Recommendations for a newbie

[vincanity1]

First post :)...

I was wondering if you guys would mind giving me some advice. I have a strange passion for philosophical thought, as primitive as it might be for someone that has yet to turn 18. I would really like to venture past looking through the general philosophic ideas created by some of the most brilliant men ever, and instead delve into their texts and experience their brilliance first hand.

For a 17 year old I believe myself to be well read to some degree, but I have never tried out a philosophy book. The reason for this is probably just fear. Why you ask? Well, I fear that I will read the book with only a mild understanding of the true ideas behind the text, and subsequently destroy any possible appreciation I could have developed for the author.

Short and sweet, I would really appreciate somewhat of an introductory guide to philosophy in terms of a sequential list of books to read to facilitate my introduction to such a broad and magnificent field. I realize that one cannot just begin reading Hegel off the bat, and that is why I came to this forum for help.

Thanks in advance for all of the help and I want to apologize if this thread or one similar has already been created.

[ballb]

Kick off with anything by Bertrand Russell. I`m no philosophy student but I find most of his stuff fairly comprehensible. He also has the kudos of having coached Wittengstein. Avoid his forays into mathematical philosophy to start with. Although I have an aversion to maths anyway.

If you can cope with the ponderous 18thC writing, David Hume is also within the realms of the layman.

Karl Marx is a bit of a plod, but easily understanable.

If you plan to get into Plato, "The Last days of Socrates" is a good starting point.

However, if you just want to dip your toe in the water start off with one of Bryan McGee`s books of interviews with modern philosphers. I think he`s done a couple. He doesn`t dumb down and requires a bit of effort. But it is an excellent introduction to philosphical ideas old and new.

[NikolaiI]

Descartes was my first philosopher, but you have to get a very good translation, which can be difficult. I read a translation of him in an intro to philosophy book that was insulting and laughable. They had dumbed it down apparently, for no reason, it wasn't hard to understand with bigger words, all they did was lose much of the meaning.

I like Pascal, too, but only in small selections of his 'Thoughts'. Jaspers is one of my favorites, and Camus is good, plus he has some novels, like the Stranger, which are short and easy to read. Schopenhaur is good, after you've read a few others, and Fichte is really good, one of my favorites; I recommend reading him fairly early. He wrote The Vocation of Man, of which I've only read the third book, Faith. Anyway, good luck.

[Charles Darnay]

I think it simply depends on what period and what topic you are interested in. If you are interested in ancient philosophy, I recommend Plato or Lucretius (The Trial and Death of Socrates and On the Nature of Things respectively). If you are into Renaissance ideals try Machiavelli (probably the most enjoyable/understandable) or Thomas Moore. For more modern ideals I recommen Sartre, Russle, Marx (if you are into communism).

Either way, if you hope to understand these texts, you should remember that philosophy is not remvoed from the world. With novels, it is possible to read a novel and understand it without having any idea of what life was like at the time it was written, the same is not ture of most philosophical texts. Everything written is a reflection of the time it was written, so when you choose with text to tackle, before starting, look up a little bit about the philosopher and his/her world to better understand his/her ideals.

[vincanity1]

I'm really interested in existential and metaphysical philosophy. I have no preference for time period because it would be insightful to have an idea as to the progression of thought in terms of said branch.

[ballb]

As far as existentialism goes, try Sartre`s "Road To Freedom" trilogy which sets out his philosophy in novel form. Readable but not a walk in the park.

[Charles Darnay]

I'm really interested in existential and metaphysical philosophy. I have no preference for time period because it would be insightful to have an idea as to the progression of thought in terms of said branch.

Existentialism = Kierkegard(sp), Nietzche, Sartre, Camus

Metaphysical = Plato, Berkely, Descartes (if you want a more scientific approach), and many more but I'm drawing a blank for some reason.

[Mr. Dr. Ralph]

Wikipedia is probably where you should start, it is free and relatively introductory and easy to read. Find one you like and then buy a book of theirs. Descartes is a good starting place.

[vincanity1]

Existentialism = Kierkegard(sp), Nietzche, Sartre, Camus

Metaphysical = Plato, Berkely, Descartes (if you want a more scientific approach), and many more but I'm drawing a blank for some reason.

Would someone mind rating these on a 1-5 scale in terms of difficulty (5 being the hardest)?

Also, please include Bertrand Russel in the ratings.

Thanks for all the help everybody

[Bakiryu]

I only own one philosophy book but it has a bunch stuff by my favorite philosopher Frederich Nietzsche you should try reading his stuff!

[vincanity1]

bump.

Also, what is the difference between solipsism and idealism? They both seem to assert the fact that anything outside of the mind and its contents are non-existent. The only distinction that I can muster is that the former is termed an idea, and the other a doctrine.

