Mr.Duck on 23/10/2009 at 21:32

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I want to start reading into some serious/interesting western & eastern philosophy literature.

Starting with the old school classics of the Greek works (Plato & Co.), but I wondered where to go on from there. Also, as mentioned, I'd like to read on eastern philosophy, so if anyone has names, please mention'em.

While we're at it, any favorite philosopher and any given reason why he's your man/woman?

Thanks in advance, guys.


Feel free to discuss about philosophy and jest a bit, but no extreme derailment with fighting and bickering (or else I am calling the GeeBums).

Mr.Duck on 23/10/2009 at 21:38

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Ah, that's always a good place to start. Thanks!

Any books that you personally reccomend?

:)

PotatoGuy on 23/10/2009 at 21:41

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This can be a stupid question, but did you read (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_World) Sophie's World?

Though not only being a novel, it also is a basic guide to philosophy, and I found it very enjoyable to read. When you have read it you probable got interested in some of the mentioned philosophers, and read a book they have written theirselves.

demagogue on 23/10/2009 at 22:06

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Yeah a cool way to do it is chronologically ... at least a few short passages from each guy and maybe a whole work for the big guys. I'll give you a big list as a starting point that you can winnow down. (I was a philosophy major after all.)

[Edit: Well that's a big list, but it gives at least a good order. I put a star next to some fun ones I'd recommend in a knee-jerk way, good for general readers, and maybe a book, though I might pick differently if I sat down and thought about it.]

Some of the chestnut "must reads" in terms of historical importance are:

ANCIENT and MEDIEVAL: a few pre-Socrats maybe (Heraclitus vs Parmenides is sort of fun), *Socrates/Plato (Meno, Phaedo), *Aristotle , *Augustine (Confessions or City on a Hill), Avecinna (Ibn Sinna), Anselm, Aquinas [More literary for general reading might sub for *Abelard (his auto-biography is awesome), Machiavelli of course]

EARLY MODERN: *Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, *Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, *Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, *Kierkegaard, Mill, Marx, *Nietzsche, W. James [More "literary" you might sub for Voltaire, Emerson, Thoreau, all of which I recommend]

MODERN: Moore, *Russel, Husserl, Heidegger, *Wittgenstein, *Sartre, Beauvoir, Quine, Bergmann ...

By this time you get to the contemporary era and there's just an explosion of guys to read, so it gets more down to what you're into. If you're into more logic and ethics, I'd say maybe pick anything from Searle, Rorty, Nozick, Putnam, *Nagel, *Singer, *Dennett.

If you're really into Continental stuff, they have some of the most "literary" style, then pick from *Tillich, Merleau-Ponty, *Arndt, *Buber, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur ... edit: Oh, and you have to read Gasset in the original Spanish of course!

As for Eastern, a chronology there might be like:
China - *Confucius, *Sun Tzu, *Laozi, Mencius, Zhuang Zi
India - one of the Vedic histories maybe, *Siddhartha, Badarayana, *Bodhidharma
Japanese I ironically don't know as much except for Nishida Kitaro, who I really like, a 20th Century guy.

..........................

Edit2: As for the thing I'm into lately ... the revolution in cognitive science is suddenly making the old European phenomenology guys (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty) relevant again in a big way. They never did fit well with Analytic philosophy (US & UK; Russel, Witt, Carnap, Quine), but now for the first time we can start reconciling how Husserl and Carnap talked about the mind and consciousness. Or to put it in a more interesting way: Husserl et al started talking about consciousness from only the experience itself; everything else is out of bounds. Carnap et al talked about it like a big AI program shifting symbols around you could program into a computer. CogSci is now coming out with ways to talk about programming "experience" into a computer so you reconcile the approach of both lines, though you have to "translate" both of them to something new to do it. Anyway, that's a topic generating some action lately ... not just "thinking" computer programs, but ones that can dream and have emotions along with their thinking, too. Anyway, the point is, re-reading the phenomenology guys in light of all the stuff happening in CogSci these days is really interesting to me, translating how their ideas on consciousness might actually play out in real human brains/minds ... So Husserl is turning into my go-to guy lately for that reason, along with Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.

Edit3: Sorry for going on like this. The other thing I wanted to add is that I've always thought that philosophy, at its best, isn't a spectator's sport. You should jump in feet first arguing right along with them. It's best IMO when you ask questions and try to figure out what somebody really means or what the right answer to their question really is, and then talk about it with other people ... that's the line between just "reading" philosophy books and "doing" philosophy. So if you read something interesting, it might be fun for you to bring it up for us to talk about, especially if it raises a big question without a clear answer.

june gloom on 24/10/2009 at 19:32

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Just popping in to say that Kant is a dickbag and is not worth reading.