Ask HN: Learning about philosophy

It was a lot more interesting than anything else at school because it actually talked to you instead of talking at you. If you're going to start anywhere you might as well start there because ethics is an area everyone can understand and the republic is written in a way that anyone with a working brain can appreciate.

Why AC Grayling's Philosophy I & II instead of the Stanford Encyclopedia: It is 2 volumes, so much, much shorter. I have no idea how long the SEP is in print, but I imagine somewhere near an order of magnitude longer, maybe two orders of magnitude. It is meant to be useful for philosophy grad students and professors. You asked for an introduction.

Why AC Grayling's Philosophy I & II instead of his History of Philosophy. Actually, they are pretty similar. The History is a single volume, so it has the advantage of brevity. But it is more idiosyncratic and Grayling is more out of his depth. Russell's History of Philosophy is worse still in this regard. Scott Soames has a history entitled The World Philosophy Made, which is even more Analytic in outlook.

Why not primary sources: Why not? It is how I went along in the subject. Just start with Plato. Apology (who is this Socrates character anyway?) -> Meno (What is knowledge anyway?) -> Republic (is it better to do injustice or be injusticed?). That will be enough to start. There are plenty of other good suggestions here.

Why not an introduction to Continental philosophy: Actually, I can recommend one. Robert Pippin's Modernism as a Philosophical Problem.

(My credentials. I was a philosophy major at the University of Chicago, which is an Analytic program, where I tried to pursue Continental philosophy, and I have a master's from The New School, which is a Continental program, where I tried to pursue Analytic philosophy.)

I've long left Rand behind, but she's a good start for a bare-knuckle punch to the teeth regarding altruism, egalitarianism and the beliefs of the political Left.

Later I picked up the usual suspects: the Greeks, the Stoics, the modern philosophers. Read the classics of the East and of India, read more modern mystics, read the pragmatists, the existentialists and the Communists. Read the economists (Adam Smith et al.) Read Popper, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Heidegger, Rawls, Kripke, Kuhn, Habermas, etc.

I guess if I were to recommend a starting point, I'd start with Book One of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. Be sure to heed the title of the book--it's a discussion of human nature, not of the world as-is, as-was or as-will-be. And the first book explores how we understand the world (i.e. ideas) and the limits of our understanding. Note it's a little daunting due to the older language (e.g. connexion vs connection, lots of 'tis, 'tho', 'twill, lots of apostrophe-d) and some of his arguments are initially confusing (skip and come back later,) but it will give you a firm grounding on which to consider later philosophy (and much else besides.)

After that, it won't matter too much which books you start with. If you're young, I'd recommend sticking to fiction for a while, pick up some of the old stuff (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante (Inferno,) Rabelais, Cervantes, etc.) Add some new stuff, too (Camus, Tagore, Yoshikawa, Flannery O'Connor, Colson Whitehead, Colum McCann, too many to name.) Once you start hitting thirty or so is when you might pick up some philosophy. The benefit of reading the old stuff first (e.g. Aristotle's Ethics, Plato's Symposium) is that later writers reference them. Even today, were you to read about, for example, the writing craft, teachers still quote Aristotle's Poetics (e.g. all stories have a beginning, middle and end.)

As for personal philosophy, experience will shape you more, especially if/when you have kids, pay higher taxes, buy a house, suffer a sudden medical condition. But understanding the why of it--that's where the philosophers come in handy. Putting your human self--the same human self that is shared by humans from 5,000 years ago--in the context of humanity, of the human community.

(P.S. As a bonus, if you're really itching for philosophy, try out Machiavelli's The Prince as translated by Tim Parks, or for just a little philosophy to start, Rashomon and 17 Other Stories by Akutagawa, esp. "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove". Another little bit of philosophy can be found in The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.)

* edit--typos.

Why did you try to learn Continental philosophy in an Analytic program, and Analytic philosophy at a Continental program?

That sounds like a sure fire way to get the worst of both worlds.