(Part 2) Best modern philosophy books according to redditors
We found 271 Reddit comments discussing the best modern philosophy books. We ranked the 156 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.
This is a tough question. There is so much that has been written on this part of the Investigations, making it hard to generalize about what "most philosophers" think. What's worse is that you get radically different interpretations about what's actually going on in the argument. Lots of people have, and continue to struggle with the book. If you are interested in secondary literature on this (and it is voluminous), you can look up Peter Winch, Bloor, McDowell, Goldfarb, Kripke, Stroud, Stern, Diamond. And those are just some of the bigger names that have written notable essays on this argument. To be honest though, I'd just slowly work through the PI a few times. (Though check out the Routledge Guide for a good book to help you through the text.) The PI is different sort of philosophy book, and it can be quite rewarding.
So, given that little preamble about the difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein, take what follows with a bit of salt.
On the "obscurity" of the text: I think the book is not intentionally obscure, and Wittgenstein is not hiding some idea he wants us to struggle to get at; the literary device of the book places a role in communication with us that could not be done with just explicit statements. So, the upshot is to get us to see/think/track/evaluate things other than arguments, propositions, etc; Wittgenstein wants us to increase our awareness of when we are making certain philosophical moves. So, Wittgenstein is not giving clear arguments that are designed to relieve you of your burden (of, say, mind/body types of problems). Instead, we are led in a non-argumentative way, so that you recognize "loaded" (there is supposed to be a negative connotation here) vs. ordinary ways of speaking, so that you see how speaking a certain way distorts the concepts you are using. But the feeling is fleeting: it's not an argument, it's not a proof such that you then say, "aha! That's a pseudo-problem."
So, on a more general level, Wittgenstein's method in PI has an holistic quality about it, such that his remarks about private languages are subtly, but deliberately, connected to considerations spanning different fields of philosophy. Indeed, part of his project seems to be showing us that when we attempt to defend some of our intuitions about the essence of language, we tend to bring certain presuppositions to bear about, say, mental states, normativity, skepticism, and scientific observation. As we go further down the road of defending these linguistic intuitions, we, almost reflexively, engage with various philosophical assumptions – and we might not have thought that our view of language is connected to all these other presuppositions. All of that is to say that the bits about the PLA probably can't be cleanly separated from the rest of the PI.
If you look at and around 304 you might see that Wittgenstein has seemed to deny the reality underlying pain behavior, but what he is actually denying is the whole framework that “either pains exist and underlie pain behavior, or they don't.” Wittgenstein wants to avoid, both, behaviorism and the notion that our language of, say, pains, refers to some mental state. To some people, (and indeed, the interlocutor in the PI is one such person), this seems paradoxical. But much of the PI is designed to get us out these paradoxes. Wittgenstein wants to say that the problem of skirting between behaviorism and say, Cartesianism, is a monster and we should realize that this whole palette is a misunderstanding of mind, meaning, normativity, and rules. We need to recognize this monster, and not try to find a middle way between it, but instead come to see the developments that led up this problematic position. So, for example, Wittgenstein isn't denying the phenomenal experience of, say, seeing blue; indeed, when I look at the sky it "seems blue." He is making a point about language that we couldn't communicate such a private sensation, or talk about it. So, he's not denying the reality of our experience of the world has a quality and it seems some way to us.
What are the criticisms of this sort of thing? It's hard for me to say. As I read Wittgenstein, he doesn't really offer arguments in the traditional sense, so much as try to get you into a position to undergo a sort of gestalt shift. The idea seems to be that, perhaps, over time, one can slowly lose a way of thinking that led to so many problems, and adopt a sort of thought that won't necessarily solve more problems, but make problems less likely to appear.