[Charles Darnay]

Would someone mind rating these on a 1-5 scale in terms of difficulty (5 being the hardest)?

Also, please include Bertrand Russel in the ratings.

Thanks for all the help everybody

1 = simple, 5 = stay away or you'll die of confusion

Kierkegard (I should look up the spelling of his name) = 3 (not difficult but somewhat dry, very interesting though, foundation of existentialism)

Nietzche (him too, I can't spell) = 2 (also very enjoyable especially "Beyond Good and Evil" and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

Satre = 3 (depends on what you pick up)

Camus = 2 (his works are novels so easier to grasp, just as philosophic though)

Plato = 1-3 (depends on how deep you want to go with him, how much you want to interpret. He's not difficult to grasp but could be difficult to make sense of.

Berkely = 4 ("Essay towards a new theory of Understanding) is quite difficult but very insightful

Descartes = 5 (I hated him!!! But that might just be me. His theories themselves are not too bad but his justification and the way he words things....ouch. If you are going to takle him, I recommend "Meditations", I found it the simplest of his works.


Also, what is the difference between solipsism and idealism? They both seem to assert the fact that anything outside of the mind and its contents are non-existent. The only distinction that I can muster is that the former is termed an idea, and the other a doctrine.

I think solipsism is idealism to a further degree as it were. Solipsism is the belief that the only thing we know to exist is the self and though everything is cannot be said to certainly exist whereas idealism says that things can exist as long as they exist in our mind. So the way I see it is that solipsism is just a more skeptical idealism....but I haven't done enough work with it to say for sure.

[vincanity1]

Thanks for expounding on both responses charles darnay. I just finished the philosophy page on wikipedia, and I intend to get a slightly better foundation in terms of the branches that I intend to study in more detail. Needless to say I will be taking a rather lengthy trip to the bookstore tomorrow :)

[The Atheist]

Kick off with anything by Bertrand Russell.


Would someone mind rating these on a 1-5 scale in terms of difficulty (5 being the hardest)?

Also, please include Bertrand Russel in the ratings.

Thanks for all the help everybody

Mate, I have a piece of sound advice, gathered over many years. Avoid philosophers at all costs. Nietzsche, Descartes, Plato, the lot of them - avoid like the absolute plague - they will pollute your mind with all kinds of rubbish. You may as well read Freud! Ask yourself why it took Neitzsche 7 steps to prove 2+2=4, when my three-year old daughter could work it out. The best way to sum all philosophy by philosophers to date is "the world exists".

Please, please, read the great minds, the mathematicians, the scientists - Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Albert Einstein - people who didn't study the philosophy, but developed philosophy from acute studies of the physical world.

Honestly, you'd learn more from reading Mein Kampf - by Adolf Hitler - than you would reading Plato's Republic. Stick to people who ventured beyond the walls of academia and who earned their stripes in the harsher world of science, peer review and empirical observation. If you want to read about cars, you read a book by the car guy; if you want to learn about the world, learn about it from those who knew what makes it tick before they found a priori evidence of their inane [or insane, take your pick!] blatherings.


Please. :D

[Charles Darnay]

So you're saying that Hitler advanced beyond academia whereas Plato did not....I don't know whether to be offended as a Jew or a lover of philosophy.

Look, you don't have to like metapyhscia/epistimological philosophy, but just becasue you don't like something and possibly dont understand, dont dismiss is as rubbish. I will admit that in my list that I provided, I could have put more scientists for they are certainly important to the development of philosophy. However, calling existentialism rubbish and a waste of time is simply not right. Calling Plato rubbish is dismissing a great foundation we have in this world. I will grant that his ideal political system is a little outdated, but this ehtical/metephysical ideas are just as relevant today as they were when they were written (for the most part). I mean, even early Christians realized Plato's ideas as similar to their own and adopted some of his teachings into their own.

Some people really enjoy reading philosophy, some don't: that's all there is to it.

"Ask yourself why it took Neitzsche 7 steps to prove 2+2=4, when my three-year old daughter could work it out."

I think you seriously missed the point of this.

Sorry, one more thing. You call yourself the Atheist - where do you think teh ideals that you support came from?

[AuntShecky]

Kudos to you. It's an encouraging sign when a young person becomes interested in philosophy. "The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living."
Why not approach the topic chronologically, with Plato (of course that means Socrates) just as Aristotle more or less
means Plato. The Symposia , for instance.
For an introduction: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. It's not really childish, just accessible! Also a wonderful book by I.F. Stone: The Truth of Socrates. And the shipyard philosopher, Eric Hoffer. Here's the website of some of his aphorisms: http://www.phnet.fi/public/mamaa1/hoffer.htm

[vincanity1]

After a couple hours at the local Borders, I decided that it made the most sense to start with Russel's History of Western Philosophy. I'm really excited to begin.

