(Part 2) Best greek & roman philosophy books according to redditors
We found 216 Reddit comments discussing the best greek & roman philosophy books. We ranked the 105 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
> it means the belief in beings with some high but relative degree of power or influence over usually some aspect of the natural world. I wouldn't even consider the latter option as a form of theism.
I would argue that you are
both(EDIT: this "both" existed not to indicate that I was referring to both users, but from an earlier draft when the following list only had two entries) misrepresenting many polytheistic religions, trying to force a definition of "god" developed by one tradition onto a vast array of traditions it was never intended to define, and essentially dismissing the vast majority of theistic religions as not sufficiently "theistic". By sheer number, it would be your conception of godhood that is aberrant.Instead, it is important to understand that polytheistic conceptions of god-hood can vary, and that there are far more than just the two you've presented (which are inadequate for describing any polytheistic religion with which I am familiar). To just include a few conceptions:
In Shinto-Buddhism, the kami are understood to be manifestations of the Buddhas. They function as gods in the maintenance of cosmic order, but take their fundamental existence as an extension of the Buddhas, who transcend existence. Therefore, there can be at least as many unique gods as there are unique Buddhas.
Western philosophers since at least Plato have viewed the gods as unique individuals who share qualities of eternity, omnipotence, omni-benevolence, and omniscience. Christian educators and philosophers of the last two millennia have presented the Hellenic philosophers as possessing a crude form of monotheism, presenting the philosophical idea of "The One" as a god itself, rather than as a category which describes each god as him/herself ("The One is not, and it is not one"). Reading on the work of the Neo-Platonists (like Proclus) illustrates how their ideas of polytheism were conceived of. I would particularly recommend the great work of Edward Butler.
Finally, even the less philosophically sophisticated polytheists of the Indo-European tradition would not be so dense as to "arbitrarily stamp the 'god' title on anyone," as you suggest. Polytheistic traditions tend to have clear distinctions within their own traditions of the properties proper to godhood, and often maintain separate categories of spirituality for respecting the gods, natural spirits, and ancestral spirits (though particular entities may transcend a few of these boundaries). Generally though, the term "god" clearly refers to those powers which are generative of the cosmic order, typically preceding the cosmic order in some way. Their power is not just "relative" as you present it, but, in terms of the cosmic order, fundamental. The gods, by virtue of their extreme excellence, collaborate in the creation of the cosmos. It is this trend of polytheistic spirituality that called the philosophers to attribute the gods a position in their metaphysical systems superior to nature, soul, intellect, and being.
So, as I find myself often having to say, one should not over-generalize polytheistic religions.
I would suggest that the best (most literal) translation available right now is the Joe Sachs' edition. There are some disputes over some of the terms he translates that people argue loses the original Greek sense of the word ("active condition" where others have used "habit" or merely "beautiful" for "kalon," which has the triple sense of the beautiful/noble/fine). There is a Claremont Institute book review about the difficulty of translating Aristotle into English, too.
Since studying Aristotle's Politics is the natural follow-up to the Ethics, I would recommend the Lord's translation as being the most literal.
Lastly, for additional reading on The Ethics, check out Ronna Burger's Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics.
Socrates wrote no books himself, and our sources (dialogues by Plato and Xenophon, a comic play by Aristophanes, and some statements of Aristotle) diverge wildly, so the exact content of Socrates' teaching is disputed. Frederick Copleston discusses some different interpretations on pp. 99–104 of A History of Philosophy, vol. I—a work I recommend starting study of Plato and Socrates with, because I found it much easier to appreciate Plato's metaphysics once I understood how his predecessors had dealt with the same questions. For a more direct and in-depth answer to your question, see Terry Penner's chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Plato.
Alain Badiou recently wrote this article on Hegel's master/slave dialectic, but did so asking the question as to it's relation to real slavery. It answers the question quite nicely while also providing an extremely clear reading of Hegel's argument.
Frederick Beiser also wrote a book on Hegel (there are ways to get the PDF version of this if you look in the right places) that is clear and does a good job dispelling the common misreadings of Hegel.
Peter Singer's Very Short Introduction to Hegel (again, available as a PDF in the right places) is also extremely clear and well written.
If you're serious about reading Hegel, pick yourself up a copy of Phenomenology of Spirit and read through it with Gregory Sadler's Lecture series. He goes through paragraph by paragraph explaining the whole text. He's extremely engaging and extremely insightful.
If you can't get enough Hegel and you want to go all in, I'd recommend The Hegel Variations by Fredric Jameson, Hegel: Three Studies by Theodore Adorno, and Less Than Nothing by some Slovenian guy.
