Comment by ebullientocelot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ebullientocelot | Hacker News Reader

ebullientocelot

So a lot of philosophical writing references a sort of general canon, at least as far as western thinking is concerned. Other traditions I'm sure have their own details but I can't speak intelligently to them. The field is enormous, and without more specific information regarding your goals it is difficult to pinpoint the classics in subfields that may interest you. That said, there are a few highlights I think you're bound to come across reference or allusion to in many, many other works that would benefit you to get some exposure to. I am strongly biased toward a western analytical philosophy tradition--you'll want to check into things far more broadly than I'm recommending to find your own path. My little list is not meant to be exhaustive and is coming from personal memory of "aha!" moments in my own life, but will perhaps serve as a useful beach head for your own investigations:

* Descartes' Meditations

* Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding

* Hobbes Leviathan

* Kant Critique of Pure Reason

* Kant Prolegomena

* Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolution

* Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit

* Foucault Discipline & Punish

* Sellars Epistemology and the Philosophy of Mind

* Sellars The Scientific Image of Man

* Quine Word & Object

* Davidson On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme

* Nagel What is it like to be a bat?

* Searle Minds, Brains, and Programs

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [0] has a ton of great summary articles and bibliographies that could definitely keep you busy for a few decades or so. I've never been tremendously into ancient or non-western philosophy, which is a deficiency I aim to correct one day, but there are a ton of great essays there as well.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/

I'd add Heidegger's Being and Time to that list, and Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra or The Gay Science to that list.

These are are probably the most significant works of Continental philosophy, and should definitely take precedence of Foucault, who's really the only representative of Continental philosophy (with the exception of maybe Hegel) on your list.

It should also be made clear that plato.standford.edu is a highly biased site that mostly depicts philosophy from an Analytic perspective, where Continental thought is barely represented (or misrepresented).

NOTE: As I tried to make clear in a later post in this thread, I'm not recommending Heidegger or Nietzsche for a beginner. I just think their works belong on the list of the person I replied to more than do a lot of the other people he lists (many of whom, by the way, also aren't good for beginners to start with).

Yet again, recommending abstruse works. Being and Time is absurdly difficult for even Philosophy Ph.Ds to parse. Worse yet, Phenomenology is kinda like metaphysics in that many people in the field don't believe that it's even truly legitimate. Heidegger had to go and claim that his biggest fans (Sartre) actually compleatly misunderstood him entirely. If Sartre can't get it right, can a random newcomer understand it the way Heidegger intended?

As far as Nietzsche goes - by his own words (he is very clear about this in one of his books - I think it was ecco homo) - you're supposed to have read ALL of the works of Kant and then Schopenhauer before you can even understand Nietzsche. Not that many people agree with him about that, but it did color my perception of him (and the study of the two that he asks the readers to look into does a massive amount to explain why Nietzsche sounds like such an edgelord)...

"If Sartre can't get it right, can a random newcomer understand it the way Heidegger intended?"

They're not going to understand Hegel either, and probably not Kant, or a bunch of other philosophers on that list.

But Heidegger and Nietzsche were undeniably hugely influential on philosophy, so they belong on that list as much or more than many of the other people listed, who were of minor significance, at best.

Ecce Homo was written shortly before Nietzsche went insane, with chapter titles like "Why I am So Wise", "Why I am So Clever", and "Why I Write Such Excellent Books". I wouldn't take what he wrote there at face value.. and much of what he writes in other places should be taken with a grain of salt also, as he often wrote with tongue firmly in cheek, and it's often difficult to nail down exactly what Nietzsche thought or intended.

This is one of the reasons he's been so influential on modern Continental philosophy, some of which took on wholeheartedly his spirit of play and irony, which most of philosophy before Nietzsche was missing.

That's not to say that Nietzsche can't be serious.. much of his work is serious, but it's written in an aphoristic rather than a systematic way, which makes understanding what he's saying a lot more difficult than, say, many Analytic thinkers, who prize being clear and straightforward.

So, yeah, Nietzsche's not great for beginners either, and he's famous for being misinterpreted anyway, even by professional philosophers. But he's still highly significant, and for my money far more profound than all the Analytics put together.

Absolutely agree.

And sticking with western philosophy, if you are suggesting Hegel and Nietzsche. I would also bring you into the (late) twentieth century with Deleuze & Guattari. But I also wouldn't recommend them to a beginner.

I also think as a start, knowing these figures, perhaps even tasting their work, lets you read around them. You see the way their ideas spread out into the world. I sometimes think there are more different takes on Nietzsche's work than ideas in them!

