Read "Simulacrum and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard, then question everything that technology provides.
Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
71–80 of 148 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#72_The Tao is Silent_, by Raymond Smullyan, comes to mind.
I like this book also. Every well written by a Western logician.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#73The ones I've read and find good: - Existentialism is a Humanism - Jean Paul Sartre : Very easy to read and is a very good introduction to existentialism. - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche - Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Also by Hesse: Narcissus & Goldmund
Actually, most books by Hesse have a philosophical element.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#74I don't know if it counts as a serious philosophy book, but I really enjoyed Godel, Escher, Bach. Math, computers, consciousness, etc. I'm currently reading Reasons and Persons. Thought experiments and discussion about how personal identity works under, eg, transporter copies.
I think many readers will be surprised at how accessible "Gödel, Escher, Bach" actually is. I'm not an expert at anything: I have no work experience and maybe two serious computer science courses under my belt, but GEB really satisfies an intellectual curiosity I've had for years. I'm 550 pages in (out of about 750 pages) and with the exception of the two chapters discussing the anatomy of the human brain (a subject…
Plus one to this, it really is quite readable, I think it's overly characterized as very dense and difficult.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#75Some great recommendations here! All I can add is the quote "All of Science is footnotes to Plato" -- no matter how far we come, the ancient Greeks still have relevance. So I'd get a good introductory good to at least the top 3: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. (I could list a few more)
> "All of Science is footnotes to Plato" Science? Wasn't Whitehead talking about Western philosophy?
Isn't philosophy the mother of science?
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#76I think the quality of advice you're getting on this thread is very mixed. Some of the books mentioned are absolutely great-- like "Being and Time", or Husserl's "Logical Investigations"-- but incredibly difficult to read unprepared. If you were ready to be reading them, you wouldn't be asking the question here. The two books you mention in the question (Common Sense and "On the Fourfold Root") are both quite readabl…
This is also my experience with reading philosophy; just like significant works in any other fields, you can't approach many important books of philosophy head-on. You have to first get an understanding of the bckground, which also allows you to understand the fundamental dichotomies, and why different philosophers treat different questions as the primary ones. In this respect, the best history of philosophy I know of is Skirbekk's "A History of Western Thought: From Ancient Greece to the Twentieth Century", a highly recommended read.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#77I wholeheartedly recommend "Action Philosophers".
http://www.eviltwincomics.com/ap.html
Especially the Ain Rand section, which made it clear to me that you need to know how a person grew up to understand how they formed their philosophy.
Yes, it's a comic, but that makes it all the more accessible. Fantastic for philosophy beginners.
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#78I think the quality of advice you're getting on this thread is very mixed. Some of the books mentioned are absolutely great-- like "Being and Time", or Husserl's "Logical Investigations"-- but incredibly difficult to read unprepared. If you were ready to be reading them, you wouldn't be asking the question here. The two books you mention in the question (Common Sense and "On the Fourfold Root") are both quite readabl…
I agree, Being and Time is an impossible read - Betrand Russell is a good start
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#79It is with joy that I answer your question. And if I may be allowed to answer it philosophically. The books you find incredibly interesting may be the books the validate your worldview. There are many of these. The book you find eye-opening may be the books that open the door into the world of philosophy proper for you. There are not many of these because you only need to go through that door once I feel.
Also, I would observe that besides Ayn Rand (who for many is not a philosopher) not a single female philosopher has been mentioned here which I find is a damning indictment on the state of affairs of the world of ideas. To remedy that I would recommend to you read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft or anything by De Beauvoir (and do ignore her contemporary Sartre for he was nothing but a windbag).
I am delighted that you singled out Thomas Paine (who again is not a philosopher as such; must be something in the air in the States) and Arthur Schopenhauer. They are both tremendous stylists. I've said this many times before - I don't care how great a philosopher's ideas are, if they can't write well I don't want to know. Thus we have people here recommending Kripke or Frege or heck knows who like that who bludgeon you to death with their tedious logic. Avoid them I say.
Finally I would like to be clichéd and recommend anything by Nietzsche except for Thus Spake Zarathustra even though he himself considered it his best work and I would especially recommend Ecce Homo by him because it is a summation of his previous works by his own hand. Nietzsche was the supreme stylist and ruthlessly honest and fearless. Also I'd recommend A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues by a contemporary philosopher André Comte-Sponville. This is a remarkable book on virtue theory that takes in Aristotle, Spinoza, Nietzsche and Woody Allen among others and is divided up by virtue which is extremely novel. It is fantastically written. Anything by Cioran as well such as The Trouble with Being Born. I'm trying not to typecast myself here! :)
And finally finally Sophie's World and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while nice cute books are not true philosophy books. This is also why I wouldn't recommend Camus' The Outsider though someone did mention The Myth of Sisyphus. Borges falls into this category. Sophie's world is really a kid's book as well and one that I would perhaps recommend to children though I'd recommend Borges or Camus or Kafka first.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vindication-Rights-Woman-Penguin-Cla...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Sex-Vintage-classics/dp/00997...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Great-Ideas-Suffering-World/...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecce-Homo-Becomes-Penguin-Classics/d...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-Treatise-Great-Virtues-Philoso...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-Being-Born-E-M-Cioran/dp/155...
Re: Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?
#80"The Bible", "Notes From Underground" (Dostoevsky)
The bible is a horrible suggestion for a philosophy book. Isn't this a work that prescribes genocide, builds myth, promote the irrational?
(Your reply brings to mind another book I should have mentioned - The Order of Things (Les Mots et Les Choses) by Michel Foucault.)
If philosophy is the drive to understand the human condition, I don't think any philosopher can or should ignore the Bible. Athens, Rome and Jerusalem are where the Western mind was born it has been said. And there is nothing to stop you approaching the Bible as it were hermeneutically, ie. in the same way you might treat the Greek Myths. I find it fascinating myself - from the "ex nihilo" of Genesis, through the "de profundis" of the Psalms, to Job's "Why?!", not to mention the Christian New Testament - and I think it will be read (by philosophers) long after many books in "The Philosophy Section" have been forgotten.