Sorry if that's overkill, hope it helps!
I suggest this version of JL Ackrill. I would also suggest using educated resources online (look up scholars and philosophers preferably) to supplement the reading.
Additionally, you could just look on Stanford's philosophy dictionary for some decent insight.
Here is a list of his complete works. For his 124 letters i would recommend this. All of them are very good, i would probably start here.
https://www.amazon.com/Senecas-Letters-Stoic-Thrift-Editions-ebook/dp/B01N9BAEOR/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=seneca+letters+dover&qid=1556029398&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
As for other works i have ranked in order what i think you should read first. They are all expertly written so all should be checked out eventually, regardless here is my order.
This book has most of them except shortness of life, which you should buy separately as it is his best dialogue, or read it online on wikisouce which has all of his works for free.
https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Essays-Oxford-Worlds-Classics-dp-0199552401/dp/0199552401/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1556029795
I read this one recently and would recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Epicurus-Reader-Selected-Writings-Testimonia/dp/0872202410/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?keywords=epicurus&qid=1564757535&s=gateway&sr=8-11
It’s a short collection of his texts, letters and other fragments. The introduction is really good.
Well, the gold standard is the 2 volume Oxford translation:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works-Aristotle-Vol-1/dp/069101650X
But the logical works are in a separate volume from the ethics and metaphysics.
Hackett is generally good too - this volume seems to have exactly what you're looking for:
http://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Introductory-Readings-Hackett-Classics/dp/0872203395/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418606074&sr=1-1&keywords=hackett+aristotle
EDIT: Based on the Amazon reviews, these might be better alternatives to the Hackett edition:
http://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Selections/dp/0915145677/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_i
http://www.amazon.com/New-Aristotle-Reader-J-Ackrill/dp/0691020434/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418606837&sr=1-2&keywords=ackrill+aristotle
Lately, I'm suggesting Frederick Beiser's Hegel to people who ask me for introductions to Hegel. In this little introduction Beiser manages to give a much better overview of Hegel's philosophy, in its proper context. He knows very well classical German philosophy (he has some good books about it also) and writes very clearly. It's much much better than Peter Singer.
But I've copied a part of his commentary on dialects here, take a look: http://pastebin.com/bUi8CTNp
This book by Jonathan Barnes comes highly recommended.
This is the core critique that most reactionary thought is based on.
Reactionary future has a good article here about exactly this issue. The solution according to reactionary thought is to replace the entire structure with a leader who uses human judgement as opposed to protocol. Most of his thought originates in Moldbug's original writings. Fundamentally it is the difference between order and chaos or the spiritual and the mundane (form and matter).
All reactionary thought (like most good Western Philosophy) is simply a restatement of Plato's Republic. So you might as well skip the modern stuff and read it directly from the greatest book ever written. This is no bad thing however as it is the truth. (I recommend this version)
"dead" isn't really the best way to put it; non-existent is better. before we were born, we didn't exist and after we die we will re-enter that state of non-existence. read some epicurus if you're interested. he's the awesome philosopher that came up with this way of thinking.
The way you describe it as losing your other half... You should read Plato's Symposium. Specifically the translation done by Alexander Nehamas. As that is the one I have read. There is a lot of great insight on love and its different forms.
http://www.amazon.com/Plato-Symposium/dp/0872200760
> I can't engage in a meaningful dialogue with the Eleusinian or Orphic mysteries
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Philosophy-Mystery-Magic-Pythagorean/dp/0198150814
Kingsley has connected many of the dots you don't consider meaningful enough for dialogue.
this is not really the best history of philosophy of around. when it comes to difficult philosophers like hegel, russel just says he did not understand them, so it must be bullshit anyway, and skips the whole episode. for a much better history see this one. it is also more recent, and has a more political orientation.
this is the one that gets acclaim from both camps
It's his first. "Reality" is good too.
He takes an academic approach to discussing the magical perspectives of Empedocles, Parmenides etc.
Get the audiobook of this:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Dream-Reason-Philosophy-Renaissance/dp/0393049515
It presents a great overview of classical Western philosophy, and the audiobook version can be absorbed while you are driving, walking, etc.
My preferred version is Terence Irwin's Second Edition (2000). Note that this is not to everybody's preference; it's accessible, straightforward and it flows well, but it does translate a few Greek terms that would have been worth keeping! As always, reading around the subject will add these terms to your vocab.
I stumbled across this r/philosophy thread - Joe Sachs' Edition and Lord's Edition are amongst the most popular. Does anybody else have a preferred translation?
