Your Favourite Philosophical Books
I remember old PF used to have a favourite philosophy books thread, there's none over here. So let's make one :)
What are your favourite philosophical works that have most influenced you?
For me probably like this:
1. The Bible
2. Plato's Apologia of Socrates
3. Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love
4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov
5. Blaise Pascal's Pensées & Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
6. Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
7. Thomas Aquinas' Summa contra Gentiles
8. Spinoza's Ethica & Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation
9. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
10. William James' Will To Believe (essay)
But don't take them in order, it's hard for me to order them properly, although I've tried :P
What are your favourite philosophical works that have most influenced you?
For me probably like this:
1. The Bible
2. Plato's Apologia of Socrates
3. Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love
4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov
5. Blaise Pascal's Pensées & Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
6. Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
7. Thomas Aquinas' Summa contra Gentiles
8. Spinoza's Ethica & Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation
9. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
10. William James' Will To Believe (essay)
But don't take them in order, it's hard for me to order them properly, although I've tried :P
Comments (66)
1. Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
2. Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche
3. Baghavad Gita
4. The Gay Science by Nietzsche
5. Poems by Leopardi
6. The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer
7. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche
8. The Bible (Or more specifically the Book of Job if I must choose one thing from the Bible)
9. Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard
10. Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil
1. Read.
2. Read.
3. Haven't read.
4. Haven't finished.
5. Haven't read.
6. Read.
7. Read.
8. Read (not everything though).
9. Read.
10. Haven't read.
:P You have too much Nietzsche in there, and too little Kierkegaard. You should read Works of Love :P
2. Writing and Difference--Jacques Derrida
3. The Postmodern Condition--Jean-Francois Lyotard
4. I and Thou--Martin Buber
5. Anti-Oedipus--Deleuze & Guattari
6. The Birth of Tragedy--Friedrich Nietszche
7. Phenomenology of Perception--Maurice Merlau-Ponty
8. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime--Immanuel Kant
9. Capital--Karl Marx
10. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding--David Hume
You should read Simone Weil. She is brilliant.
In my opinion this was N's best work :P
I've read some quotes from her, may even have taken a look at Gravity and Grace (I remember someone recommended it awhile ago), but didn't go in more depth yet.
Dostoyevsky's great too. Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov, then below them, Demons and The Idiot.
For Dostoevsky I like Brothers Karamazov best. Then the Idiot. Then comes the other two.
A book of such [i]significance[/I], but I have yet to go anywhere near it directly, and have decided instead to approach it indirectly through secondary literature - stuff like 'Das Kapital For Beginners'.
Yes, that's chapter 7: commodity fetishism and ideology.
Quoting Thanatos Sand
And I think that that's probably covered by the chapter on value. It's coming back to me a bit. It has been quite some time, and I've been meaning to go back to my readings on this, but I have a tendency to stop and start and go from here to there. I have so many books read partway and left pending.
How To Stop Worrying and Start Living
Parmenides - On Nature
Plato - Dialogues
Kierkegaard - Journals
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Spinoza - Ethics
Berkeley - Treatise/Dialogues
Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason
Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Presentation
Camus - The Stranger
The Upanishads
That's eleven, but I notice you cheated too.
Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - Phenomenology of Perception
Anthony Wilden - System and Structure
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition
Slavoj Zizek - The Ticklish Subject
Andre Leroi-Gourhan - Gesture and Speech
William Connolly - Identity\Difference
Francois Zourabichvili - Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event
Manuel DeLanda - Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy
11 because everyone else is cheating too :P
by me of course
Plato - Republic
Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
Rousseau - Emile
Hegel - Philosophy of Right
Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols
Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
Heidegger - Being and Time
Heidegger - Collected Essays (specifically Letter on Humanism and Question Concerning Technology)
I'll add JS MIll's On Liberty as my bonus pick.
You mean the Fragments that remain of that? Why did you pick it? It seems to be quite popular, you're not the only one :P
Personally, I've found very very similar wisdom and much more detailed in the Chinese and Asian cultures. The Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, Art of War, etc. are quite similar in nature to H's Fragments. That's one of the reasons why I've chosen the Tao Te Ching in mine (and maybe it should have even been higher up).
