Ask HN: Learning about philosophy

From Wikipedia: "Throughout the Summa, Aquinas cites Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, and Pagan sources, including, but not limited to: Christian Sacred Scripture, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Boethius, John of Damascus, Paul the Apostle, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, Anselm of Canterbury, Plato, Cicero, and John Scotus Eriugena."

That's my whole disagreement. The analytic-continental divide is a split within the western world. But you present it as if the non-eurocentric world is more conducive to the continental tradition, when even the concept of eurocentrism not only comes from europe, but it comes from the continental tradition through hegel's philosophy of history and his predecessors.

> It doesn't shy away of critique and dispute

This is nonsense. wittgenstein and nietzsche are highly regarded within philosophy departments, and they both criticize philosophy to the point of turning their backs on philosophy. russell is just not a very careful scholar of history, philosophy, or the history of philosophy.

It's a fascinating subject but be prepared to be utterly confused the deeper you dive. I've concluded, like philosopher Michael Huemer, that few philosophical principles can be uncontroversially concluded. Excerpt from The Problem of Political Authority [1]:

"Questions of this kind are notoriously difficult. How should we approach them? One approach would be to start from some comprehensive moral theory–say, utilitarianism or Kantian deontology–and attempt to deduce the appropriate conclusions about political rights and obligations. I, unfortunately, cannot do this. I do not know the correct general moral theory, and I don’t think anyone else does either. The reasons for my skepticism are difficult to communicate, but they derive from reflection on the problems of moral philosophy and on the complex, confusing, and constantly disputed literature about those problems. It is a literature in which one theory after another runs into a morass of puzzles and problems that becomes ever more complicated as more philosophers work on it. I cannot fully communicate the situation here; the best way of appreciating my skepticism about moral theory is to delve into that literature yourself. Here, I shall simply announce that I will not assume any comprehensive moral theory, and I think we should be very skeptical of any attempt to arrive at sound conclusions in political philosophy by starting from such a theory. Nor, for similar reasons, do I start by assuming any general political theory, though we shall arrive at a political theory in the end."

As far as an overarching philosophy, I've concluded on intuitionism, closely approximated by Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism [2].

[1] https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/1.htm [2] Excerpt: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/5.htm