Summer Reading - Philosophy
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Summer Reading - Philosophy If you about to embark on your philosophical journey and want to do some preparatory reading beforehand, we suggest two types of book that would be useful for you to read. One or two of each type is sufficient. Although some preparation is undoubtedly helpful, don’t feel that you have to prepare intensively or exhaustively. The two types of book are, 1). an introduction to the history of ideas, and 2). a topic-based introduction. The first will give you a chronological overview of the development of thought, which is useful because later thinkers, in their various traditions, are in conversation with earlier ones and this will help you orientate yourself in those conversations. The second will allow you to engage with particular philosophical problems and arguments more directly and encourage you to think about them for yourself, without necessarily being encumbered by the weight of tradition. In each category, we suggest: Introductions to the History of Ideas David Cooper, World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, 2nd edition. (Written by a philosopher who is happy working across different thought traditions, this looks at the history of ideas from a global perspective.) Anthony Kenny, A New Introduction to Western Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. (A comprehensive survey of the key ideas in European thought by one of Britain’s most eminent philosophers. Kenny has also written other introductions that focus on particular historical periods.) Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2004. (First published in 1945, this is a classic example of the genre—even though it obviously leaves out important developments in the second half of the twentieth century. Opinionated and tendentious, but also written with wry humour, it was one of the books that won Russell the Nobel Prize for Literature.) Mary Warnock, Women Philosophers. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1996. (Sadly, many histories (e.g., Russell’s) fail to acknowledge the contribution of women to the development of philosophical thought. Warnock—herself a distinguished British philosopher—provides us with an important corrective.) In addition The following books, whilst not essential, take a slightly different—and perhaps fresher—approach to the history of philosophy or look at a particular period or school. Julian Baggini, How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy. London: Granta, 2019. (This approaches the history of ideas via five key issues and shows how these have been addressed by different philosophical traditions.) Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café. London: Chatto & Windus, 2016. (As the subtitle amply explains, it’s about freedom, being, and apricot cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others.) Jonathan Rée, Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English. London: Penguin, 2019. (Perhaps a slightly more demanding read, focusing on the development of modern British philosophy. This book’s distinctive narrative structure allows interesting cultural connections to be made that usually get passed over.) Topic-based Introductions John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1997, 4th edition. (Thoroughly revised several times since it first appeared in 1956, this is still a recommended text because it lays out some of the important questions and arguments so clearly.) Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. (An essential primer. A leading American philosopher makes complex philosophical puzzles about as accessible as they can be made. If someone, who doesn’t know any philosophy, wants to know why philosophers are interested in these rather weird questions, they should read Nagel. If they still don’t get it, there’s really no helping them.) Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 2nd edition. (First published in 1912, generations of philosophers before you—including us—have cut their teeth on this classic. It is still one of the best introductions and includes Russell’s famous reflections on the value of studying philosophy.) .