What are you reading?

[reixis]

reixis, i apologize if i was coming of as against you . its just that this ridiculous down vote stuff has to be addressed by now. its mostly a bad prejudice.

 

No worries. I didn’t feel offended by Chiki’s commentary, but that’s not the kind of commentary I myself would do either. The reason is simply that I don’t see any major drawback in someone not reading Descartes at this time of their intellectual life. 

 

Actually, I know that my educational background is likely to raise some doubts (consciously or unconsciously) and that is something I know I will have to deal with in the future. I’m not implying that this has happened here, but that I’m not really bothered by such situations.

[dgswaim]

There are lots of important works from the history of philosophy that I've not read. A partial list would include:

 

Aristotle, The Metaphysics

Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics

Kant, Critique of Judgment

Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Mill,  System of Logic

 

Probably someday I'll have read them at least in part... but jesus there are a lot of books to read and very much less than a the amount of time I'd need to read them all. 

[Nastasya_Filippovna]

There are lots of important works from the history of philosophy that I've not read. A partial list would include:

 

Aristotle, The Metaphysics

Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics

Kant, Critique of Judgment

Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Mill,  System of Logic

 

Probably someday I'll have read them at least in part... but jesus there are a lot of books to read and very much less than a the amount of time I'd need to read them all. 

So true, I mean I have read excerpts from many of the classics but Lord knows I haven't read them front to back. (and the time I've spent reading Descartes is time I'll never get back- haha! No, he is incredibly important I just find his style excruciatingtly unbearable! Kant and Hegel, they are of course challenging reads but so rewarding in my opinion, although I've only scratched the surface. Right now I've just been on a big analytic push, and once I'm done I want to get back to more German Idealism, I miss it!

[aojfifjoaisjaiosdj]

Because it's a post that doesn't contribute anything other than being a jerky thing to say online to someone you don't know.

 

 

I love it when people take it upon themselves to claim what others are actually doing or thinking. Thank you, but I can speak for myself, and that wasn't the reaction I had.

 

It wasn't meant to be jerky to him. Rather more jerky towards his education than anything else. Every philosophy department should make that book a required reading for some required course.

 

Oh no, I did read it a few times before. It's just that it's been a few months since I read it for the last time (actually, it was in 2012), so I decided to read it all over again. Same thing for Plato's Theaetetus.

 

Sorry, I got the implicature that you hadn't read it before. I felt like you would've made that stronger claim if you were following the cooperative principle and the maxim of quantity.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Chiki

[Nastasya_Filippovna]

It wasn't meant to be jerky to him. Rather more jerky towards his education than anything else. Every philosophy department should make that book a required reading for some required course.

 

 

Sorry, I got the implicature that you hadn't read it before. I felt like you would've made that stronger claim if you were following the cooperative principle and the maxim of quantity.

What you said actually brings up a pet peeve of mine- professors who teach a philosophy class in an area in which they aren't trained or in which they aren't remotely familiar. You brought of Plato and I had an awful Ancient Class. It was my first semester as a phil major and the prof I had never specialized in ancient- we read two short plays by Sophocles, did the Presocratics, read the Republic and Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. We should have covered a lot more plato and more aristotle. The profs who have studied ancient did so much more in their classes and I rue the fact I never got to take the class with them. Now I don't have any desire to specialize in ancient, but I do plan to read more Plato because he's just so fundamental. I just find it atrocious that it wasn't included as a part of an ancient philosophy course. I notice this so often- a prof who gets assigned to a teach a class and really doesn't know how to teach it. Thankfully this only happened to me in ancient. 

[Monadology]

What you said actually brings up a pet peeve of mine- professors who teach a philosophy class in an area in which they aren't trained or in which they aren't remotely familiar. You brought of Plato and I had an awful Ancient Class. It was my first semester as a phil major and the prof I had never specialized in ancient- we read two short plays by Sophocles, did the Presocratics, read the Republic and Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. We should have covered a lot more plato and more aristotle. The profs who have studied ancient did so much more in their classes and I rue the fact I never got to take the class with them. Now I don't have any desire to specialize in ancient, but I do plan to read more Plato because he's just so fundamental. I just find it atrocious that it wasn't included as a part of an ancient philosophy course. I notice this so often- a prof who gets assigned to a teach a class and really doesn't know how to teach it. Thankfully this only happened to me in ancient. 

 

The problem wasn't that your professor wasn't familiar with Ancient philosophy, the problem was your professor wasn't familiar with Joseph Jacotot! 

[Infinite Zest]

Reading this post makes me wish I valued the history of philosophy more. I know it's a central field of study, but I have trouble appreciating works that are over a hundred years old. Maybe I'll grow into appreciating the greats a bit more, but, as of now, I don't seem them to be very relevant to my intellectual interests.

 

On that note, I still haven't read Critique of Pure Reason, so you can all laugh at me for that.

[overoverover]

Reading this post makes me wish I valued the history of philosophy more. I know it's a central field of study, but I have trouble appreciating works that are over a hundred years old. Maybe I'll grow into appreciating the greats a bit more, but, as of now, I don't seem them to be very relevant to my intellectual interests.

 

On that note, I still haven't read Critique of Pure Reason, so you can all laugh at me for that.

