I used to read random books, but not anymore. The Internet is full of various paths of research. The one i attach to this post seems the most reasonable, but I'm still unsure.
>>25465719The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and SophistsPlato - Republic, Phaedo, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, PhilebusAristotle - Categories, On interpretation, Prior Analytic, On the soul, Metaphysics, Nicomachean EthicsDescartes - Meditations on first philosophySpinoza - EthicsLocke - EssayBerkeley - TreatiseLeibniz - Monadology, TheodicyBaumgarten - MetaphysicsHume - EnquiryKant - three critiquesFichte - WissenschaftslehreSchelling - System of transcendental idealismHegel - PoS, SoLthis would be a decent start
>>25465768Not including a single book on the history of philosophy is a major error.
>>25465910oh yeah i forgot about that, a history is essentialA New History of Western Philosophy by Anthony Kenny is great for this purpose
Start with the Greeks
>>25465719>>25465719Philosophy is a broad category of investigation comprising everything from formal logic, to ethics, to Ontology. If you want to learn about "Philosophy" in general, then your best approaches are to either break the subject into several smaller parts, learn each of them as well as possible, and only then begin to learn about how they intersect; or else to simply learn about the history of philosophy, and learn to process, and engage with each new idea in the chronological order of their introduction. Additionally, the threefold division between philosophy, science, and religion is a fairly newfangled thing, so in taking the chronological approach, you will end up studying much science, and religion, in order to keep up. (This is part of the reason why most courses just skip straight from Aristotle to Descartes, ignoring the philosophical movements of late antiquitity, and the Medieval era). In terms of branches of philosophy, I'd mainly recommend:>1. Logic Before Aristotle, Logic essentially doesn't exist; from Aristotle until Frege shows up, Logicians mainly consist of pointing out the problems with Aristotlean logic, and then trying to figure out how to fix them; post-Frege, it mainly consists of taking his mathematical logic, and expanding it to apply to more, and more situations). For this I would recommend starting with developing a decent grounding in modern, post-Frege mathematical logic, then going back and studying Aristotlean logic, then reading up on the history between Aristotle & Frege. If nothing else, this will help you understand what the fuck Hegel is talking about. > 2. Metaphysics (i.e., Epistemology & Ontology). Epistemology is the study of what we can, and cannot 'know', and of how to define knowledge. It can go in some pretty interesting places, but it's not that convoluted in the first instance. Ontology is a bit more complicated. It consists of the study of "being", that is, the question of what makes thing X thing X. A classic internet example of an ontological question is "Is a hot dog a sandwich?". In the early days, this meant that Ontology overlapped heavily with both science, and logic. However, both science, and post-Frege logic now accept that categories are fundamentally arbitrary, and should be constructed, and reconstructed on a utilitarian basis, so modern Ontology ends up consisting mainly of two things: 1. Philosophical investigation of extant conceptual categories, and what their form and function tells us about the humans who created them, and their social and cognitive biases (Heidegger wrote a lot of good shit about this.)2. The debate between Materialists, Dualists, Idealists, and Solipsists over how "real" the material world is, how "real" consciousness is, and what the relationship between the two is.
