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I don’t enjoy reading the old language and lack of modern context. Any more modern philosophers you recommend reading? Or modern summaries of older philosophers
by rzz3 5y ago
I don’t enjoy reading the old language and lack of modern context. Any more modern philosophers you recommend reading? Or modern summaries of older philosophers?
- OtomotO 5y agoI very much enjoy Richard David Precht for a nice summary of philosophy with ancient and modern context.
- pietrovismara 5y agoI found "on the suffering of the world" by Schopenhauer to be eye opening, especially his thoughts on death.
- dgb23 5y agoThe Problems of Philosophy by Russel is maybe useful here.
- keiferski 5y agoI generally don't like summaries, as you just get a contemporary interpretation of what the translator/academic thinks the philosopher was saying. Far better to go straight to the source. Eventually you'll need to read the original works, but I'd recommend starting with philosophical fiction. Crime and Punishment, The Plague, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, etc. Plato's dialogues are pretty readable, too, as is Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche.
- ithkuil 5y agoOriginal texts are important but you also need to have a very good understanding of the historical language and wider context in order to not fall in similar pitfalls yourself as the ones you wanted to avoid on the first place.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoA good translation will contain a lot of that information as in the notes. I like the Oxford World Classics series as the translations are very good and the notes are often fantastic, the Cambridge Companion-series also make a very solid complement.
- ithkuil 5y agoAh sorry I thought we were talking about untranslated original texts. Translations with a lot of notes are surely more faithful to the original than a random summary, but there is still plenty of room to interpretation.
- codegrappler 5y agoIf you are American I would recommend “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville. Very easy to read and has some really mind opening lines. “Americans are cartesians without ever having read Descartes” still sticks with me to this day and I last read it over ten years ago.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoIf you don't mind a podcast or two, you can get a lot of context from these: Stephen West's "Philosophize This!" as the light-weight option, and Peter Adamsons' "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" as the more academic option. Both go chronologically, from pre-socratics onward. West's podcast is a bit rough in the first episodes, but it keeps getting better.
- originalvichy 5y agoLawrence Cahoone’s lectures on Audible are a great intro as well. One about intellectual tradition and one about political philosophy.
- estaseuropano 5y agoI think in many cases the old philosophers are still very readable, but make sure you get a modern translation. Publishers like to reprint 60-100 year old public domain translations, which often makes the material very inaccessible. Get a good copy from a still-breathing translator of anything like Plato and You'll likely enjoy it. Other more modenish ones: Descartes - "Meditations" Rawls - "lectures on the history of moral philosophy" Or some modern ones like Alain de Botton