You can also read back and trace a line of thought through various philosophers from say, Deleuze back through Bergson, Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, Liebniz, all the way back to the Stoics. To understand Dennett, you need see the impact Descartes has on modern thought, and you can trace that kind of thinking back through to the Socratics. You start to see that these philosophical threads actually shape people's entire view of the world around them, and in some way the world itself.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting Hegel and Nietzsche, but Heidegger and Nietzsche.

Hegel, however, was clearly influential, so he shouldn't be left out of a list of influential philosophers. I'm just personally not a fan of his at all, and were it not for his significance I would skip him.

Yes, quite! I meant to say, Hegel and Kant or Heidegger and Nietzsche. Agree about Hegel too, theres a lot of philosophers works I would recommend to give a miss and just read a synopsis. Hegel is in that list, Kant is not.

I think you mean abstruse or obscure, not obtuse. Obtuse means stupid.

+1 for Stanford Encyclopedia. Such a uniquely and consistently excellent resource. Can't think of many things like it for other subjects.

https://qz.com/480741/this-free-online-encyclopedia-has-achi...

This is a great list.

Why no Greeks? Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics at least!

I would add Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism” as a short and readable intro to existentialism, followed by kierkegaard’s Being and Nothingness and Nietzche…maybe The Gay Science? (I am biased towards existentialism)

EDIT

I’m sure to get carried away, but some utilitarians would be good. Bertrand Russell is quite readable. His essays on Happiness are quick and impactful. John Stuart Mill, too, is a marvel of rationality (and progressivism (not on everything)) and sometimes prophetic. There’s value, I think, especially for those in tech to see the limits of rationality.

Spicy hot take, I think Ayn Rand is great for this. She takes hyper rational philosophy as far as it can go. It ends up being absurd precisely because it is so divorced from the irrational sides of humans. She’s fascinating, in my opinion. Understanding why she’s both revered in some parts of society and a bit of a meme in “serious” philosophy is a valuable exercise.

For existentialism/absurdism, you should probably include The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Absolutely. Great addition.

(To this day, I feel like maybe one might…not imagine Sisyphus to be happy? But Camus getting there is valuable. And maybe he’s right!)

BTW - Sartre goes on later in life to claim that Marxism and Existentialism are basically identical, or rather that Marxism is the sociological analog to Existentialism in his work "Search for a Method". This is not very well known among anyone except the Sartre hacks, but is important to mention. Same with Camus and his early relationship with leftist politics.

Source if you don't believe me (see conclusion and checkout a full copy for further context): https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Sartre-Search.pdf

This pdf source is missing the first chapter, "Marxism and Existentialism".

Here's another source in html: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/crit...

I found Plato (and what he relates of Socrates) transparently self serving. Like a consultant who’s recommendations always involve more consulting work.

Perhaps Montaigne's Complete Essays as well (In the translation of M A Screech), since he lucidly summarizes most of what developed till his time, and also analysed and explained in very clear and understandable manner how it all affected his manner of living his own life.

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is a great introduction to Stoicism

I'm personally much more a fan of Seneca. I find his On the Shortness of Life and many of his Moral Letters to be far more eloquent, readable, and profound than Marcus Aurelius or any other stoic.

Overall these are good recommendations. For instance Sellars is hard but extremely important. His disciple Brandom is comparatively more readable and worth investigating as well.

You can safely ignore hegel as I am afraid that if you don't ignore hegel you may think philosophy is useless after you get through 20 pages of any of his works.

Kant may also be a stretch for someone whose new - even the "idiots guide" versions of his works that he wrote because his other works were criticized in his own time for being hard to read

The rest listed here are good - but IMHO you should always start with plato/socrates. I'd throw in Timaeus and the sophist and maybe even parts of republic (at least the chapter involving allegory of cave and allegory of divided line) to this list

Hegel is useful to read if only because he had a meaningful impact on others (whether inspiration/building upon him or, at the very least, reacting to him.) But I could be convinced that spending an hour wrapping one’s mind around the Hegelian Dialectic is enough of an 80/20.

Similar with Kant. Bang your head against the categorical imperative at least. It’s a concept to be familiar with. I agree that a deep read of Kant is too far down the rabbit hole to start with.

For Hegel I’d just say read a short modern secondary source that summarizes the main ideas and traces their influence on subsequent thinkers. Honestly the main point of knowing about Hegel anyway is because he deeply influenced Marx, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and many other philosophers that you might actually want to read and apply to your life and worldview. Peter Singer’s Hegel: A Very Short Introduction is short, clear, and has all the information you’d need (https://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer...).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com