Quoting Thorongil
It's surprising that you picked this one. Why so? I didn't like The Stranger, and I've read it multiple times, in 3 different languages actually (including the French original). It's too hopeless and depressing. The Plague and Myth of Sisyphus, I enjoyed much more from Camus, and they both had a bigger effect on me.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Interesting, never read it, but looks very good. I will have a read, thanks for sharing that! (Y)
Quoting Thorongil
X-)
He was one of the first Western thinkers (along with Parmenides and perhaps Anaximander) to recognize and articulate--albeit in obscure hints--the so-called ontological difference between beings (the many) and Being (the One). The one is symbolized by fire, sun, lightning, etc. which lights up specific beings in their differences while withdrawing "itself" from attention ("nature loves to hide"), even though most interpreters posit this as his theory concerning the primary substance of the cosmos along the lines of what many other pre-Socratics were after.
This is an interpretation heavily indebted to Heidegger, something which will turn a lot of people away, but once that ontological difference is grasped most of Heraclitus' fragments become much more accessible than they were previously.
This one gathers together the many, and we as human beings stand in a privileged relationship to "it" despite the fact that we typically don't understand ourselves in this sense, and instead prefer to "fill our bellies like beasts" and engage in other sorts of (what Heraclitus perceived to be) low pleasures unworthy of our true nature.
Others may point to his focus on impermanence, the unity of opposites, his pan(en)theism, and such things as being important and influential philosophical contributions-- some which are indeed very similar to Lao Tzu's pronouncements (as I understand them)--but that bringing to language of the proper essence of man is something simpler yet even more profound IMO. What's more important than knowing your "true" self? Philosophy as a way of being, possibly even the highest way of being.
Lots of conjecture, obviously, and there's much I don't understand about Heraclitus, and probably never will.
The Mind of God- Paul Davies
Reason and Persuasion:Three Dialogues by Plato - John Holbo
Ultimate Questions:Thinking about Philosophy - Rauhut
Plato's Dialogues
Philosophy as a Way of Life- Hadot
The Inner Citadel - Hadot
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
Tolstoy's Short Stories
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Seneca's Letters (well, anything by any Ancient Stoic really. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, etc.)
1. Hamlet
2. Paradise Lost-John Milton
3. Ulysses-James Joyce
4. The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Ubik-Philip K. Dick
6. Beloved-Toni Morrison
7. New York Trilogy-Paul Auster
8. Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad
9. The Crossing-Cormac McCarthy
10. Absalom, Absalom- William Faulkner
>:O >:O >:O Says Sappy without ever having read the work...
You haven't read all of the Bible?
No, there's a few OT books that I haven't fully read.
Yes. We don't have titles for his fragments or those of Parmenides, so that's the title scholars have given them.
Quoting Agustino
My list reflects those works that I read in full and which influenced my thinking the most. I thought Heraclitus' concept of flux was fascinating, and later I saw some parallels with Schopenhauer's will.
Quoting Agustino
It thoroughly absorbed my attention the first time I read it, and I found the main character's exasperated protestations and observations conducive to my mood and aligning well with my general outlook on the world. I might not like it as much if I read it now. I don't know.
The Bebb series
Godric
Telling the Truth: The Gospel As Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
On the Road With the Archangel
And I also like several books by Philip Yancey
Disappointment with God
The Jesus I Never Knew
What's So Amazing about Grace?
The Bible Jesus Read
Soul Survivor
True enough but it was kind of silly at least to me. Meursault always seemed to me to be unable for some strange reason to feel compassion (for example for his dying mother) or empathy towards any of the others. Not only this, but he either did not understand the social games people were playing, or if he did, then he did not use them at all to save his own skin (I've never been quite able to decide between the two). Although he did have some "ability", the ability he had was simple passivity and going with the flow of whatever happened. Which did work in some cases - with Marie, with his friends including Raymond, etc.
:-}
Yep. Regardless of Michael's attempted insinuation, the fact that I haven't read a few books of the Old Testament is not comparable with your situation with Karl Marx's work. At least I've read most of the Bible, you haven't read even 20% of Das Kapital.
Now I do question whether you actually know quite a bit about the Bible, or you THINK you know. Last time we talked you were telling me that the Bible was written many hundreds of years after the time of Jesus >:O
Well yes, maybe I was too harsh above, excuse me. The last sentence was meant to be a joke, but it didn't come out like that, came more like I was trying to make fun of you unfortunately. What I meant is that you shouldn't consider a work to be significant until you've actually read at least a majority of it. Reading about a work, instead of actually the work, can give you a false idea of what it is. And I really mean a false idea. Like I can't believe the stupid stuff I find about, say, even Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation. If I open up Wikipedia, or even the Stanford page, it's full of stuff I wouldn't consider very accurate.