In terms of Aristotle's great-souled man and his understanding of friendship, we unpack these concepts in Part IV of this podcast series! I hope you enjoy the show enough to stick around until Part IV!
Sincerely,
Jack
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Socrates doesn't have any writings.
Very Short Introductions
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Routledge Philosophers
The Socrates entry in this series won't be released until later this year
Plato
Aristotle
Alternatively, just read the first volume in Kenny's A New History of Western Philosophy.
>Suppose you had never eaten or even seen pineapple, kiwi, or strawberries. But your friends tell you how great they all are, and how sweet and tangy they are. And then you get a piece of fruit, and you've never seen it before and you don't know what it is. So you taste it, and it seems like you've been told pineapple is like, so you go on telling everyone how great pineapple is and how much you love it. And then later you come to find it wasn't pineapple or even any of the others, it was an orange.
Well then you've been enjoying a pineapple that happens to be something also people call an orange, but like Shakespeare said, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet". So enjoy your citrusy orange colored pineapple. However I get what you're saying so why not start with some good philosophy that atheists, Buddhists, Christians, agnostic, anti-theists all agree on like Plato 99 cents on kindle? He'll directly counter your philosophy and you won't have to throw away science. So here I am a Christian recommending you to read a book that Sam Harris* would highly recommend too so what am I selling you right now? Except inviting you to look at the world with objective truth and after that you can make your own decisions.
Also how do you know I'm not the fruit coming to you?
i recommend the topic Xenophanes. he was a very interesting pre-socratic philosopher.
what you do is read chapters 1 and 2 of this book (i love this book):
http://www.amazon.com/World-Parmenides-Essays-Presocratic-Enlightenment-ebook/dp/B00HDE4IKY/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
and then you will have plenty of information to write a very interesting and impressive essay. only reading 2 chapters isn't that much, i think this is a great way to do it, and it's really fun/interesting and would impress your teacher with knowledge s/he would not expect you to have.
one of the interesting issues with pre-socratic philosophers is we don't have their books. we have "fragments" which are little pieces of their text which survive because someone else quoted them later on, and that other person's book survived. you can actually read the entirety of everything Xenophanes wrote that we still have in a very short time at http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/xenophan.html
there's hardly any fragments. but i think if you start there it will make no sense and be boring. but after you read the 2 chapters from the Popper book, then you might be interested in the fragments. but they're optional. (Popper quotes some and you could just talk about those only, that's be completely fine)
there are controversies involved with Xenophanes. different people translated him different ways. Popper disagrees with some other scholars about it and offers some controversial interpretations of what Xenophanes meant. you can see some of this by comparing the translations in Popper's book that he uses for some fragments to the webpage i linked.
Absolutely! I'm not an expert, but I find great joy in wading into the thoughts of some of the great philosophers. You may also be interested in reading an "introduction to philosophy" type of book or taking a philosophy class before delving into original texts. It may help with building context and categories of topics like Epistemology, Ontology/Metaphysics, Ethics, etc.
Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy is a decent book to set the stage. The Great Courses offers Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition as an audio lecture series - also a great overview. Finally, Hank Green's Crash Course: Philosophy is an outstanding video series presented to a general audience. Enjoy, my friend, and I hope you are able to glean as much joy as I have from investigating our understanding of the world around us!
The Dream of Reason by Anthony Gottleib is an excellent introduction to philosophy from ancient Greece to the Renaissance.
That's one great way to start.
Alternatively, you could start with who I think the greatest philosopher is, Ayn Rand, who is basically the philosopher who resolved Aristotle's few errors.
But starting with the questions of philosophy as they arose, which is what Dream of Reason does, is the more advisable route.
Modern philosophy, which was the subject of debate that the I was engaged in with the other poster, is badly mistaken phoniness, which you'll see emerge if you follow the conversation. The other poster essentially gave up when he realized that his premises lead him to believe in things that are impossible.
http://www.amazon.com/Plato-Symposium-Hackett-Classics/dp/0872200760
Here are amazon links for:
I don't think that the author's definition of reason holds up. He would have been much better off talking about natural philosophy instead of reason. After all, that is what Thales is known for, he is the father of natural philosophy. Do you really want to argue that there was no reason before Thales? After all it is thought that Thales got his "monist principle" from the Egyptians (and why can't we just be more rigorous and call it archē?). What is unique with Thales and the ancient Greeks is the separation of reason from religious dogma, not reason itself (for a short and sweet treatment of these standard positions you could refer to the intro to Thales in this book.