What sort of argument does one give to respond to that? If I give you this picture, tell you it looks like a duck, trace the supposed duck features, highlight the supposed duck parts, and yet all you see is a rabbit, what sort of argument could you give that I'm wrong? Understood in this way, Wittgenstein can be incredibly frustrating (or incredibly rewarding). Perhaps the interlocutor doesn't pose the right argument to Wittgenstein. Perhaps Wittgenstein's responses to the interlocutor are insufficient. Perhaps, as a reader, you never have the gestalt shift; perhaps there isn't one to have.
if you think time is a social construct, so are mathematical symbols. read kripke's interpretation of wittgenstein: https://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Rules-Private-Language-Elementary/dp/0674954017
Summary
Philosophy professors Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse, authors of Why We Argue (And How We Should) , and Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of Philosophy, engage in unscripted dialogue about philosophical topics. Here, they put their MIllian Principles to the test. Mill's Maxim is that, "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." And so, here they perform what they call THE BEST ARGUMENT CHALLENGE -- they wrestle with what they think is the best argument for views they hold false. In this episode, they address what they think is the best argument for Utilitarianism.
Gilles Deleuze has a lot to say about such topics. In Difference and Repetition, the third chapter is called "The Image of Thought", and he lays out 8 characteristics of thought as it has been traditionally conceived. Deleuze's goal is to challenge all of them. He returns to this sort of theme with his What is Philosophy (co-authored by Guattari).
Heidegger doesn't talk specifically about ideas (as far as I'm aware), but he has a long-lasting pre-occupation with figuring out what we mean by "thinking." What is Called Thinking is the name of one of a late book and comprises a lecture series he had given.
Max Scheler actually wrote a book, Ressentiment, that targets Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity and characterization of resentment.
Wittgenstein by William Child is really good. It covers all the major topics and is written in a very clear and easy to follow prose. A more advanced book is Marie McGinn's Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
But reading Wittgenstein himself is indispensable. I would recommend starting with the Blue and Brown books (it's a single book actually), and then reading his magnum opus Philosophical Investigations. You should keep in mind that there is no scholarly consensus even on the basics of W's philosophy and you should therefore be very cautious with any secondary literature that you read. It is better to make up your own mind based on Wittgenstein's own texts rather than what commentators say about them. Wittgenstein's later philosophy is non-technical and pretty much self-contained in that it doesn't presuppose much prior philosophical knowledge to understand (or at least to be able to follow it) so there's really no good reason why you shouldn't just start with the primary texts.
The narrator is Charlton Heston, and apparently the text is written by Richard Schacht, author of the book on Nietzsche in the Arguments of the Philosophers series. More from the Giants of Philosophy series here and here.
Because only about 10% of american philosophers identify as continental and the other 90% fundamentally dismiss the discipline. They dismiss the discipline only on the basis of the name, which comes down to analytics judge books by their covers.
Pretty sure this is what analytic(s) think continental philosophy is. The sad truth is they are not far off.
You might consider checking out a book called Kierkegaard's Philosophy: Self Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age by John D. Mullen. That book may provide some of the answers you're looking for.
Hope you all enjoy, I'm surprised how little the influences, especially his impact on Japanese culture, is discussed. I've even linked to a book that discusses his impacts on Asian culture in general. I'll share below too.
https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Asian-Thought-Graham-Parkes/dp/0226646858
So I learned most of my Nietzsche from Schacht.
https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Arguments-Philosophers-Richard-Schacht/dp/0415090717
This is his book. Anyway, Nietzsche, in terms of moral philosophy, makes two moves. He spends a lot of his writing tearing down various religious beliefs and non-religious enlightenment moral philosophies. He tries to leave basically nothing in his wake.
Then this quote and others like it happen. Its an argument that you need some values, you can't just be an amoral monster. That is no way to live.
Once that is all well and good then he begins to develop his positive moral philosophy, which is pretty run of the mill Aristotelian virtue ethics except he adds creativity as one of the virtues.
The phenomenological mind is pretty good, although its not a typical introduction, more like a summary of the main phenomenological topics, without going into detail of each phenomenological thinker, their main ideas, and comparing it across other phenomenologists. Zahavi also has a good introduction to Husserl.
I respect your religion, and if I ever met you in person, I'd never let our differences in opinion on that keep us from being friends.
With this in mind, I read this book some time ago (http://www.amazon.com/Critique-Religion-Philosophy-Walter-Kaufmann/dp/0691020019/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320091890&sr=8-1) which blew my hair back in terms of my own understanding of religion. It gives a great explanation of how religious experiences and languages are not "explainable" from a philosophical and linguistic point of view, using in this case experiences from the Catholic tradition. It's a great treatment on the topic.
