Thread: Favorite Books On Philosophy?

Originally Posted by carlhungis

Curious, what books you would reccomend for someone who has never taken any formal classes on the subject.
Thanks
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Eastern Philosophy: "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Yognananda. It is silly in places and in other places it is promotional and commercial, with a dead and obsolete product, but overall there is still not a better introduction to Eastern Philosophy, Yoga, Mediation and Spiritualism.

i really liked betrand russel's "history of western philosophy".

it places the development of western philosophy within a historical context, which greatly helped me see both how it was influenced, and how it influenced.

of course, he is (quite) biased in some places, but he was a very intelligent man with a knack for addressing the intelligent layman.

i found it less helpful near the end, where his bias starts to come closer to home, but the first half is excellent.

There are so many types and categories that you will never get all you need from one book. I always recommend reading an overview one and start exploring what you like from there.

I usually suggest one of two (hey, maybe even both). Since there is just so much information you have to make a choice.

The first one is Ideas of the Great Philosophers which was reprinted by Barnes & Noble so it's cheap. Since this is a fairly small book as far as Philosophy books go, it is packed with info so its pretty challenging. It also has a section that is a great intro to formal logic.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc...92712&itm=1

The second one, The Story of Philosophy, is quite popular so it's also cheap. This one is pretty big but a lighter read. That doesn't make it easy - this is philosophy after all - but you don't have to stop after every sentence and think about what you just read.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc...39164&itm=4

Hope this helps.

If you want a large overview of western philosophy, go with "The Experience of Philosophy Third Edition" by Kolak and Martin.

Very good for typical joes.

Good books to start off with:

"Think" by Simon Blackburn
"A History of Philosophy" by Albert Hakim
"Philosophical Problems" by Anne Baker
"A History of Philosophy" by Coppleston (a rather old collection)

Most of Simon Blackburn's books are great, but Anne Baker's textbooks are usually used for first-year philosophy students.

~

Sohphies world, by Jostein Gaarder

it is a novel about the history of philosophy...

Sofie is an ordinary Norwegian girl. One day she recieves a video tape on which a certain Alberto Knox talks directly to her from ancient Greece. They then start to meet at different occasions and throughout the film, Alberto takes Sofie on an odyssey of the history of philosophy, from ancient Greece, over the Roman empire, the Middle ages, the renaissance, the enlightenment, the big revolutions and up to today. Throughout this journey, they start to realise that they are only fictions of a story writer's imagination and start conceiving a plan for escaping into reality.

there also is a movie about it: also named "Sophies world" (or, as the original title is: "Sophies Verden)

in fact i'm having philosophy lessons at my secondary school, and this is the film we're watching right now, because it describes the history of philosophy... (which, unlike for example: the history about Biology and Physics) is extremely important... (or so it is told by my teacher )

Thank you for the responses. I will start looking into these. I have started Autobiography of a Yogi, so it will take time...


Thanks again.