Peirce and Karl Popper as the source of the ideas), but still different. Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is essential here. Oh, and by the way, there's a dude named Edmund Gettier who published one paper. It's in every anthology available, and it's two pages long. It must be read by everyone who is interested in epistemology. In the end, grab an anthology that looks good to you. There are bunches, so don't hesitate to run to a library and look through a few. The Stanford Encyclopedia has a bunch of entries that can shed some light on the subject and give you a better starting point than this. Start with http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/ and then move on to http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/ for a good overview of the subject. Oh, and here's a treat: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/to...9/1?cookieSet=1 The entirety of an issue of Philosophical Perspectives dealing with epistemology. Dig in. Philosophy of Science I'd recommend a textbook, but I can't remember which one we used. It was damn good, though, and I'm certain somebody else can name some good ones. Anyway, this was a big field, and it's really interesting today. Some texts that might help illuminate the field: Karl Popper was a big player here. His Logic of Scientific Discovery is interesting and the caricatures that critics paint are totally off. He's still wrong, though. Anyway, it's important. One book that revolutionized the field was Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. If you read any philosophy of science, read this. It's that important. Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend were relatively close and started off as followers and students of Popper, but changed. Lakatos' Methodology and Scientific Research Programmes is a brilliant work, and easily one of the best in the field. Currently, I'm reading Feyerabend's Against Method, which is subtitled An Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Yeah. He's insane, yet rather spot-on about some things. It's a blast to read so far. Things have moved away from method towards issues within the sciences. I'm acquainted with philosophy of physics, but sadly I cannot recommend any good books, since ours weren't that good. If you know some contemporary physics, it's really nifty and neat to deal with. It's tough as nails, though, and at a certain point you just want to throw your hands up in the air and go "what the ****, guys?" Someone else can probably recommend something good. This is a request, as well. Philosophy of Mind Another branch that is as interesting as epistemology. Also, I know a bit about it. David Chalmers edited a spectacular reader, and it's got all the heavy hitters: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat?), Gilbert Ryle (Descartes' myth), Daniel Dennett (Quining qualia), Paul Churchland (Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes), Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal qualia), Chalmers himself (Consciousness and its place in nature), and tons of other cool bits. It is a good reader, but it's heavy. And a bit costly. Still, it's a great place to start. I haven't read any of the textbooks on the subject, but Jaegwon Kim has one and I've heard good things about it. I don't know anything about Susan Blackmore's book. If you're interested in any single philosopher, here's some recommendations. Daniel Dennett is the 500lb gorilla of philosophy of mind. A student of Gilbert Ryle (who wrote the book Two Concepts of Mind), his masterworks include The Intentional Stance and Consciousness Explained. He's a great starting point, since he's so influential and interesting. Paul and Patricia Churchland are essentially the torchbearers of eliminative materialism (there is no mind). Grab Neurophilosophy, as well as Matter and Consciousness. I recommend the latter. Interestingly, the fathers of eliminative materialism? Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty. David Chalmers is another big hitter here, and pretty recent. His book The Conscious Mind is what got me interested in the field, and he offers up a dualistic (though naturalized) solution to consciousness. John Searle has written on the subject, and Rediscovery of the Mind, or so I am told, is a pretty good work. I haven't read it, though knowing Searle it's got some good stuff in it. The subject is vast, and there's a reason it's so popular: it's so ******* interesting. For a change, read some Hubert Dreyfus (he has written about A.I.), John Haugeland (his essay The Intentionality All-Stars is really good), as well as some Wittgenstein (the Investigations have some material on the mind) and Davidson (he has a few essays on the subject). And that, as they say, is that. I'm interested in language, as well, but I'm pretty unacquainted with much beyond ordinary language and Wittgenstein. ---- I'm really racking my brain to think of significant things you left out, but I can't come up with much as far as primary literature goes. I mean, there's lots of stuff to read in connection to Frege and early analytic philosophy (Whitehead and Ramsey come to mind; both Godel and Turing contributed as much to philosophy as they did to mathematical logic). Hempel should definitely be read alongside Carnap and Ayer. Brentano is incredibly important for making sense of contemporary philosophy of mind, but I'm not sure he counts as 'anayltic' in any strict sense. I'm sure you'll smack yourself in the forehead for leaving Fodor off that list, but he is definitely in the heavy hitters category in phil mind. Ned Block certainly deserves to be on that list too, as do Dretske and Millikan. I'd add that Dewey and James are worth reading on their own, independent of how later philosophers used them. The only glaring omission I can see is a lack of Nelson Goodman, who was incredibly important in developing a theory of representation and, relatedly, for offering the new riddle of induction and the grue paradox. Goodman is pretty standard reading in phil mind, phil language, and phil science, so he should definitely be on your list, especially since one of the main themes you focus on are reactions to the analytic/synthetic distinction. Goodman also rejects the distinction, but takes it in an even more radical direction than Quine. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast and Ways of World Making are definitely worth reading. Along similar lines, the Quine/Goodman response to Carnap is generally contrasted with the Pittsburgh school of thought (Sellars, Brandom, McDowell), though by the time you get to those figures the analytic/continental distinction ceases to have any meaning. Otherwise, if we are sticking with analytic philosophy the only other subset I'm really familiar with is pretty specific to my own interests. Ian Hacking is fairly important in the philosophy of science, as are most of the names associated with science and technology studies (Latour, Haraway, etc). But this gets somewhat far afield of the mainstream list you are developing. Michael Williams probably doesn't belong on the list, but from your write up I would suggest you read him; he's a student of Rorty's who decided that epistemology could be salvaged. He is broadly classified in the 'contextualist' category but takes a radically different approach from DeRose, and I think you'd get a kick out of his Unnatural Doubts. Analytic metaphysics is definitely a weak point in my background, but the two figures you see mentioned over and over in this area are Derek Parfit and David Lewis, both of whom are incredibly influential and are basically required reading for any contemporary philosopher, if only for the methodological tools and thought experiments they develop. If you are interested in this area, I'd suggest you start with them (Parfit's Reasons and Persons; Lewis' Philosophical Papers v. 2 collection), though I would first suggest you stop being interested in this area edit: I teach Andy Clark and Burt Dreyfus in my 101 class, for what that's worth.

Originally Posted by LabelKing

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Heidegger.

Why not get into some Derrida while he's at it? Perhaps some Lacan, Zizek, Levinas, and Agamben for good measure?

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Lightweight beginner stuff.

But really, pick a topic you are interested in and then google philosophy books on the topic. You should be able to find some compilation of philosophical thought on the subject.

If you really want to stick with a single book - I'd suggest Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.

Applied philosophy is more engaging than straight philosophy for a beginner. At least it was when I became somewhat interested. Reading Camus' novels, watching 2001: Space Odyssey, Seventh Seal , or Kieslowski's Decalog with complementary notes, or reading interviews with rigid conceptual artists like Duchamp would be a fun place to start, if for no other reason than they might provoke thoughts that you weren't actively looking for (instead of "Teach me about ethics today, Aristotle.") Most philosophy texts are somewhat disengaged from the emotional potential of philosophy and you need a certain type of personality to trudge through academic writing, which I don't have.

Originally Posted by fairholme_wannabe

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Why not get into some Derrida while he's at it? Perhaps some Lacan, Zizek, Levinas, and Agamben for good measure?

Wittgenstein.