My decision to begin with Russel's History was based mostly the amount of philosophical topics touched on in the book, along with the fact that it is straightforward and will provide a quick and solid foundation for when I take on the masters in the months to come.

As for Atheist's comments, the one characteristic that prevails from your post is ignorance. It is easy to bash that which you don't grasp. The beauty of the work of the greatest thinkers in history is that they have been able to explore the "why" in its most fundamental forms. Without this, the science of which you speak of would have no logical foundation, so long as you use the same train of thought that you have applied to general philosophy. I understand that in all likelihood you meant well, but I feel that to skip out on the roots of thought is to skip out on a sort of childhood if you will. Without said childhood, IMO, all subsequent thought is diminished because it is without basic reference. Atoms are not the only thing that can teach us things when they are broken down.........


....Besides, I hate science

ps. “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” - Einstein

[The Atheist]

I mean, even early Christians realized Plato's ideas as similar to their own and adopted some of his teachings into their own.

Some people really enjoy reading philosophy, some don't: that's all there is to it.

The first bit kind of proves my point - christianity and philosophy deserve each other. :lol:

It's not so much a dislike of philosophy, more that I'd like people to understand the physical world before they approach the esoteric.


"Ask yourself why it took Neitzsche 7 steps to prove 2+2=4, when my three-year old daughter could work it out."

I think you seriously missed the point of this.

Not at all.


Sorry, one more thing. You call yourself the Atheist - where do you think teh ideals that you support came from?

Certainly not from philosophy. I'm a materialist/determinist and philosophy plays no part in my atheism. To be frank, I can't imagine anyone finding atheism in philosophy - far more likely the opposite. Check out how many young earth creationists are philosophers, then see if you can find one YEC scientist for every hundered philosophers.


As for Atheist's comments, the one characteristic that prevails from your post is ignorance. It is easy to bash that which you don't grasp. The beauty of the work of the greatest thinkers in history is that they have been able to explore the "why" in its most fundamental forms. Without this, the science of which you speak of would have no logical foundation, so long as you use the same train of thought that you have applied to general philosophy.

No, I'm sorry, but you're a long way off course. I suggest that I understood and studied philosophy long before you were born*. I'm just trying to save you the hassle of reading books which generally amount to the opinions of navel-gazers. Fortunately, if you're reading Bertrand Russell, you'll figure it out anyway.


....Besides, I hate science

I sincerely hope you overcome that problem.


ps. “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” - Einstein

Which is precisely why I recommend them. Scientists will give you the facts upon which philosophies are easily built without having to swallow gibberish, but each to his own.

:)


*Edit: Whoa. Long before you were born, I have kids well older than you!

[NikolaiI]

Interesting, and at least a part of the Atheists point should be taken into account: philosophers should be valued based on what they can give you. I guess I was lucky to start off with a good translation of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. I started reading it an instantly got sort of an idea of what philosophy was. It's my own idea, but basically deep thinking. I understood the ideas that he was talking about; he's a great writer, creative above all else, and it was very enlightening to me on the subject of philosophy. It's a broad field, and a lot of people don't care for it. But anyway let's get back to what philosophy is: the search for truth, etc. It wasn't until I read Descartes I really understood what truth was, but after reading him I got a much better understanding of the objective. In fact, I don't believe in his way of looking at things, at God. Interestingly enough, I am open to the idea of God in my own search, and at the church I go to thanks to the pastor and congregation, but when almost anyone else talks about God, I disbelieve. Atheist, how philosophy rejects God is this: consider philosophy as untainted, then a philosophic inquiry into the world, it would see lots of religions but no reason for any of them other than just they happened to come about, and mostly about power and war, but no reason at all to believe in any of them. I don't see how a philosophic inquiry could take a person's or people's word for it's own sake about God, or the bible, yet that's what a lot of them do. Nietzsche didn't.

For me I would definitely recommend No Boundary by Ken Wilber if you haven't already read it. It's subtitled Eastern and Western approaches to personal growth, but it also addresses science and philosophy.

Anyway, like I was trying to say before I got off on a tangent, philosophy is useful as much as it is clear and simple and well-written...keep in mind it is one person writing. You have to review them critically, no matter what their reputation is, and by your own standards. If they hold up, great. If not, discard them, because there is a lot of good stuff to read, you just have to find it. And you might find a tendency in yourself to write your own philosophy, and that is great.

Anyway, good luck again.

[The Atheist]

...keep in mind it is one person writing. ....

Good post, Nikolai! And that piece is probably the most important part not to lose sight of. No matter how populist the following of any one philosopher, it's an exclusively subjective domain. I'm no fan of subjectivity.

