Philosophy Reading List: work in progress
Submitted by badgerworks on Thu, 05/05/2005 - 09:08
Tags:
- Plato: Republic, Meno, Sophist (I also need to have some of the other dialogues -- if not all -- on this list)
- Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics; Metaphysics, I, VII; Physics II, III ch. 1-3; 3); Poetics
- Parmenides
- Heracleitus
- Plotinus, Enneads I, 6 (On Beauty) and III 7 (On Time)
- Augustine: Confessions I-XI
- Aquinas: Summa Theologiae Part I, qq. 2-3 (the existence and simplicity of God) qq. 75, 76, 79, 84, 85 (union of body and soul; the intellectual powers; the mode and order of understanding); Part I-II, qq. 90-92, 94-95 (treatise on law)
- Anselm: Proslogion
- Maimonides: Guide for the Perplexed
- Averroes: On Plato's Republic
- Scotus: On the Will and Morality (Catholic University of America Press, Parts I-V)
- Ockham: On Aristotle's Physics
- Descartes: Meditations
- Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Prefaces, Introduction, Transcendental Aesthetic, Transcendental Logic, Transcendental Analytic, Books I-II; Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
- Hume: Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. 1, Parts I and III
- Hobbes: Leviathan, Introduction, Part I, Ch. I,II, X, XI, XIII, XIV; Part II, Ch. XVII-XIX
- Locke: Second Treatise on Government
- Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Introduction, A. Consciousness, B. Self-Consciousness; The Philosophy of Right, Introduction, Part III
- James: Pragmatism, The Will to Believe, Ch. I, II, III; Principles of Psychology, Ch. IX, X, XV.
- Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments
- Marx: Paris Manuscripts, German Ideology I, Capital I Book I, Parts I-III
- Mill: On Liberty; Utilitarianism
- Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; The Use and Abuse of History
Author Comments:
This is a basic reading list for a lay man (me). The real deficiency is the complete lack of twentieth century philosophy on the list. I will add to it as necessary.
Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments is amazing, but if you're going to read that, you have to read Concluding Unscientific Postscript afterwards. That's his real masterpiece.
And you're missing out on Nietzsche's great later works. Check out The Gay Science for an easy, enjoyable overview of many of his themes. Check The Antichrist for Nietzsche with an agenda.
In my opinion (as a philosophy student), you're paying too much attention to medieval philosophy and (as you noted) none on 20th century thought. At the least, I hope you read some of Heidegger's Being & Time (maybe the first half) and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Just some friendly suggestions!