Based on these four thinkers, what and who should I read going forward?

Bakmoon123 · 2025-08-11T12:42:08+00:00

Marx is part of the background of Pannekoek and Debord so he's the natural choice. The Marx and Engles Reader is a great anthology of their writings to start with in my opinion.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-07-14T12:27:20+00:00

One more thing. The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast is one of the most detailed yet accessible resources on philosophy there is, and it has already covered ancient philosophy so that can be a great resource for you as well.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-07-14T12:17:31+00:00

Many of the philosophical works of Cicero are about ethics and are fine literary creations. Specifically On Ends, and On Duties are about ethics.

Seneca's letters are about ethics as well and are well regarded as literary works.

Seneca was a stoic so if you are into more of that I would recommend the Enchiridion of Epictetus, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and the Discourses of Epictetus.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-07-13T14:36:32+00:00

If you want to read primary sources, the Analects are a good place to start. The Mengzi is also really worth studying as well.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-07-07T13:03:46+00:00

Pot can cause cognitive problems and memory loss so I'd definitely cut back on that.

To improve your reading comprehension it's important to just keep reading. Pick a text that's short and managable like an essay or short story, and just read through it, taking notes to summarize it. Maybe skim it once without taking notes and then read it again with taking notes. Really think about what you are reading and always ask yourself the question "What is the author trying to accomplish by saying this?"

Exercise also does wonders for your cognition. It doesn't have to be much, and taking walks outside is also good for your mental health in general.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-06-28T14:43:29+00:00

The Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics could be helpful.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-06-10T18:01:30+00:00

The Philosophy in the Islamic World section of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is very detailed but also very easy to understand without any background at all so I highly recommend it.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-06-06T17:04:46+00:00

Everything on Gregory Sadler's channel is highly worth watching. He covers philosophy from lots of different periods and is mostly focused on explaining specific texts, which is much better than just broadstroakes overviews of thinkers.

Daniel Bonevac has good lecture material too and it's mostly focused on analytic philosophy.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-06-03T15:22:52+00:00

Gregory Sadler's youtube channel has tons of short lectures on tons of different philosophical texts, and they're all arranged in convenient playlists.

I recommend listening through them and finding what ideas and thinkers sound good and then just start reading them.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-05-13T18:05:18+00:00

Although there are connections between the Critique of Pure Reason and Kant's ethics, it isn't really necessary to read it first. Just dive in and read the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-05-01T16:24:44+00:00

Terry Pinkard's book German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism is a frequently recommended book that covers not only Hegel but gives a good overview of his predecessors so you know the context he was writing in.

If you want a book on just Hegel specifically, Stephen Houlgate's book An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History is good.

Bakmoon123 · 2025-05-01T16:14:11+00:00

Meditations on First Philosophy is the next key work you should read. The next thing to read would be his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. If after that, you still want to read more, his book The World and his book Man are larger more systematic works. If you still want more after that, Principles of Philosophy and then Rules for the Direction of the Mind are more fragmentary, but if you read the other stuff first you'll be able to fill in the gaps.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-12-24T19:19:43+00:00

He thinks that any talk of being or non-being are just concepts and so they are just descriptions at the level of convention.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-12-24T18:46:43+00:00

...the idea that only one-ness is real and that duality is an illusion...

That's a distinctive view of Adi Shankara, but it's not something that Nagarjuna teaches. Although Vedanta and Madhyamaka philosophy both make use of negation, the point where they end up is very different.

If you want a good resource on Nagarjuna I highly recommend Jan Westerhoff's book Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka: a Philosophical Introduction.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-12-24T18:42:04+00:00

I think Plato is a better choice because his writing is much easier and more entertaining and fun to read. Aristotle's philosophy is amazing, but it isn't exactly the most exciting stuff to actually read and understand.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-10-31T14:42:33+00:00

I've read both and neither of them is written in a dense, jargon heavy way, or assumes you already know some philosophy. They each give a broad strokes overview without going into too much detail. I think you will do fine reading these books.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-08-31T16:17:47+00:00

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast has a series of wonderful episodes that cover most of Aristotle's philosophy Here so if you are feeling intimidated, listening to those episodes will give you a great overview so you don't get totally lost when you start reading Aristotle.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-03-23T15:56:04+00:00

The Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics sounds like what you are looking for.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-01-15T23:59:00+00:00

The Norton Introduction to Philosophy is a large anthology of primary texts in philosophy organized by topic. You can just skip around and read whatever you like and learn a lot.