And just a note for Vincanity, my age reference wasn't to establish any kind of authority, I'm just emphasising that your argument suggesting ignorance of the subject is completely incorrect.

[vincanity1]

I understand where you are coming from Atheist. I just felt that you we're insulting the brilliance of some of the greatest thinkers in history and selling them short, as with the 2+2 comment.

It's thought itself, not the application of thought that intrigues me. I'm really anxious to study its evolution as I believe it will give me insight into my own self.

Finally, I understand why you established it, but I don't feel that my age should be used in any means on this forum.

I thank all of you for your help in giving me a rough guide as to how I should pursue my interest in such a beautiful subject.

[NikolaiI]

I would actually recommend Buddhist ontology. A good article can be found here; http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/inada4.htm, it's kind of long, but I found it interesting from the first.

Philosophy meant a lot to me because it was good practice for learning about language, knowledge, people and thinking. You learn about history, and I don't find the subjects of philosophy invalid or valueless. You learn about the different philosophers and their times, and what influences if any philosophy had on society. They are also connected to literature, and important people simply because they were living and writing, and knew others that were living and writing.

It is not necessary to make them out to be anything they're not, and they're not everything, but they are significant, at least to me. Subjects such as humans, as opposed to animals, or heavenly objects or science, for instance, tell us a lot about ourselves. Again, not because it is the strict and literal truth, but because it tells us what others before us thought. It tells the history of thought. And like Nietzsche says, even if the conclusions were wrong, they are not valueless. For instance he denounces metaphysics strongly, and the item of the soul, and even the very language we speak, but he also says we owe things to metaphysics, too, even if it is as wrong as could be. I will talk more about that later, that's from his "Prejudices of the Philosophers."

However guided by feelings, prejudiced and subjective the philosophers are, it still took thinking and writing ability to come up with the things they have written, and it teaches us to think critically to examine these ideas. It inspires us to think for ourselves, and when we are thinking it inspires us to write down our own ideas, to share and talk about it. Anyway, just my ideas.

It is valuable to know that Descartes had some meditations he wished to write out, when he had some time for leisure in which to do so, and also what Nietzsche thought of his idea of shutting out the senses, as in the meditations he said he had become so used to.

[vincanity1]

Nikolai, which translation of Descartes did you start with?

[NikolaiI]

Well,this (http://www.librarything.com/work/354688) is the book I read him in, you can see the cover on the left side of the page. I don't have it with me, and I'm not sure who was the author of the translation. Other translations are online for free, but I haven't found the one in the book. The worst translation I ever saw of it was in a published book, an introduction to philosophy that would have been amusing were it not tragic. They butchered it in an attempt to make it understandable- I think the original translation I read was very understandable and intelligible- and in the effort lost almost all of the value. Anyway, I'll keep looking for it. Maybe I can call my friend to whom I lent it to find out for me.

[ryan_haberman]

Hey, I'm 16 and I feel like I share the same type of philosophical fondness that you have. What first really got me into it, was Candide by Voltaire. Personally right now it is still my favorite book. I'm also reading Thus Spoke Tharathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, and let me tell you thats some pretty deep stuff! I've also experimented with some Marx and Kant but i still feel like my favorite is Voltaire.

[bibliophile190]

This is really useful to me also, because I've been looking for introductory philosophy books also.

[vincanity1]

I've only just finished the pre-socratic part of Russel's History. I must say that I am happy to have started with such a comprehensive introduction into philosophy. The book is average in terms of how easy it is to read, but Russel does a very good job in delivering complex concepts in a simple and understandable form.

I believe the most astounding part of the book and his writing is how much sheer knowledge he has. When considering that this book was written before 1950 and how little resources one had at that time compared to today, it is truly amazing that he was SO well versed in everything from history to mathematics to philosophy.

For my fellow beginners that decide take this book on as their first of its kind, I definitely recommend taking every bit of time possible to digest the information presented. Not any one page can be taken lightly, primarily because each and every page contains a truly impressive amount of very pertinent information.

Thank you all for your recommendations. I am very happy I started with this book and am quite anxious to delve much further into this vast world of thought.

[stlukesguild]

I would suggest that one of the central reasons that certain philosophers have lasted over the centuries (something our resident atheist clearly missed or could not appreciate) is not solely for their ideas... but equally for how well they were expressed. Among the greatest of these I would certainly place Plato and Nietszche. Certainly you should not forget the true American sage, Emerson. I would also suggest that you remember that "philosophy" is not to be found solely in the writings of "philosophers". I would greatly recommend many of the most profound thoughts are to be found in the works of essayists/poets/writers. Among my favorites I would include Montaigne's Essays, Goethe's Journals, Rousseau's Confessions, de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Machiavelli's Prince, DeQuincy's essays, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Lucretius, etc...