The book is actually very sensitive to religion, too - it's not a full anti-religion book. If I recall correctly, the author was an agnostic when he was writing it.
Oh well, just my two cents.
That's not true. He was referring to people like Heidegger and Paul de Man, left wing European intellectuals who were nazis and then became heroes to the new left and post modernists. Insinuating that anybody you disagree with is an anti semite or racist is a stalinist tactic of ziofascist neocons and establishment liberals. Richard Wolin has written about the phenonomena of nihilist, anti enlightenment, anti capitalist, and anti science romanticist European intellectuals who were first nazis and then whose ideas were supported in America by post modernists.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Seduction-Unreason-Intellectual-Postmodernism/dp/0691125996
http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Postmodernism-Skepticism-Socialism-Rousseau/dp/0983258406/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375668152&sr=1-1&keywords=stephen+hicks
http://www.amazon.com/Deconstruction-Literature-Criticism-after-Auschwitz/dp/0874515661/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375668256&sr=1-6&keywords=david+hirsch
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Enlightenment-Tradition-Zeev-Sternhell/dp/0300135548/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375668499&sr=1-3&keywords=zeev+sternhell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_nationalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Enlightenment
The two intellectual movements Molyneux was referring to. Supported by European intellectuals like Herder, Heidegger, and Fichte.
No, he argues that philosophy is meaningless, shuts up, and then writes an entire new book plus leaves behind many books of notes.
Dammit, you're both wrong.
First guy, the fact that you'd link to "idealism" and think that it has any relevance to the tenants of Buddhism indicates that your sweeping pronouncements on the affinities of Buddhism to other religions, and indeed all world religions, is remarkably shallow. There are strands of Buddhism, Zen being one, which are deeply atheistic. Come back when you understand why. When you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha being a good place to start.
Second guy - Nietzsche didn't understand a damn thing about Buddhism and his opinions on the subject are widely dismissed. There are interesting affinities with this thought and Buddhism philosophy further explored here but his speculations on Buddhism, filtered through Schopenhauer, are almost entirely worthless.
Both of you are going to come away from this thinking that the people on the other side of the argument are misinformed. In this case, you're both right.
Check out some secondary literature/introductions to those subjects/authors. If you want to delve further they usually have helpful "Further Reading" sections that will give you other points of departure, that will hopefully be better paths to understanding than, just say, picking up Of Grammatology.
There is even a continental theory book in the A Very Short Introduction series, but based on the reviews it doesn't sound like it's what you're looking for.
Which commentaries/reactions do you have? I, too, would be interested in getting commentaries on Kant, though mainly on CPR. He had some theological ideas (and stuff in a few disparate sections) I'd be interested on reading more about.
Can't say much about commentaries. However, I have a few ideas as far as who he's responding to goes:
I'd start with, as you listed Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. CPR is basically a direct response to that book (which is in turn a response to Plato and others) and at the very least he addresses those ideas first. Then I'd move on to an Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Hume considered it the best of his works, and from what I could tell the best expression of his ideas on them. Kant seemed to respond a little to the style in his own moral works, and it may prove interesting with the Canon of Pure Reason chapter and Kant's own moral works.
Descartes as well. His account of the cogito in his Meditations (and perhaps even Discourse on Method) would provide context for the Transcendental Deduction. Kant responds to several other ideas from his psychological works IIRC, though not explicitly. Kant critiques Platonic and classical empiricist ideas as well in CPR, so those may be worth looking into. He responds to the ideas of Newton at least once, though for the life of me I can't remember where.
There are several theologians that Kant is responding to as well, including Leibniz. However, there isn't just one "Leibniz book". The guy never wrote a complete expression of his philosophical and theological thought. There's a good edition out by Hackett that contains many relevant essays. Kant also seemed to respond to Aquinas' thoughts from The End of Man chapter in the Summa as well at one point in the Canon. Spinoza as well, though to be honest I haven't read his Ethics yet, though the Tractatus is my favorite book. However, as a result I can't confirm this, but I imagine they'd be in the Ethics.