I follow. It's not about whether I'm more of an expert than that guy, this goes deeper. I don't trust experts, most of the experts I've met are wrong very often. I have a deep distrust of experts, even of doctors for example. The other issue I've noticed is that with philosophy sometimes when I read a secondary text by a so-called expert after reading the original, sometimes I feel it has absolutely nothing to do with what I've originally read :s
But Thomas Nagel's What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy was my first taste of philosophy and probably what I would recommend to anybody wanting to discover philosophy for the first time. It deserves to be mentioned.
I'm curious as to what makes The Postmodern Condition a favorite.
I am going to have to bump it closer to the top of my to-read list.
Nikolai Berdyaev - The Meaning of the Creative Act
Nikolai Berdyaev - Divine and the Human
Owen Barfield - Poetic Diction
Nietszche - The Gay Science
Surprised you've listed this over Saving the Appearances. Admittedly, I haven't read it, but some of the reviews that I read of it certainly didn't inspire me to think it superior to Saving (or worth reading for that matter :P ).
Poetic Diction helped in my understanding of how the meanings of words change, and how metaphor is a fundamental component of how language happens. It's not a directly philosophical book, but it's implications are philosophical. It's been a significant influence on me as an artist, and on my own aesthetic philosophy. Saving the Appearances is good, it was just less important for me. But it's definitely required reading for Barfield.
A Short History of Decay by Emil Cioran
The Trouble With Being Born by Emil Cioran
Ethics by Spinoza
Freedom as Development by Amartya Sen
Joyful Cruelty by Clement Rosset
Nihil Unbound by Ray Brassier
This post got me pretty curious. Why Twilight of the Idols over other works from that period? I'd love to hear the rationale, because I think it tends to get interpreted unfairly as a 'minor' work.
Also interested in the rationale for Philosophy of Right since all the Hegel people seem to obsess over the Phenomenology and Logic.
But I have read some lighter stuff and mostly on the humorous side.
On Bullshit - Harry Frankfurt
The Humans - Matt Haig
How to Stop Time - Matt Haig
Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life - Daniel Klein
Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away - Rebecca Goldstein
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a bar - Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein
Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington - Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein
Not so humorous.
The Gospel of Philip - Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union - Jean-Yves Leloup
The Computer and the Brain - John von Neumann
Theory and Reality An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science - Peter Godfrey-Smith
There are a bunch of Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan I want to re-read as well. When I get the time. :chin:
Also Plato's Five Dialogues, The Tao Te Ching and The Analects. Still haven't read The Odes.
The I Ching can be pretty esoteric and superstitious but I may be interested in reading it soon since I still like Astrology, Archetypes, Enneagrams and the like, it's just good old fashion nerd fun I don't necessarily believe in any of the latter. examples.
I think there's some sentimental attachment as this was the first work of Nietzsche's that I read, and it's the one I return to most. Beyond that superficial reason I think it presents a nice broad overview of the major themes of his philosophy. It also contains a few of my favorite aphorisms (e.g. #1 in 'Reason' in Philosophy, #8 in The Four Great Errors and #5 in What the Germans Lack). So yeah, I know it's not typically interpreted by the experts as being one of his better or more important works, but it's the one that's stuck with me most.
Quoting It's cool
Well, I can't comment on Hegel's Logic because I haven't read it, and large parts of the Phenomenology remain incomprehensible to me. But just when I was about to give up on him, I heard someone mention Philosophy of Right as being surprisingly accessible and full of valuable insights. I gave it a shot and found that to be true. Furthermore, as anyone who's engaged me here would probably attest, my style of thinking is very "Hegelian" - seeing the partial truth of competing sides and then endeavoring to lift them up into some larger, reconciled whole. I guess 'sublation' would be the technical term. Whatever the case, I was influenced just as much by the style of Hegel's work as its substance and, as with Nietzsche, he's left a lasting influence on the way I think about a few things; in this case the family, civil society, the state, etc.
Have you read it? If so, what's your take? There are some parts where I was a bit surprised by how traditionally conservative Hegel comes across as, but there are also areas where's he's pretty radical in outlook. That's actually another attraction I find in the likes of Hegel, Nietzsche, and especially Heidegger: they're hard (if not impossible) to place within traditional categories. They seem to think through and beyond rigid alternatives - be they political, philosophical, or whatever - that most of us remain trapped in.
Incidentally, since this list was posted almost a year ago, I may change my list to include one or two really, really good books that I've read within the last year as my focus has shifted towards U.S. history and political philosophy:
Crisis of the House Divided by Harry Jaffa and Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville.
Not sure what I'd remove though...
You articulated its importance and attraction much better than I did.
