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Glauco Schlembach

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Aug 5, 2024, 12:31:52 AM8/5/24

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Philosophyis about asking the big questions: Why are we here? How should I live my life? What is reality? A good book for beginners is A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton. The book starts with Socrates, who lived in the 5th century BC in Athens, and asked such probing questions he was sentenced to death by his fellow citizens. Socrates himself never wrote a word, but his pupil Plato wrote about him. Plato's book, The Republic (c. 375BC), is one the earliest and most important philosophical texts ever written.

Philosophers (from the 5th century BCE onwards) Ancient Philosophy Contemporary Philosophy Ethics and Moral Philosophy Atheism Beliefs Epistemology How to Live Biographies of Philosophers Best New Philosophy Books

The genre of philosophical biography is flourishing, as we pay attention not only to what philosophers said and wrote but also to how they lived and the intellectual context in which they developed their ideas. Nigel Warburton, our philosophy editor, picks out some of the best philosophy books of the year, from the man who lived in a storage jar in 5th century Athens to the latest contributions of cognitive science to our understanding of how we experience the world. Read more philosophy book recommendations on Five Books

Over the past decade our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton, has been interviewing philosophers asking them to recommend the best philosophy books. After hundreds of interviews, this is our list of the books that have come up again and again. It reveals if not the best philosophy books ever written, at least a collection of very important and influential books.

How should we live? What is the nature of reality? Should pro golfers be allowed to use carts? British philosopher Nigel Warburton sets us off down the road of philosophical enquiry with an intriguing list of introductory philosophy books.

The study of philosophy in the Western world is often parochial, and limited to the study of the Anglo-European tradition. It's time to widen our focus, advises the author and philosopher Bryan Van Norden. Here he selects five foundational texts of philosophical traditions worldwide.

Can philosophy change your life? Yes, says bestselling author Eric Weiner, though partly by making it more complicated. Here, he picks five works of life-changing philosophy, from Epictetus to Jacob Needleman, a professor (emeritus) at San Francisco State University.

The skills of a philosopher and those of a novelist are often in tension, but they have much to learn from each other, says novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. She chooses her favourite philosophical novels.

The questions of moral philosophy are not always best answered by philosophy books, says leading moral philosopher, Jonathan Glover. He explores questions of how we should live and by what values in books spanning across multiple genres.

I have a background in STEM. Specially, I started as an engineering student but quickly my interests escalated to core sciences then mathematics. I would now like to explore the domains of Philosophy. As is aptly said, "Philosophy is the mother of all sciences"; I am interested in enquiring "how?" or rather "why?".

What are some of the books that complement hard sciences well? I want some well-acclaimed publications relating to knowledge, mind and logic.I am currently reading - "Epistemology" by Robert Audi. I have found it to be thought-provoking. Contemporary philosophers are highly appreciated.

If you are looking for a general grounding in Western philosophy, look up the books in a university philosophy curriculum. If you are looking for books that are likely to interest someone with your background, I have some suggestions. You probably want to focus on analytic philosophy, mostly from the English-speaking world and, at least initially, avoid classical philosophy from Greece, and continental philosophy from France and Germany (with a few exceptions such as Frege, Descartes, Kant, and Duhem).

You'll notice almost all of my recommendations are from before 1950, but I think these authors are necessary for a strong grounding in understanding what more recent philosophy is about. Read some of the books I recommend, decide which ones interest you the most, and then look for discussions and commentary on those, which will direct you to more modern work.

A few comments on what I've left out: a lot of people think a grounding in classical philosophy is important, but Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Locke pretty much put an end to classical philosophy, and I don't see it's influence much in anything that comes after those authors. Francis Drake gets a lot of attention as the "first modern empiricist", but I found his work unimpressive. Wittgenstein was very influential, but more in the sense of scattered ideas than in any systematic sense, and I don't know that he's really worth reading unless you are curious about it. If you think Kant is impressive, you might think that it would be interesting to read the German idealists who followed Kant, but you would be mistaken. Most of them are typical continental philosophers, meaning that they are quite opaque to most English speakers who think analytically.

I recommend Experimentation by D.C. Baird. Quoting page 1, it is about "...the whole process of identifying a portion of the world around us, obtaining information from it, and interpreting that information. [...] This book is intended to meet the needs of all who are either engaged themselves in any kind of study of the world around us, or who must form a judgment on scientific statements made by others."

If you're coming from a STEM background and know some programming (especially functional-style, i.e. Haskell etc.) you might be interested in what Kant had to say about mathematics, because he was an early proponent of mathematical intuitionism/constructivism (proofs in intuitionistic logic are isomorphic to computer programs and lambda-calculus is basically a natural deduction system for intuitionistic logic). I reccommend reading Intuitionism: An Introduction by Heyting if you're not sufficiently familiar with the topic. It's worth keeping in mind when you're reading Kant's Critique.

It's also worth (independently of your background) to have a good understanding of what Kant is aiming at (if you're interested in reading him) - and where he fails (if he fails). I reccommend John Haugeland's notes regarding the B-Deduction which can be found in Giving a Damn: Essays in Dialogue with John Haugeland and Jim Conant's Why Kant was Not a Kantian. Longuenesse's Kant and the Capacity to Judge is also valuable as a reference (although quite lengthty).

It's hard to reccomend contemporary works without providing a context regarding their origin. But I think the key to understanding contemporary analytic philosophy is Willard Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, so it's definitely worth reading regardless of everything else.

I would like to buy some books on philosophy for the child of a friend. He is very intelligent and mathematically able and clever for a nine-year-old. I remember near that age really enjoying the idea of logic (in particular syllogisms and some of Lewis Carroll's puzzles) as well as paradoxes such as Zeno's.

Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy (Worldcat link) might be better for an 11 or 12 year-old, but is worth mentioning. It follows a 14 year-old girl who starts wondering about philosophical questions and engages with a philosophy teacher to discuss in an accessible way ideas from early modern philosophy.

When I was young I really enjoyed the books of logician Raymond Smullyan, who wrote several books of logic puzzles held together with minimal but amusing narratives, including The Lady or the Tiger? and To Mock a Mockingbird. They are very accessible, even to a young audience, but cover some surprisingly sophisticated and advanced concepts. Lewis Carroll himself wrote a similar book called A Tangled Tale (but it can be a bit rough going for a modern reader). If you don't care about the narrative, Martin Gardner has several entertaining books of puzzles and paradoxes. There's also the justly famed Godel, Escher, Bach which might appeal to a young reader of the right temperament. Flatland is more math than philosophy, but still food for thought. Likewise, The Phantom Tollbooth introduces advanced concepts in mathematical philosophy within the context of a thoroughly entertaining children's novel.