• Agustino
    11.2k
    I remember old PF used to have a favourite philosophy books thread, there's none over here. So let's make one :)

    What are your favourite philosophical works that have most influenced you?

    For me probably like this:

    1. The Bible
    2. Plato's Apologia of Socrates
    3. Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love
    4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov
    5. Blaise Pascal's Pensées & Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
    6. Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
    7. Thomas Aquinas' Summa contra Gentiles
    8. Spinoza's Ethica & Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation
    9. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
    10. William James' Will To Believe (essay)

    But don't take them in order, it's hard for me to order them properly, although I've tried :P
  • Beebert
    569

    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
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    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
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    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.
  • Thanatos Sand
    843
    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
  • Beebert
    569
    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.
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    The Birth of Tragedy--Friedrich NietszcheThanatos Sand
    In my opinion this was N's best work :P
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    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.
  • S
    11.7k
    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.
  • Beebert
    569
    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.
  • Thanatos Sand
    843
    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.
  • S
    11.7k
    9. Capital--Karl MarxThanatos 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'.
  • Thanatos Sand
    843
    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.
  • S
    11.7k
    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...
  • Thanatos Sand
    843
    And fetishization, never forget fetishization....:) Use value versus exchange value Is huge too.
  • S
    11.7k
    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.
  • Thanatos Sand
    843
    You're reading important stuff. To me the three most central thinkers to Modernism are Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, with Kierkegaard the dark horse.
  • Jake Tarragon
    341
    Anne of Green Gables
    How To Stop Worrying and Start Living
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    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.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    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
  • _db
    3.6k
    My autobiography.

    by me of course
  • Erik
    605
    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.
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    Heraclitus - On NatureThorongil
    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 StrangerThorongil
    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-)
  • Erik
    605
    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.
  • anonymous66
    626
    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.)
  • Thanatos Sand
    843
    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
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    A book of such significanceSapientia
    >:O >:O >:O Says Sappy without ever having read the work...
  • Michael
    15.8k
    8. Read (not everything though).Agustino

    You haven't read all of the Bible?
  • Michael
    15.8k
    I liked Sophie's World, and couple of the others by Jostein Gaarder.
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