I think approaching it in this way is probably mostly unhelpful. I think it risks reducing philosophy to yet another tool in the self-help box. I think philosophy must retain a critical attitude and character. It's not about, first and foremost, developing firm foundations on which to base the beliefs and values we hold to. To my mind, its first task should be the opposite: to understand the various ways in which much of what we believe might be very badly mistaken, and what caused us to believe those things in the first place.

That's part of the problem with at least some autodidacts whom I've talked to. To many of them, philosophy (or philosophers) who seek to unsettle or destabilise our accepted systems of thought are either useless or dangerous, because philosophy is conceived of (in the first instance) as a way of reinforcing prior beliefs. If I already believe in Empiricism (or what I think is Empiricism), for example, and my purpose in approaching philosophy is to find a way to justify that belief, then I'm not going to read critics of Empiricism, or if I do it'll be uncharitable readings, and I'll probably end up confused when I read Hume and discover that he discredits the law of causality from an Empiricist framework.

It's one of the dangers of autodidacticism: because you aren't being examined by someone with experience and expertise in the field, and because you aren't having your views, arguments and interpretations challenged and critiqued by scholars and fellow students, the risk is that you end up constructing elaborate arguments upon poor foundations to shore up your previous commitments.

Teaching yourself philosophy is possible. But it's difficult to navigate those risks. How are you supposed to be made aware of, for example, the best critiques of Kant's metaphysics if you haven't got someone who's spent decades researching Kant's metaphysics to guide your reading and point you in the right directions? It's also how you end up with those who have never actually studied philosophy at degree-level criticising 'post-modernists', 'neo-Marxists' and all the other boogeyman they've constructed in order to vilify anyone who dares to subject accepted patterns of thought to a critical lens.

That said, I generally recommend that people start with a few texts. Plato's Republic is a good starting point for at least three key reasons: It's arguably the foundational text of western philosophy; It's relatively accessible due to its conversational style; and it touches on a wide range of areas in philosophy (ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology) which can help you figure out what it is that you're interested in and where to go from there.

This is a really good post and I'm not really in disagreement with any of it. I do think though that on a practical level just self-teaching oneself philosophy is really, really suspect. I've just seen too many of my co-workers (I work in a field completely unrelated to philosophy) just pick up Hegel or Metaphysics of Morals one day and try to break into the field that way and you and me both know what happens there.

Talking on forums like this is a nice start, but until you've had your work critiqued and evaluated by an expert in the field I really think it's tough. I have a BA in philosophy and for the first two years of it I felt like I was wandering around in the dark even with these PhDs guiding me. I get that some people catch on quicker, but I feel like until you're actually writing those papers and getting the feel for what they expect of you it's just completely different from self-study which is mostly just you in your own head or talking to random people who are probably in the same place as you. You need to familiarize yourself with the norms and expectations of the field. Good philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, is often much more narrow and specified than most normal people outside the field would expect and this can come as kind of an unpleasant surprise to amateurs.

But back to the OP: Find a subject that your interested in, read relevant literature, talk to people, keep an open mind, leave your ego at the door and compare many perspectives. You can entertain an idea without accepting it. Also try to seek out someone with experience if possible.

I think that this is pretty good, and it lines up with my experience. I am an engineer who never had a hint of what philosophy was about until I had time - meaning retirement - to think about the big picture.

The way that I got exposed to philosophical notions was by listening to a history of philosophy via a set of audio lectures, which surveyed philosophical thought beginning with the pre-Socratics and going up to the present. From there I had a lot of questions I wanted to further study. I was not systematic, which means I was not efficient in my use of time. I just poked at this and that. And that’s all I still do, really. So it has taken a long time - years - for me to sort out a personal view of the world. Strong curiosity is a real asset to self-study success.

A point about the learning process: What I find similar about philosophy to science and engineering is the confusion of terminology/language. Every discipline has its own priesthood, which revels in obscurity. Fine, I get that. And I get the fact that there are deep and difficult thoughts going down any intellectual avenue. What is different is that in science and engineering there is the constraint of such things as experimental results and keeping the airplane in the air - exceedingly strong empirical underpinnings.

OTOH, a lot of philosophy is nothing more than sophistry wrapped up in big words that have obscure and personalized definitions. This makes it harder for the unwashed to wade through the nonsense and focus on the insights. Anybody who spends time with philosophy and really wants to get to the bottom of things, to achieve some clarity of thought, has to understand this and not be frustrated and give up. There are plenty of sources that make the important notions of philosophy reasonably clear, but it takes effort to find them.

I think that this is pretty good, and it lines up with my experience. — Torbill

Many thanks, and welcome to Philosophy Forum.

What is different is that in science and engineering there is the constraint of such things as experimental results and keeping the airplane in the air - exceedingly strong empirical underpinnings. — Torbill

Of course! That's why in our age of technological marvels, it's easy to see why philosophy is thought of by many as empty words or parlour games - which is true in the case of a lot of academic philosophy. And actually I am very much an advocate for science and technology, I have made a career as a tech writer, which I still pursue, and have a keen interest in those subjects.

However, philosophy is concerned more with self-knowledge - I regard the story of Socrates' encounter with the Oracle and the command 'know thyself' as being foundational to philosophy. But clearly self-knowledge, and indeed knowledge of the kinds of problems that troubled Socrates - the nature of justice, virtue, and piety, among them - are much less clear-cut than technological and scientific issues. And I think they're less easy to deal with in the lexicon of today's technological culture.

There's an interesting scholar and historian of philosophy named Pierre Hadot (1922-2010), 'best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre).

...According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation.

These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos.'

I found similar attitudes and practices through my engagement with Buddhist philosophy and the practice of meditation, so that when I later encountered Pierre Hadot's work, I felt that traditional philosophy, in the way Hadot depicts it, was much more like Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, in that it was embedded in a set of disciplines aimed very much at the attainment of emotional equanimity - a kind of 'living philosophy' rather than technical discourse.

But you also do see that concern, albeit rarely, in modern Western philosophy, I think foremost in Wittgenstein. However the problem is that from the viewpoint of the typical anglo-american analytic philosopher, it sounds uncomfortably close to religion, and the attitude of secular philosophy forms a barrier against ideas of this type. (For an excellent overview of some of these issues, have a look at Thomas Nagel's essay Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament (.pdf)).

Anyway - I'm still studying, I got a great synoptic text, "Plato for the modern age" at Christmas and am intending to start on it in my remaining summer break.

:up:

Hadot's excellent Plotinus or The Simplicity of Vision is overdue for a rereading.