:up: I don't think that's a superficial reason at all! Actually, I think you raise at least one interesting question not addressed in this thread, which is the importance of when and how we read certain books in our development cycle. I wonder sometimes if anyone can ever fully understand a philosophical work after 25.
Quoting Erik
Perhaps with someone like Nietzsche the best works are those which give an overview of his major themes in a representative tone. I mean, we can track the genesis and development of his themes across works, but I think that in some sense none of his works are essential for just that reason: you can engage with his themes by picking up any book. I think that's why the academe managed to flip Genealogy of Morals from an obscure 'minor' work to one of the 10 most assigned books in university syllabi.
Quoting Erik
I haven't read it in a long time, so I will re-read it on your recommendation. :)
I guess I have mostly given up on Hegel myself. When I read Taylor, Pinkard, Pippin, McDowell, Brandom, Zizek, etc. Hegel seems like one of the most exciting people to have ever lived. But then I read him and get very little of that excitement. He's probably the only canonical figure who leaves me with this feeling. It makes me think that I am better off reading the secondary literature on him.
Quoting StreetlightX
I am pretty sure he does so in his lecture "Nietzsche and the Crisis of Philosophy".
What is the crisis of philosophy in his view? I understood that it was the question of how to embrace atheism while avoiding nihilism. I haven't done any reading in this area, but I was told that the history of philosophy since Nietzsche has been a search for a way to reject God while avoiding nihilism. I have been told that no philosopher has yet been successful in this search.
The title refers to a Walter Kauffman lecture on Nietzsche, and I believe that Kauffman is referring to his own views and time period when he uses the word "crisis", not to the views of Nietzsche.
Quoting Ron Cram
Well, if you enjoy philosophy I would recommend that you do some reading in this area. :) Continental philosophy is fascinating. I am sure many people here can recommend books.
Quoting Ron Cram
There have been many brilliant philosophers since Nietzsche, a lot of whom have been heavily influenced by him. They have certainly had success, in the sense that they have raised questions anew and have developed significant conceptual resources for understanding and addressing the types of questions which Nietzsche, among others, raised. None has been successful in the way that, say, a mathematician would be, since philosophical questions don't really admit of that sort of answering.
What philosopher do you think has been most successful in embracing atheism and avoiding nihilism? If you have some book you can recommend, I would be happy to read it.
My philosophical interests are in epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of life with a minor interest in political philosophy. So, the issue does fit within my areas of interest but I just haven't read much on this particular topic.
Well, I'm probably not the best person to ask this question, because I'm certainly no Nietzsche expert, and your characterization of him is simply not how I read him. Still, I can't help but give a hopelessly obnoxious answer and suggest Kierkegaard to you. I suppose it depends on how widely or narrowly we are willing to take the term atheism.
Quoting Ron Cram
I do have a (more serious) recommendation for you! If you have some time, try reading some Pittsburgh School philosophy (Sellars, Brandom, McDowell). If you have an analytic background, Brandom's book on Hegel might be a good place to start in approaching Continental thinkers.
Sense and Sensibilia, J.L. Austin
The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle
Reconstruction in Philosophy, John Dewey
The Winds of Doctrine, George Santayana (not entirely philosophical, I know, but a good read)
Pirsig - Zen and Lila.
Lakoff - Metaphors we live by and Philosophy in the flesh.
Lao Tsu - Tao te ching (Ursula LeGuin translation).
Claxton - Hare brain, tortoise mind.
Alan Watts - Everything he ever wrote or said.
I would also add unspecified (but well-conceived and -written) fantasy novels, where the experience of different worlds/realities (albeit imaginary ones) can often be food for worthwhile thought.
The best thing I ever learned during 32 years as a firmware designer was about perspectives: nearly every different perspective you can discover is worthwhile, to some extent. Sometimes a problem can be solved simply by finding and adopting a different perspective, or by finding several, and using them in combination. Looking at something from every possible angle (or as many as you can manage/find) is the most valuable and useful problem-solving tool I have ever found. [ I mean "problem" in the broadest sense, intending to include the philosophical conundra (?) we encounter in communities like this one.] But I've never read about perspectives (in this sense) in a book....