As for responses, I'm less familiar in this area (yet!):
I've heard that Nietzsche responds to his ideas. But as I haven't had the pleasure of reading Nietzsche yet, I can't comment on that. However, I do know that Bergson responds to him briefly in Creative Evolution, which I am currently reading. Can't speak on that because I'm not there yet.
I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but this is a good introduction to Quine. It provides a lot of the relevant background and has chapters on the major aspects of Quine's thought.
Source: Dialogue Between Satan and a Christian, in his 1958 Critique of Religion and Philosophy.
Just for you.
Then again, people who argue without basis tend to be too resentful to learn anything as well, so I'm not holding my breath.
I still don't understand him; he's too elliptical for me, but I understand those who explain him.
http://www.amazon.com/Kierkegaards-Philosophy-Deception-Cowardice-Present/dp/081919803X
Quine has a lot of great work spanning all areas of theoretical analytic philosophy, so it's hard to pick just one thing to start with. I second all of /u/TychoCelchuu's recommendations. From a Logical Point of View contains Quine's most famous paper, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and that's definitely worth reading if you're going to read anything from him.
If you're looking for a secondary source, I highly recommend Peter Hylton's book. It gives a great systematic overview of Quine's philosophical project as a whole.
As far as secondary lit goes, William Blattner's Reader's Guide to Being and Time is very clear and straightforward. I also think that Steven Mulhall's Routledge Guide is great (though, to my surprise, the amazon reviews weren't that good).
If you want a more exciting and inventive commentary which will tie Heidegger closely to recent analytic philosophy, I cannot recommend John Haugland's Dasein Disclosed enough. Unfortunately it was unfinished (published posthumously) and so the commentary is mostly D1, but it's a fantastic book, and there's essays of his as well in there to fill in the blanks.
As far as understanding terms go this glossary is very thorough. I'm not a huge fan of how it puts things, actually, but I know it was really helpful to a few people in my classes.
Corporate use of "synergy" pisses me off because it's an amazing concept that they've abused to the point of it no longer having any real meaning outside of the sentences it's used in.
Personally I like his early work best, especially Les mots et les choses, but that is a fairly difficult work, so it might not be the best start. It is also in a period where he isn't dealing with power and political things yet, so if that's what you're interesting in you should start later; I'd say with Discipline and Punish.
I think Kant is pretty important to have a general grasp of, certainly for his earlier, archaeological period. For his later, genealogical period perhaps the Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche might be nice to have read. A decent grasp on structuralism is also important, I think. He rather explicitly does not identify as a structuralist, but there certainly is a close relation. There are even people who simply disagree with him and call him a structuralist.
He gets clearer as he gets older, but for his earlier works you might want to read some secondary literature. This book by Gary Gutting is a pretty good overview of his archaeological period, while this one gives a general overview of his entire work and has been approved by Foucault himself, who went so far as to supply a previously unpublished essay on power as an afterword. I would also highly recommend this article on Foucault by Foucault himself (under the pseudonym of Maurice Florence)
While I can understand reading Plato's and Aristotle's complete works, there's no point in doing the same for Cicero or Seneca. It's simply a waste of time. If you truly decided to go through with this plan, you'd be dead by the time you reached Plutarch.
If you're at all interested in modern philosophy, you need to get to Kant as quickly as possible. You don't need to have read the entire corpus of ancient and medieval philosophy to understand what's going on today. Also, primary texts alone won't cut it. Don't underestimate the complexity of these ancient texts simply because they're so old.
With that, here's what I would suggest:
------------
You now have a solid foundation in the three fundamental thinkers of western philosophy. Now, all the doors are open. You could go further and either start reading Hegel and Adorno or alternatively you could just straight to Husserl and Heidegger. All these four thinkers require Kant as a basis but with Heidegger, the background reading in Aristotle will start to pay off. You could also go for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche if you're into existentialism.
Alternatively, if you want to specialize in medieval thinking, refocus your studies on Aristotle, read Plotin and Augustine, get Edward Feser's books on Thomas Aquinas, learn Latin and get to work reading the Summa.
One more thing: If you're really serious about reading basically the complete works of Plato, Aristotle and other greek thinkers, you'll need to learn Attic Greek. My favourite textbook is Mastronarde's, although if you want to go straight to reading texts, consider Reading Greek.
