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Rev0lution
United States1805 Posts
There is western and eastern philosophy and in each there are at least thousands of books. Not only that, but for each sub-philosophy there are hundreds of books. Am I supposed to read on books that reinforce my beliefs or should I read on the classics, and if so what classics do you recommend? If I reinforce my beliefs isn't that just preaching to the choir? What prevalent philosophical schools are considered important and which ones are now defunct? Thanks guys,  | ||
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Pandain
United States12979 Posts
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Rev0lution
United States1805 Posts
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Malgrif
Canada1095 Posts
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Motiva
United States1774 Posts
This for a basic idea (it is fairly narrow, but isn't a bad start) or for a more scrupulous method you could start by simply reading something like Plato's Republic, and then progress across the time line. | ||
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Aus)MaCrO
Australia349 Posts
A website I like is insomnia.ac, which focuses on videogames and philosophy. There is also a forum thread there with a list of recommendations: http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2373 Eastern philosophy is mostly a waste of time as far as I am aware. Hope that helps. | ||
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mainerd
United States347 Posts
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
"studying" philosophy is a lot more like studying history, facts. sure you can pick up ideas but to understand them you're gonna just need to use your own mind. and you could have gotten there anyways without studying other people's work. i am frequently annoyed by half-men/half-parrots that clearly haven't developed their own views through serious contemplation | ||
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noko
United States7 Posts
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illu
Canada2531 Posts
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Bereft
United States1007 Posts
Plato: Republic Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics, Politics Machiavelli: The Prince, Discourses Hobbes: Leviathan Locke: Second Treatise, Letter on Toleration Rousseau: Basic Political Writings Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals de Tocqueville: Democracy in America Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals And haha, I remember reading Sophie's World for AP Lang a couple years back... good stuff. | ||
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e.soul[gm]
Sierra Leone254 Posts
On July 04 2010 11:34 travis wrote: i am frequently annoyed by half-men/half-parrots that clearly haven't developed their own views through serious contemplation sounds like half of the tl.net community. but spiteful words aside, i agree. don't wind up like that op! | ||
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koreasilver
9109 Posts
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URfavHO
United States514 Posts
Regarding Descartes, his writing helped bring the west out of the Dark Ages and made philosophy relevant again, so I can't exactly recommend him unless you're very interested in God or want to understand the concept dualism. He also writes in a very strange style that won't really make much sense in the 21st century. Nonetheless, he is vital in the history and development of philosophy. You can find this for free on the internet so perhaps you'd want to print it out or something (it's about fifty or sixty pages in .pdf). Clifford's Ethics of Belief kind of just tells you that believing things that can't be backed up with sufficient evidence is wrong. It's a very materialistic and promotes skepticism and doubt in your beliefs. In many ways, I feel that it just gives people the right to be a dick to other people in order to promote your own beliefs. Now when purchasing this collection of essays, make sure it's by Clifford and doesn't have other authors attached to it. From what I'm aware, there isn't a single intro phil class that skips this book. Now as far as what you should read, I don't really feel that it's a proper question since you aren't taking a class for it and you don't have any curriculum to adhere to. However, If you want a general understanding of modern philosophy, I'd go with Ethics of Belief. Hope this help, good luck on your quest. | ||
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shinosai
United States1577 Posts
Do not read books that reinforce your beliefs. If your interest is reinforcing your beliefs, then read someone that believes the opposite of you, and try to form an argument that logically disproves it. If you can't, then you've just learned something new. As an aside, Descartes is highly respected for his math, but I'd be wary of his metaphysics. He made some great contributions to modern mathematics, including a proof for an "actual" infinity (great stuff for finitists vs infinitists). As far as his metaphysics go, he spent a lot of time trying to prove the existence of God. And I think it's common belief among philosophers (at least since Kant) that one cannot prove the existence of God through metaphysics. edit: Oh, yea, I should probably mention... if you're really interested in philosophy, Kant is obviously a go to. There are more dissertations and papers written about Kant than anyone else, mostly because of how controversial his philosophy is. He's very important, you'll want to know about him. | ||
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URfavHO
United States514 Posts
On July 04 2010 11:59 shinosai wrote: As an aside, Descartes is highly respected for his math, but I'd be wary of his metaphysics. He made some great contributions to modern mathematics, including a proof for an "actual" infinity (great stuff for finitists vs infinitists). Some say Descartes contributed so much that France decided not to contribute anything for the next three hundred years | ||
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ella_guru
Canada1741 Posts
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Crahptacular
United States295 Posts
If you want to learn philosophy in order to further develop your own opinions on certain subjects, you can probably skip straight to contemporary philosophers who talk about what you're interested in, with just a short crash course (e.g. Wikipedia articles) on the background of that subject. For a very broad example, you might be interested in metaphysics In that case, background knowledge of someone highly influential like Kant would almost certainly be needed; and Kant's metaphysics are (partially) in response to people like Descartes, and so on back to Aristotle. Except if you're only interested in your contemporary philosopher, you only need to know very little about his/her influences in order to know what's going on, which is a really good thing, because fully understanding someone like Kant takes years of dedicated study. As for the question of reinforcing your beliefs vs. challenging them, that's not really a problem. Almost every philosophical work is written in response to something (or everything) written before it. Moreover, many works will make direct references to other philosophers and their arguments, so you'll get a little bit of input from both sides. And if that interests you, you can go find the people who were mentioned and read their works too. Finally, if you're mostly concerned about more "ordinary" or "everyday" philosophical issues (e.g. ethics), you honestly don't need any background information. It's useful and interesting to read what others think, but if I ask you if doing something is right or wrong, you're just as qualified as anyone else to give your opinion regardless of whether or not you can name drop famous philosophers to support your opinion. | ||
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koreasilver
9109 Posts
On July 04 2010 11:59 shinosai wrote: edit: Oh, yea, I should probably mention... if you're really interested in philosophy, Kant is obviously a go to. There are more dissertations and papers written about Kant than anyone else, mostly because of how controversial his philosophy is. He's very important, you'll want to know about him. Regardless of whether you like Kant or not you will always have to cross by him sooner or later. It's always like this with philosophers of stature. Whether you like them or not you inevitably have to study them for some reason or another. | ||
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
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