What is some readable philosophy?

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Originally Posted by dratsab

I managed to make it through the entire works of Plato, but Aristotle is driving me crazy. I need something good to read after I suffer through some of his works. I was thinking David Hume. Anyone got a good list or a few recommendations?

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Aristotle for many years was my nemesis simply because he was contraPlato. You have to remember that most of Aristotle' works are 'lecture notes' and were not actually written by him thus the dryness of the man - yet Aquinas would aspire to create the whole of Catholicism through these writings - the Poetics and the Rhetoric are two good places to start (and perhaps end) with Aristotle but the Politics is also worthwile - if you started with the Categories you will surely lose your mind as the logic of Aristotle is dense and all-encompassing to a fault. I think Spinoza is a great 'read' and avoid Hegel and Kant for the time being - also look for some good philosophical commnetaries and Copleston's brilliant History is certainly worth investigating. Many primary sources are unpenetrable initially so you need a good guide to get you over the metaphysical humps as it were...there are great sites online that will lead you to coursework and books and essays that will yield up useful and informative delights of the Queen of the Sciences.

Since nobody has mentioned it yet I'd like to recommend Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will. A wonderful piece on the philosophy of mind, with great clarity.

Gauss referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences". Philosophy is more the court jester :)

Anthem by Ayn Rand is a quick, fun read, albeit a fictional work.

Not Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' which I'm reading at the moment but his 'Philosophy of History' which I'm also reading is far more accessible

Whilst not perfect, and somewhat dated, I would still heartily recommend Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy to anyone new to Philosophy. Also, Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy is a must.

Reading and doing philosophy won't give you many answers. However, it will allow you to develop a strong grounding in your own arguments, and an acute ability to see through the myriad of weak arguments and propositions that you come across as you make your way through life. Not such a bad thing really! In truth, if you've read and comprehended the works of Plato, then you are probably halfway there already!

The most beautiful philosophical texts I have read are:

The Sickness Unto Death by Kierkegaard
I and Thou by Martin Buber
The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Poetry, Language, and Thought by Martin Heidegger
The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes.

You would be surprised how readable Schopenhauer is. Try Vol 1 of The World as Will and Representation.

Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum's "Causation: A Very Short Introduction" is worth reading not simply because it is short, but because it is so clear.

And you might find yourself realizing that what you believed about causation has a cultural ground. It can most likely be traced back to David Hume and it is likely not the best explanation that is currently available. At least that is what happened to me.

It's often said that Plato and Nietzsche are the two best writers out of the major philosophers. Although Kaufmann is the overall standard in the translation of the latter, I've been extremely impressed with how well Ludovicci's work rolls of the tongue when said aloud.

Emerson's essays, if considered as philosophical works, should easily rank among the best-written of all time. They are also far more accessible than Nietzsche, whom they helped inspire. If you are considering Nietzsche, but aren't yet familiar with him, I'd recommend reading Self-Reliance, Power, Fate, Nature, and Intellect out of the essays, and probably the Harvard Divinity Address as well. Along with that, I'd suggest two of Oscar Wilde's essays, The Art of Lying and The Critic as Artist, which are likewise accessible, stylish, and a great introduction to a viewpoint similar to Nietzsche's notions of lying, masks, and the aesthetic.

If you favor a slightly more Eastern approach, Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching is a great classic. I found Alan Watt's to be an excellent and straightforward introduction, as a sort of philosophical crash course in comparative theology. After these, European existentialists like Heidegger and Buber become more readable.

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Originally Posted by Oedipus

Try the novels of the existentalists (Nausea by Sartre, one of the Camus works)

Nietzsche and E.M. Cioran are both good stylists. Try "Human, All Too Human" or "Generalogy of Morals" for Nietzsche, and "On the Heights of Despair" by the latter

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For the last two days I've been trying to recall a specific quote, but couldn't quite put together enough to find it again and the name kept slipping my mind - Emil Cioran:

"Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers."

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Originally Posted by Trevor Gower

For the last two days I've been trying to recall a specific quote, but couldn't quite put together enough to find it again and the name kept slipping my mind - Emil Cioran:

"Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers."

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What Cioran wrote doesn't make any sense. What "definitive" answers does music give? What does that even mean?

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Originally Posted by YesNo

What Cioran wrote doesn't make any sense. What "definitive" answers does music give? What does that even mean?

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You know the feeling when a great piece of music is settling to its close? How complete it can be? Contrast that sensation to finishing a great philosophical passage. The first three sentences focus on this, and are the part that I admire most.

In both cases one feels enlivened and enriched, but there is a feeling of...hunger or searching for more after coming upon a revelation in philosophy, "the need to begin anew" as Cioran puts it. I don't think this is wholly undesirable, in fact, but it is interesting to note. This is, for me, particularly true in the cases of attempts to write out systems of philosophy focusing on causality, no doubt due to language restrictions which prevent us from ever quite reaching the bottom.

I believe that this is something that can be overcome with writing style, if only obliquely. Description, as indicated by Wittgenstein, or the sudden inspiration of poetry is a way of getting at things that causality can't, which also explains a lot of the style of Zen teaching. Aphorisms and poetry with a philosophical bent sometimes achieves that feeling of wholeness, but usually at the expense of either the completeness or accuracy which a whole system of philosophy aims for.

Of course, it's unfair to contrast a fugue with philosophy, even a five part fugue is infinitely simpler than a complete and coherent philosophical system would be. The "definitive answers" bit is also something that I reject. People can talk of turning to music or to nature for answers, but if pressed as to what they mean by it, they almost always end up incoherent. Nonetheless, trying to play out a philosophical thought through poetry and aphorism, assembled systematically like parts of a fugue, strikes me very well, though nobody has managed to do it yet with their own original content.

EDIT: I should add, in hindsight, that I do understand what they mean by "finding answers" in something like music. It derives from the Romantic tradition of knowledge and truth in self-experience, particularly in inspired moments, which can occur, for an individual, when relating to music or, in Wordsworth's case, nature. It's inaccurate to say this is superior to philosophy, in that the latter is dealing with questions framed in language and aren't totally, perhaps not even roughly, comparable. Such questions, and their answers, occur only through the minds of people. The Buddhist and Taoist traditions are better at explicitly handling this differentiation with non-language.

I agree that music and meditation can be satisfying, perhaps more so than philosophy. If the music is good, I wouldn't mind hearing it again and Buddhists repeat their meditations. In both of these activities one "feels the need to begin anew" as well. The satisfaction comes from the acts themselves, like walking through a park or breathing.

Music doesn't pose questions it pretends to answer or even clarify the meanings of. It hasn't reached the level of language where meanings are associated with sounds. However, that one can have pleasurable sounds without words is quite amazing. Try to imagine an artificial intelligent machine really experiencing enjoyment from listening to music. I can't imagine it.