/lit/ - Literature

Isabelle Tripfag is too anal. For the average person that doesn't study it in university full time or actually work in the field, you don't need to read half of these.

An Anon posted this list. I thought it was an excellent overview of Philosophy.

Starting off, a book structured like:
-Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
-History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel.

Then Understanding Greeks:
-Illiad and Odyssey (not philosophy but helpful)
-Some compilation of Plato's dialogues (namely Republic, Gorgias, Symposium, Apology but its a good idea to read all/most of his work)
-Aristotle's Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics (reading as a series is good).

Moving into the modern realm/away from teleology:
-The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
-Discourse on the Method by Rene Descartes

Metaphysics (I haven't studied any metaphysics):
-Aristotle's Metaphysics

Ethics:
-Mill's Utilitarianism
-Kant's Grounding for Metaphysics of Morals.

Politics:
-Hobbes' Leviathan
-Locke's Two Treatises of Government
-Marx's Communist Manifesto and Das Capital
-Mill's On Liberty
-John Rawls' A Theory of Justice

Epistemology:
-Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
-Also Berkley's reply but I can't remember its name.
-Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy
-David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature
-Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Aesthetics:
-Poetics by Aristotle
-On the Sublime by Longinus
-Critique of Judgment by Kant

>>514306
No existentialism or post-structuralism, the concepts of which would ring most relevant to modern readers. Why is this?

>>514308

because post-modern thought has no valeus

>>514316
Sure. But Solomon's broad overviews of existentialism and a Baudrillard book or two would bring the neophyte into the modern state of the discipline.

>>514319
>Baudrillard

>>514332
Hey, he's even outside the realm of post-modernism, despite what some say. He rejected it out-right. He even rejected cohesive theory because he felt it could no longer be approached head on. Someone that starts with the Iliad and Aristotle and ends with Baudrillard will get a pretty full fucking picture of where philosophy's come from and where it's at now.

>>514343

>>Talking to a picture of Emma Watson.

lol

>>514343
I am not disputing Baudrillard's place, rather his thought. His critique of Marx's theory of value is so bad, based on such a simple error, it is embarrassing.

>>514351
Yes, but he rejected Marx very early on. He's most well well-known because of his post-Marxist works today.

>>514355
indeed, and his rejection of Marx, which underscored his later work, was based on a mis-reading of what Marx meant by use-value. I mean, it's on page one of Capital Vol I and he didn't even get it right!

Basically, he argues that use-value is itself subjective, that a commodity _has_ use-value, whereas Marx wrote that a commodity _is_ a use-value. A use-value is just a thing that satisfies human wants through its material properties.

>>514362
I concede the point.

Regardless, people like Baudrillard and Virilio and others that were contemporaneous with post-modernism but acted, in a sense, outside it, seem to me the last point in any philosophical overview up to the present. No matter your personal feelings, the fact that >>514306 disregards everyone from Nietzsche to Heidegger, Foucault to Derrida, creates a huge hole in what someone new to philosophy needs in order to understand its development and current place.

I'm not trying to argue over the philosophy itself, only, like you said, state its place in the history of its development.

>>514365
agreed. I'd say the French (the existentialists and the po-mo crowd) need a look-in too ... not sure about Virilio - I am not certain that his contribution to philosophy has amounted to much. He's more of a cultural sociologist imo.

>>514375
Perhaps not, he does seem more like an observer than anyone interested in developing an actual philosophical view in any sense. Regardless, just like including the Iliad in the list for ins implications, I think someone like Virilio, for his own implications and perceptions, is also relevant. Not Iliad-level relevant, but relevant.

The list should end with The Essential Zizek.

I'm partly serious.

>>514382
>Zizek