The Routledge Guidebook is very very good
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Routledge-Philosophy-Guidebook-Heidegger-Guidebooks/dp/0415357209/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
You're talking about Kripkenstein kind of stuff (i.e. plus vs. quus)? Unfortunately, the anthology above doesn't cover that. Your best bet is to go straight to the source.
On the Genealogy of Morality is pretty easy to understand and a good time.
You could also just read, like, an intro to Nietzsche lol.
Surprise! Surprise!
Books to look at if you have access to a library:
http://www.amazon.com/Michel-Foucault-Beyond-Structuralism-Hermeneutics/dp/0226163121/ref=pd_sim_b_10
http://www.amazon.com/Foucault-2-0-Beyond-Power-Knowledge/dp/1590512340
What types of examples do you need?
Have you tried to read Wittgenstein's Philosopical Investigations? (Yes, I do mean tried, because its taken me a few years of distance from reading it the first time to really make sense of it.) He picks up on the context point pretty handily. His basic recommendation boils down to drop it and think of other interesting problems in philosophy.
I, on the other hand, think the issue to be wildly fascinating, and ended up writing a term paper on how Plato's Cratylus can been seen as more than just dicking around with etymologies, but that he's getting at a point that wasn't formally picked up until Frege started playing with it.
(For those who are interested, I argued that Plato in the Cratylus, in attempting to explain why some things have names that fit naturally, failed to do so for reasons other than the obvious conclusion that there is no necessary superposition of words to things. He talks about some things that are named as having descriptors, and here suggests that on some level everything participates (roughly, has some sort of essential, metaphysical connection to) in the Forms--though he later contradicts himself on this point. I argued that the mechanism that he was looking for to describe participation was words themselves, and because of this, he couldn't perform an accurate meta-analysis of participation. It's inherently difficult to perform certain operations on something from within the system itself, e.g. formal logics, and since there is no higher level of cognition that is close enough to the world that allows for a meaningful analysis of language, Plato got stuck trying to define participation.)
>Philosophers try to tame language
Not as much as you'd think. If we look at the popular thought experiments, unless it's something that we rely upon as something any speaker of a language would understand, the use of language tends to be much more abstract. The goal is to build the framework, not to get the truth (at least, if we're to give Quine and deference), since it's people who collect raw data about the would who get the truth.
>it really does do a disservice to the understanding of linguistics and language.
That philosophers use language? Would you then also say that novelists who are obscure also do a disservice to the understanding language? Anthropologists that study with some sort of notions about (weak or strong) Sapir-Whorf? Or is it that you don't see work done in the abstract in, say, logic as relevant as you claim? Or would you prefer that philosophers have discussions about the nature of reality in mathematical notation? I just don't see what you're getting at that is causing a hindrance for the understanding of linguistics and language.
And, as I alluded to above, I lean more strongly toward a functionalist theory of epistemology and a physicalist ontology, so I tend to defer to experts when it comes to claims about the world. Linguistic analysis is wonderfully helpful to that end and playing with what the results of what you come up with is fun, but the nuts and bolts of it bore me to tears.
Haha! What? Trying to be clever are we?
Have you read any of the book you posted, or are you just karma whoring?
I didn't say I thought he was an idiot, I said he sounded insane, which he does. He's using a few nice shapes to make incoherent arguments filled with big words that don't really say anything. I just had a look at the amazon reviews - the third one down pretty much confirms what I thought.
Fuller didn't know what he was talking about, basically. He liked to play with geometry but he seemed to do little actual scientific work. From what I've read about him he seemed to be a pompous blowhard, and this book is the product of his inflated ego. He was the president of mensa, dontyaknow - probably the most damning conviction of the man. He should have just stuck to his achitecture.
I'm consistently surprised that Heidegger never comes up in these kinds of lists. His fascinating argument against the cogito is something to be reckoned with--at least not completely ignored. For those who do not know, his primary thesis is that, before cognitive thinking, we have a pre-understanding of our being in the world, which accounts for qualia. Only as being as a foundation can we begin to have cognitive thoughts. Instead of the "I think, therefore I am," it is an "I am, therefore I think." I'd recommend Being and Time (after some preparation with Husserl along with basic phenomenological texts) and What is called Thinking?