Maurice Merleau-Ponty "Phenomenology of Perception"
Thomas Kuhn - "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"
Karl Popper - "Conjectures and Refutations"
Franz Brentano "Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint"
Michel Foucault - "Discipline and Punish"
-Various - "I Ching" (Wilhelm translation)
-Laozi (Li Er)- "Daodejing"
-Liezi (Lie Yukou)- "Liezi"
-Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou) - "Zhuangzi"
-Sunzi (Sun Wu) - "Art of War"
-Yagyu Munenori - "Hereditary Book on the Art of War"
-Miyamoto Musashi - "Book of Five Rings"
Magical realism is an abundantly profound tool for its application in the various spaces of unseen threads, hints, and collections of defunct passage. Hallways, the grand steps of the House, and the untrodden potentialities of the pages. Every possible conglomeration of might, of unseekable ipseity by the very notions of evolved place, conglomeration, and vague opponency of choice, is brought into chaos. The panic, the entropy, and the melisma of the halls can be interpreted in any modality. Those zenithal sounds, halls, Holloways, and insensate beacons of crude want have become as lavalieres, where words, fascinations, obsessions, and bleak terrorscapes may guide the reader into any thicket of verbvepricosities.
There is, in House of Leaves, a fathomless and boring instinct to the core of every escapism. We may eventually discover the complexities of each diverse formation and ultimate dissolution of the unknown through our own homes, which might reflect to us another façade entirely other than our own. The House, too is surely connected by a mesentery of mythomaniacal outlets, wherein shamen, wise magicasters, paracosmicists, and oneirophrenics have envisioned, and interpreted, it.
The Similars, being a motion picture of the uncanny, features a primal distortion of the countenance. The primal form of every unremarkable feature, the facial transformations, and the fundamental fear of conformity or abstrusity is epipresent. Those inherent conglomerations of miraculous foundation, wherein one countenance may become another, are, however, attributed to the machinations of extraterrestrial entities. The entirety of all possible or fanciful countenances are contained here, as the Mexican bus station becomes a harbor of intrinsic collapse, inherent dissociation, and inherent vice. Those convoluted entities of characters, dull terminal scenery, the paranoia, the grim nuance of the hopeless and the trodden, and the eventual revelation of the unthinkable alien are here in full frampold. Each such placement of fright, each rampart of unthinkable clamor, and each desperate character is vivid in its dissociation.
The Similars explores the horror vacui of conformity and the abberant confusion of a society amidst anonymity. The nature of such dastardly disparities between students, the faculty, and the government become apparent through the tensions at the station. The disease carries a mutation of the countenance into the apparent guise of Ulises, a character possibly named for James Joyce. Throughout the journey, which ensues not in an omnibus, taxi, or city, but within a claustrophobic paracosm, we witness a warping of cultures, of politics, and of humanities.
Ulises, we learn, is the first of the group to have transformed. At another time, he was an ordinary countenance, but, because of the extraterrestrial influence, he cannot recognize the transformation. His eventual dearth brings a moment of revelation.
Both House of Leaves and The Similars display a paranoaic escapade found within the confines of the ostensibly domestic. The frightening transition from melancholic hiraeths of the quotidian into absolute and arrant pandemonium is an unending void, a rictus of horror within the bed, within the very fabrics of the unseen, within the voidances of every crude unreality and misstep. The extraterrestrial beings, in their Cosmicism, wish to make humans identical, and therefore otiose to the deistic viewer. Identity and the home are stripped of their reason, and replaced by catechetic calamity. The cacoethes which drive both the Navidson-Greens and the Mexican cast are driven by an insane perplexity at the order of homes, relationships, and features which reassure the traditional familial unit. Ignacio is no placid boy, and neither is the House a mere hearth for the hunter and entourage. In the House, shifting walls symbolize the dissolution of a marriage, of the nuclear family, and of the self. These themes are echoed throughout The Similars, and that profundity of the House. A House which emerges in similarities and in pareidolia is a fundamental mimicry, for, even as the walls shift and sieve, it is not easily distinguishable from the confines of the wonted home.
The Navidson Record illustrates to us the deepest agonies of a life in which supellectile places, people, and ambitions are caught within concentric nightterrorscapes of the unthinkable and the irrational. Every possible outcome, every impossible failure of nuanced room, vice, and countenance are relegated to the ordinary familial home or to the washroom of a degenerate omnibus station. Every portion of the unknown is as a shattering blow to the tastes of the vagrant, for whoever loses a facade, whoever is lost within a hall, loses their place in the hearth and the home.
The Similars revolves about a xenomorphic presence, or egregore, which, as the House was constructed by and for unknown purposes, so too alter the image of man for unknown reasons. The philosophy of pessimistic nihilism is one which encompasses, and confounds, all aspects of existence. House of Leaves is a book within a book, and so nested into the folds of every recursive narrative. Every frightened tumult, clash of nonsensical amphigory, and the mutation of ostensible literature only recurses the further into semioticism.