 

I can beat that: I haven't read Plato's freaking Republic. 

[Infinite Zest]

What you said actually brings up a pet peeve of mine- professors who teach a philosophy class in an area in which they aren't trained or in which they aren't remotely familiar. You brought of Plato and I had an awful Ancient Class. It was my first semester as a phil major and the prof I had never specialized in ancient- we read two short plays by Sophocles, did the Presocratics, read the Republic and Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. We should have covered a lot more plato and more aristotle. The profs who have studied ancient did so much more in their classes and I rue the fact I never got to take the class with them. Now I don't have any desire to specialize in ancient, but I do plan to read more Plato because he's just so fundamental. I just find it atrocious that it wasn't included as a part of an ancient philosophy course. I notice this so often- a prof who gets assigned to a teach a class and really doesn't know how to teach it. Thankfully this only happened to me in ancient. 

 

My ancient class was taught by a well known philosopher who was specialized in the field, and we completely skipped over Nicomachean Ethics. Luckily, I got to read it down the line, but it still seemed like too major of a work to skip. Instead, we read most of Aristotle's shorter works.

 

Still, I'm glad we spent our time going through smaller works such as De Anima more carefully. In my opinion, these works are less accessible than Nichomachean Ethics.

 

On the other hand, I wished we hadn't spent so much time on Plato's Dialogues. I found that the class didn't really help my understanding of these texts, and I wish I had read them on my own.

[Infinite Zest]

I can beat that: I haven't read Plato's freaking Republic. 

 

Haha! Plato's Republic was actually the reason I started studying philosophy!

[overoverover]

Haha! Plato's Republic was actually the reason I started studying philosophy!

 

I'm hoping to go my entire philosophical career without reading it, mostly for giggles. (And like you I don't have any real historical interests, though I've been exposed pretty widely to history of philosophy.)

[overoverover]

I was definitely one of those angsty high schoolers who got into philosophy through the existentialists. I lost my taste for them shortly after reading Philosophical Investigations!

[Infinite Zest]

I was definitely one of those angsty high schoolers who got into philosophy through the existentialists. I lost my taste for them shortly after reading Philosophical Investigations!

 

Funny... I have deeply analytic interests, but I love reading existentialists. Being and Time is still probably my favorite work of philosophy.

 

On the other hand, I liked Philosophical Investigations a lot less than I thought I would. I think I read it too quickly, and I will definitely reread it more carefully at some point.

[Infinite Zest]

I'm hoping to go my entire philosophical career without reading it, mostly for giggles.

 

This is great.

[Nastasya_Filippovna]

I was definitely one of those angsty high schoolers who got into philosophy through the existentialists. I lost my taste for them shortly after reading Philosophical Investigations!

that's so funny, existentialism is what got me into philosophy too, and the same thing happened to me too- once i began studying it, I lost complete interest in it outside of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (both of whom fall outside the trend 20th era group anyway). 

[overoverover]

Funny... I have deeply analytic interests, but I love reading existentialists. Being and Time is still probably my favorite work of philosophy.

 

On the other hand, I liked Philosophical Investigations a lot less than I thought I would. I think I read it too quickly, and I will definitely reread it more carefully at some point.

 

I'm also a big fan of B&T, though just psychologically I tend not to associate Heidegger with Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, etc. I think some of Division 1 of B&T is just flat-out brilliant. Also, if you haven't read Husserl before, you should! I'm sort of paging through the Logical Investigations and really liking it. It's very similar to Frege, and in fact Dummett writes in the preface that in his opinion, the "Analytic" and "Continental" traditions were never closer than when Husserl published LI and Frege published Foundations of Arithmetic. 

[Monadology]

I have yet to really appreciate B&T. Every time I read it, it just feels like warmed-over Kierkegaard. 

 

I do love Philosophical Investigations, but my love of that and my love of Kierkegaard are mutually implicated. So I guess I can't relate to losing an interest in existentialism from reading it! The reverse really.

 

Also, the Critique of Judgment rules and it is what I am currently reading (most intensively, at least).  

Edited November 22, 2014 by Monadology

[overoverover]

I think I was a little vague. I don't think there was a causal link from PI to disliking existentialism, but something a bit weaker. PI got me interested in philosophy of language, and then that led me to just ignoring the existentialists. When I came back to them, I had lost the taste.

[MorganFreemanlives]

 as for me i went from ,  descartes  -> early analytic philosophy -> spinoza ->  neo-hegelianism.   

 

wittgy never impressed me but  i quickly abandoned the linguistic turn in philosophy so a lot of what he said became inconsequential to my endeavors.. heidegger  i never understood and grew to despise because no matter what i did , be it read the primary text and discuss it in a heidegger class , or read secondary text of varying difficulty, it always seemed either false or trivial to me.

 

as for not reading the so called classics throughout your philosophical career, plenty of analytic philosophers do just that and hyper-specialize in a single topic or theme.i feel funny about it though because 1. you can think you have a brilliant idea when in fact you are reinventing something a not too obscure figure already postulated and 2. the history of philosophy has a bias agaisnt certain figures who were rightly lauded during their times, analytic philosophers have great prospects for reviving and improving the thought of neglected thinkers