The other thing that irks me is that in order to say something grand, the author feels like he has to sweep under the rug the entire history of summodeisms, henotheisms, monolatry, and frankly, if we are honest, monotheisms before the Greeks. Anyway, I want to leave this reference. I think this is a much more sophisticated argument for why monotheism: "Holy Resilience: The Bible's Traumatic Origins," by David M. Carr.
> of which I'm having a hard time finding the essential works of
This is because we just don't have them. We have mainly collections of fragments and testimonia. The Kirk and Raven that /u/varro-reatinus suggests is a good text, but I would also recommend Graham's book.
Contrary to the other position, though, I don't think it's actually necessary to start with the pre-socratics since they are so incredibly piecemeal that to think of them as putting together coherent project and reading them as such involves quite a bit of speculation which might be dangerous if you're jumping into philosophy; whereas one can get a great deal of Hellenic Greek philosophy without extensive knowledge of the pre-socratics (and, indeed, this is the route that most intro level courses at the undergrad level go). Making matters worse, much of the presocratics wrote in a way that's not altogether clear (in poetry for instance). If you're intent on getting into it, I would read up on the figures in SEP, but, while helpful, it is absolutely NOT necessary to read up on pre-socs prior to engaging with Hellenic Greek philosophy; or, alternatively, Aristotle's Metaphysics I (which while not necessarily faithful, gives a glimpse of how the Hellenic Greek's would have understood the pre-socratics). While reading pre-socs will give you context, it's going to give you a very incomplete one that I'm not sure a neophyte would have the historical or philosophical background to understand adequately.
To put things in perspective, while the Greek tradition is viewed somewhat homogenously, someone like Thales (one of the earliest pre-socratic figure) and Plato would have been separated by 300 years. This is not a perfect analogy, but at least temporally, while there is a relatively persistent cultural lineage there, this means that their relation is something more analogous to our relation with, say, Kant than our contemporaries.
tl;dr: feel free to start with the Hellenic Greek philosophers: it's what most intro to philosophy teaches anyways :)
> i ask you to explain to me, how the average person has the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions about who should run state?
It’s not necessary to explain this to you because the question is entirely irrelevant. It is a very narrow and parochial understanding of knowledge which becomes apparent if you reverse the question: How can any one individual, or small group of select individuals, have the required knowledge of the populace to make informed decisions about how the state should be run on their behalf?
The issue is not whether "the vast majority of people” have or don’t have "the required level of knowledge on politics” because they don’t need whatever this specialist knowledge is to have specialist knowledge of their own lives and families.
In fact, for that matter, specialist knowledge of the kind you are talking about is highly disputed, is not a well-defined object that can be learned or not and is the subject of endless debate - in a democracy at least that’s true. Under a dictatorship you can simply have dissenting voices silenced.
> … dictatorships are less pleasant but democracies are just as corrupt as any dictatorship its just far less obvious ...
That is absolute rubbish. I mean it’s not even a different point of view, just actual palpable nonsense.
The only way in which that statement could be true is if we were to extend the meaning of ‘Democracy’ to include countries like North Korea as they are named the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea or Zimbabwe or any other places which ostensibly have some form of democracy, let’s say Nigeria, but where corruption is absolutely rife and not even “far less obvious” but plain to see to anyone from the minute they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed at night.
The important point there from your argument is that the issues of corruption in the latter ‘democracies’ have absolutely nothing to do with the form of government they have, or who is in power at any one time, or whether or not the populace at large have what you call "the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions”.
Corruption exists in democracies such as the US or the UK and so on. But so do burglary, murder, extortion, rape, riots, inequality and any number of other crimes and injustices. A democratic system is not a promise of utopia and was never meant to be.
You’re a student so you’re young and it’s fine to hold pompous and silly ideas for the sake of shocking older people such as myself, but if it really is the case that you have actually "done considerable research” into dictatorships and democracies, then perhaps you could tell me what your thoughts on. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1: The Spell of Plato as I have to say your comments are rather suggestive of the idea that you think a dictatorship ruled by an elite class of selfless and benign philosophers would be just as good, perhaps better, than a democracy.
You could also, for instance, look at books such as these and explain where you can find anything comparable happening under a functioning democracy (and not e.g. those I mentioned before):
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder
The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World by Theodore Dalrymple
Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
Aristotle's De Anima helped me in my work to create Mens Latina artificial intelligence in Latin language.
I didn't know there was anything that substantial about not taking the lazy man's way out and either being an intolerant backwards bigot or a spineless moral relativist that accepts everyone for who they are. Pretty sure that should be the standard and that's what the majority of us have been working towards for sometime.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Open-Society-its-Enemies/dp/0415237319