1. Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
2. Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche
3. Baghavad Gita
4. The Gay Science by Nietzsche
5. Poems by Leopardi
6. The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer
7. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche
8. The Bible (Or more specifically the Book of Job if I must choose one thing from the Bible)
9. Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard
10. Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil

1. Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
2. Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche
3. Baghavad Gita
4. The Gay Science by Nietzsche
5. Poems by Leopardi
6. The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer
7. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche
8. The Bible (Or more specifically the Book of Job if I must choose one thing from the Bible)
9. Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard
10. Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil — Beebert

1. Read.
2. Read.
3. Haven't read.
4. Haven't finished.
5. Haven't read.
6. Read.
7. Read.
8. Read (not everything though).
9. Read.
10. Haven't read.

:P You have too much Nietzsche in there, and too little Kierkegaard. You should read Works of Love :P

Strangely enough actually, the very first book of the Bible that I read was the Apocalypse (Revelation), when I was 8ish. I found an old Bible at my grandparents' place, and I was interested in end-of-the-world stuff (I know strange interests for an 8 year old), and when I read it's about the Apocalypse, I was like woah woah, so cool! :P >:O I started reading the rest when I started on my way to becoming a Christian, which was say 16ish onward.

1. The Sickness Unto Death--Soren Kierkegaard
2. Writing and Difference--Jacques Derrida
3. The Postmodern Condition--Jean-Francois Lyotard
4. I and Thou--Martin Buber
5. Anti-Oedipus--Deleuze & Guattari
6. The Birth of Tragedy--Friedrich Nietszche
7. Phenomenology of Perception--Maurice Merlau-Ponty
8. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime--Immanuel Kant
9. Capital--Karl Marx
10. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding--David Hume

I will read Works of Love. I like Kierkegaard a lot. I just prefer Nietzsche at the moment because he IMO tried to dig even deeper in some areas. Plus he writes better prose and is more funny(not to say that Kierkegaard isnt funny at times too). By Kierkegaard I have read Sickness unto Death, The concept of Anxiety and Fear and Trembling.

You should read Simone Weil. She is brilliant.

The Birth of Tragedy--Friedrich Nietszche — Thanatos Sand

In my opinion this was N's best work :P

I agree...:)

You should read Simone Weil. She is brilliant. — Beebert

I've read some quotes from her, may even have taken a look at Gravity and Grace (I remember someone recommended it awhile ago), but didn't go in more depth yet.

For me, it'd have to be below Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. They're the top three. Oh, and Human, All Too Human - how could I forget that one? And Genealogy of Morality - even better. And Twilight of The Idols.

Dostoyevsky's great too. Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov, then below them, Demons and The Idiot.

What Men Live By.

Genealogy of Morals is the most brilliant I have read I think. And parts of it is just exceptionally funny. But that goes for his other works too of course. I love Nietzsche. He is underrated (Yes underrated!!) IMO.

For Dostoevsky I like Brothers Karamazov best. Then the Idiot. Then comes the other two.

I'd go with Twilight of the Idols as my number two. Dostoevsky is philosophical literature for me as he works to avoid making a prescription with his work, instead trying to incite thought like Shakespeare or the Tragedicians did.

9. Capital--Karl Marx — Thanatos Sand

A book of such significance, but I have yet to go anywhere near it directly, and have decided instead to approach it indirectly through secondary literature - stuff like 'Das Kapital For Beginners'.

It really is, as it pretty much foretells the value system Capitalism will develop and we have right now. The first third is the most important part, so as long as you get the ideas.

Yeah, the book I referred to probably makes it a lot easier to grasp the ideas. Each chapter is based on them: commodity, the exchange of commodities, circulation and the buying of labour-power, value, work under capitalism...

And fetishization, never forget fetishization....:) Use value versus exchange value Is huge too.

And fetishization, never forget fetishization....:) — Thanatos Sand

Yes, that's chapter 7: commodity fetishism and ideology.

Use value versus exchange value Is huge too. — Thanatos Sand

And I think that that's probably covered by the chapter on value. It's coming back to me a bit. It has been quite some time, and I've been meaning to go back to my readings on this, but I have a tendency to stop and start and go from here to there. I have so many books read partway and left pending.

You're reading important stuff. To me the three most central thinkers to Modernism are Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, with Kierkegaard the dark horse.

