Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche
Ashtavakra Gita - Ashtavakra
The Prophet - Gibran
Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
31–40 of 148 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#32Hirshman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty Camus, the myth of Sisyphus Borges, the Aleph Chomsky, on Language Cicero, On Invention Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Wiener, Cybernetics James, Pragmatism Tzara, Dada manifesto
Cicero, On Invention http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_invention
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#33Sophie's world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophies_World
It's a great book that takes you on a whirlwind tour of the most famous philosophers and their thoughts. What's more, it's woven into a suspense novel, so it keeps you reading!
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#34Bertrand Russell: A history of western philosophy. I haven't read it all but what I've read was both informative and witty. Note that Russell, kind of similar to The Economist, is "opinionated". Must be that British style...
While I like the book (and Russel in general) it really is a history rather than a philosophical book.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#35Sophie's world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophies_World It's a great book that takes you on a whirlwind tour of the most famous philosophers and their thoughts. What's more, it's woven into a suspense novel, so it keeps you reading!
Read it some years ago, definitively a good book to get some background in the history of philosophy.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#36surprised nobody mentioned "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant, which not only talks about philosophy, but the lives of the philosophers and the historical backgrounds.
philosophy is gradually becoming more literature-like, which is hard to appreciate without the context.
ps. it is also a 1930s best sellers.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#37Bertrand Russell: A history of western philosophy. I haven't read it all but what I've read was both informative and witty. Note that Russell, kind of similar to The Economist, is "opinionated". Must be that British style...
I read it cover to cover and loved it. But Russel, although a humanist, is firmly an occidental man. He rushes through Oriental philosophy like it's a bad neighborhood (he really didn't hide his distaste for mysticism and metaphysics at all.)
A better read might be Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy". And Durant's masterpiece, The Story of Civilization is unparalleled in its scope and lucidity, though not philosophy. I have such a huge attachment to the Durants, they kept me company on many a long night. I read about seven or eight of their dozen volumes.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#38Bertrand Russell: A history of western philosophy. I haven't read it all but what I've read was both informative and witty. Note that Russell, kind of similar to The Economist, is "opinionated". Must be that British style...
I second that recommendation. You won't get a lot of philosophy out of it, but you'll get thousands of pointers of where to look for the interesting stuff, put it context.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#39I really enjoyed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It's not quite a philosophy book but I found his take on the concept of 'quality' very useful. To me it's a story of how a westerner discovers eastern philosophy, which is great to read coming from a western perspective.
I never leave a book unfinished, if I start a book I feel like have to finish the book (I finished Dan Brown's book with disgust, imagine that), but I just couldn't finish this book. I have absolutely no idea why people like this book and I have got recommendations from quite a few people.
I had the opposite reaction. I almost never finish books, this book is the first one bigger than a 100 pages that i finished front to cover. I'm currently re-reading it.
Here are a few reasons why i liked it:
-It was the first book on philosophy i actually read. The closest book on philosophy i ever had contact with before was a high school textbook and it was more than horrible.
-I read it with a deliberate reason, i was interested specifically in why some people are bad with tech, actually not just bad but horrible with it. Where does this gap come from?
-I read it at a point in my life when i was trying to figure out a lot of stuff, and one of them was how to not be an arrogant asshole, i found that it was way too easy to be one towards people who i perceived as less intelligent than me. I approached this book searching for ways to enhance my reasons to be arrogant, but left it with a sort of humility and understanding towards others that i didn't know i was capable of.
-Because of my obsessiveness and extreme rationalism, it was easy for me to connect with the character of Phaedrus.
-It was a novel, not a philosophy book, it was light to read, and at the same time intellectually stimulating.
Maybe you should ask yourself why is it that you don't like it? I'm curious for the reasons, it certainly has its flaws, and i still have difficulty with some of the ideas after the second re-read, but i never found it not entertaining.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#40"The Virtue of Selfishness" "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" "Philosophy: Who Needs It" "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" All by Ayn Rand. Whether you end up agreeing with her or not, she will definitely will make you think.
Good ones. Just make sure these aren't the only ones you study or you'll end up being a worse amateur philosopher than you were before.