>>25466354(cont.)> 3. EthicsEthical philosophy can be broken into Meta-Ethics, which argues about what morality even is, with the main schools being:1. Utilitarianism - Morality is whatever provides the greatest good for the greatest number. 2. Deontology - Morality is about following duties one has unto others. 3. Virtuism - Morality is about having good personality traits, and not having bad personality traits. 4. Egoism - Morality is about being self-serving. 5. Nihilism - Morality is bullshit. I am, of course, massively oversimplifying. The second division of ethical philosophy is that which simply takes one of these schools as correct, and then argues about particular ethical questions within their confines. > 4. Political and Social philosophy. I think this one's fairly self-explanatory. So, for recommended reading, I'd recommend one book each on Modern Logic, Epistemology, Ontology, Meta-Ethics, the history of Political-Philosophy, the history of Philosophy more broadly, and at least one book on Aristotle in particular, because his views one Logic, Epistemology, Ontology, and Ethics were the standard that everything else was addressed to, until Kant shows up. In terms of the "Great Philosophers"(TM) that you need to read, after you understand the basis, the major ones are:1. The Pre-Socratics. 2. Plato3. Aristotle4. The Stoics5. Avicenna6. Machiavelli7. Hobbes8. Descartes9. Spinoza10. Leibniz11. Locke12. Hume13. Berkely14. Voltaire15. Rousseau16. Kant17. Bentham18. Fichte19. Hegel20. Schopenhauer21. J.S. Mills 22. Marx23. Frege24. Husserl25. Nietzsche26. Heidegger27. Bertrand Russell28. Gödel29. Wittgenstein30. Sartre31. Camus32. De Beauvoir33. John Rawls34. Peter Singer
>>25465719Herehttps://historyofphilosophy.net
>>25465719>>25465719>endgame of philosophy is reading m*rx>not even reading the guys where he ripped most his ideas from (smith/ricardo, French class theorists - eg. Saint-Simon, Satan)sasuga
>>25465719>Ancient:1. Pre-Socratic- Proto-philosophers and Thales; The Ionians: Anaximander and Anaximenes; Heraclitus- Xenophanes, Parmenides, Eleatics and Megareans- Empedocles; Anaxagoras; Democritus- Pythagoreans2. Classical- Protagoras and Sophists- Socrates- Cynics and Cyrenaics- Plato- Aristotle3. Hellenistic- Stoics- Epicureans- Skeptics- Eclecticism, Roman, Alexandrian4. Theological- Philo of Alexandria; Plotinus and Neoplatonics; Gnostics- Eastern Apologetics; Origen; Gregory of Nyssa- Tertullian; Saint Augustine; Late Patristics>Medieval1. 800-1200- Scotus Eriugena- St. Anselm; St. Bernard; Hugh of St. Victor- Peter Abelard (re: problem of universals)- School of Chartres- Islamic: Peripatetics (early, Avicenna, Averroes), Mutakallim, Al-Gazali2. 13th c.- David of Dinant, Siger of Brabant- Bonaventure; Roger Bacon- Aquinas, Albertus Magnus; Duns Scotus3. 14th c.- Ockham- Meister Eckhart>Early Modern1. Renaissance- Humanists (Italians, de Montaigne, de Sales)- Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, Telesio, Campanella- Francis Bacon- Naturalists (de Groot, Cherbury)- Suarez, de Molina2. 17th c.- Galileo- Descartes, Gassendi- Pascal, Rochefoucauld- Malebranche- Hobbes- Spinoza- Leibniz- Newton3. Enlightenment- Locke; Berkeley; Hume; Shaftesbury; Utilitarians- Voltaire, Fontenelle, Bayle, Encyclopedians; La Mettrie; Condillac; D'Alembert; Helvetius; Rousseau; Reid- Wolff; Kant, Schulze, Jacobi4. Idealism- Philosophical Radicals (Bentham, Mill Sr.)- Fichte; Schelling; Hegel- Schopenhauer- Maine de Biran, Cousin, Ravaisson>19th c.- Comte; J.S. Mill; Herbart; Feuerbach- Marx, Engels- Stirner, Carlyle- Newman, Kierkegaard- Spencer; Pearson; Helmholtz- Lange; Mach, Avenarius, Riehl, Simmel, Vaihinger, Cornelius- Wundt, Renouvier- Taine; Renan- Boutroux, Duhem, Poincare, Le Roy- Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, Troeltsch, Spranger- Emerson, T.H. Green, Bradley, Ward, Royce- Brentano- Nietzsche>20th c.- W. James, Peirce- Bergson; Husserl, Scheler- Moore, Wilson- Cohen, Natorp- Neoscholastics- Croce, Gentile- Lenin- Frege, Russell, Lesniewski, Lukasiewicz- Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg- Angell, McDougall, Wertheimer, J.B. Watson, Freud, Rubinstein- Durkheim, Pareto- Whitehead; Hartmann- Wittgenstein, Schlick, Carnap, Neurath- Heidegger, SartreThat should get you started
>>25466356half of this list is unnecessary
>>25465719https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0zjrnUVl-KBNSM
>>25465719I started with Anthony Kenny's a New History of Philosophy, it's pretty good as a general overview. I'm about 400 pages into it now
>>25465719picrel is definitely a terrible way of getting into philosophy. Either start with the greeks by reading some Plato (maybe his Meno dialogue) or start with the moderns by reading descartes and then locke, then going on from there.
>>25466356I usually don't respond to replies, but I see that you made an effort to explain this well, so thank you