Anne of Green Gables
How To Stop Worrying and Start Living

Heraclitus - On Nature
Parmenides - On Nature
Plato - Dialogues
Kierkegaard - Journals
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Spinoza - Ethics
Berkeley - Treatise/Dialogues
Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason
Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Presentation
Camus - The Stranger
The Upanishads

That's eleven, but I notice you cheated too.

Hans Jonas - The Phenomenon of Life
Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - Phenomenology of Perception
Anthony Wilden - System and Structure
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition
Slavoj Zizek - The Ticklish Subject
Andre Leroi-Gourhan - Gesture and Speech
William Connolly - Identity\Difference
Francois Zourabichvili - Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event
Manuel DeLanda - Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy

11 because everyone else is cheating too :P

My autobiography.

by me of course

Heraclitus - Fragments
Plato - Republic
Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
Rousseau - Emile
Hegel - Philosophy of Right
Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols
Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
Heidegger - Being and Time
Heidegger - Collected Essays (specifically Letter on Humanism and Question Concerning Technology)

I'll add JS MIll's On Liberty as my bonus pick.

Heraclitus - On Nature — Thorongil

You mean the Fragments that remain of that? Why did you pick it? It seems to be quite popular, you're not the only one :P

Personally, I've found very very similar wisdom and much more detailed in the Chinese and Asian cultures. The Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, Art of War, etc. are quite similar in nature to H's Fragments. That's one of the reasons why I've chosen the Tao Te Ching in mine (and maybe it should have even been higher up).

Camus - The Stranger — Thorongil

It's surprising that you picked this one. Why so? I didn't like The Stranger, and I've read it multiple times, in 3 different languages actually (including the French original). It's too hopeless and depressing. The Plague and Myth of Sisyphus, I enjoyed much more from Camus, and they both had a bigger effect on me.

What Men Live By. — Heister Eggcart

Interesting, never read it, but looks very good. I will have a read, thanks for sharing that! (Y)

That's eleven, but I notice you cheated too. — Thorongil

X-)

I'm almost positive Thorongil's reasons for including Heraclitus are much different than mine, but I mainly appreciate H's insight into the nature of man, specifically his notion that our being is intimately bound up with the divine Logos.

He was one of the first Western thinkers (along with Parmenides and perhaps Anaximander) to recognize and articulate--albeit in obscure hints--the so-called ontological difference between beings (the many) and Being (the One). The one is symbolized by fire, sun, lightning, etc. which lights up specific beings in their differences while withdrawing "itself" from attention ("nature loves to hide"), even though most interpreters posit this as his theory concerning the primary substance of the cosmos along the lines of what many other pre-Socratics were after.

This is an interpretation heavily indebted to Heidegger, something which will turn a lot of people away, but once that ontological difference is grasped most of Heraclitus' fragments become much more accessible than they were previously.

This one gathers together the many, and we as human beings stand in a privileged relationship to "it" despite the fact that we typically don't understand ourselves in this sense, and instead prefer to "fill our bellies like beasts" and engage in other sorts of (what Heraclitus perceived to be) low pleasures unworthy of our true nature.

Others may point to his focus on impermanence, the unity of opposites, his pan(en)theism, and such things as being important and influential philosophical contributions-- some which are indeed very similar to Lao Tzu's pronouncements (as I understand them)--but that bringing to language of the proper essence of man is something simpler yet even more profound IMO. What's more important than knowing your "true" self? Philosophy as a way of being, possibly even the highest way of being.

Lots of conjecture, obviously, and there's much I don't understand about Heraclitus, and probably never will.

Here are some I like... In no particular order.

The Mind of God- Paul Davies
Reason and Persuasion:Three Dialogues by Plato - John Holbo
Ultimate Questions:Thinking about Philosophy - Rauhut
Plato's Dialogues
Philosophy as a Way of Life- Hadot
The Inner Citadel - Hadot
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
Tolstoy's Short Stories
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Seneca's Letters (well, anything by any Ancient Stoic really. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, etc.)

Since some are legitimately including fiction, my top ten philosophical fiction works:

1. Hamlet
2. Paradise Lost-John Milton
3. Ulysses-James Joyce
4. The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Ubik-Philip K. Dick
6. Beloved-Toni Morrison
7. New York Trilogy-Paul Auster
8. Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad
9. The Crossing-Cormac McCarthy
10. Absalom, Absalom- William Faulkner

A book of such significance — Sapientia

>:O >:O >:O Says Sappy without ever having read the work...

8. Read (not everything though). — Agustino

You haven't read all of the Bible?

I liked Sophie's World, and couple of the others by Jostein Gaarder.