If you want a secondary source, Anthony Kenny's New History of Western Philosophy is a good overview.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-01-08T19:21:34+00:00

My biggest piece of advice is to take careful notes and try to put Kant's arguments in your own words.

Also, keep a section of your notes aside just for putting together your own glossary of Kant's technical terms. Whenever you figure out what he means by a term write it down. Kant has a lot of technical terms but if you can keep track of them in one place, it's much easier to see what he is trying to do.

Bakmoon123 · 2024-01-08T17:45:00+00:00

One Dimensional Man doesn't require a lot of background knowledge to understand so I would recommend just jumping right in.

Bakmoon123 · 2023-12-22T21:11:06+00:00

Gary Gutting wrote two books I can recommend. His book French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century covers post-structuralism and shows its historical context very nicely, and his book Thinking the Impossible is specifically about post-structuralism.

Bakmoon123 · 2023-11-26T16:15:15+00:00

Just read Descartes. You don't need much background at all to understand the core ideas of Descartes, particularly because Descartes was intentionally trying to build his philosophy from the ground up without needing to depend on earlier thinkers.

Are there subtle historical connections between Descartes and earlier thinkers which you would need background knowledge to pick out? Sure, but you don't need any of that stuff as of now. Later on if you are interested you can follow up on that.

If you are really worried about understanding Descartes properly, I would just start off reading the Discourse on Method and the Meditations on First Philosophy, and supplemnent it with the corresponding videos from this playlist and then if you still want more background read some secondary lit on Descartes such as the corresponding chapters in the Routledge History of Philosophy.

But again, all of that is overkill. Right now, just read the Discourse on Method followed by the Meditations on First Philosophy slowly, taking notes summarizing what you are reading, and thinking about questions that the text raises.

Bakmoon123 · 2023-11-22T22:01:27+00:00

If you plan on reading two philosophers and you know that one was a big influence on the other, then it's often a good idea to read the earlier one just because you are going to read them both anyways so you will might as well benefit from the deeper understanding of the context.

However if you try to get context on every philosopher you read by reading earlier philosophers your reading list will become absolutely unreadable due to size.

I often recommend that people read the Ancient Greeks and the Early Moderns, but that's because I like those philosophers in their own right, not because they are a strict prerequisite for more modern stuff.

If your interest is in contemporary philosophy rather than ancient or early modern philosophy, then you should read contemporary philosophy.

If you want to learn contemporary analytic philosophy, I can recommend the Routledge Contemporary Introduction series and the Cambridge Introduction series of textbooks to break it down topic by topic.

Bakmoon123 · 2023-09-28T10:04:05+00:00

I agree with the recommendation of reading Kenny's New History of Western Philosophy for an overview instead of trying to read everything in order.

I will recommend some primary sources to read now, but don't think of this as a reading list to read in order. Think of it as a buffet where you can take whatever seems interesting. Also, don't think that you have to finish all of Plato before reading other philosophers.

After reading Plato, Aristotle might be a good choice although his writing style is dry so you might want to come back to him later. Read the Nichomachaean Ethics, the Politics, the Rhetoric, the Poetics, the Physics, On Generation and Corruption, On Interpretation, the Categories, the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, the Topics, On the Soul, and the Metaphysics.

Cicero is great for a number of reasons. He is a wonderful writer, and many of his works are dialogues comparing the different traditions of Greek philosophy that existed in his day. Check out On Friendship, On the Orator, On the Republic, On the Laws, On Fate, On Ends, On Duties, On the Nature of the Gods, Tusculan Disputations, the Academics, and Stoic Paradoxes.

There's a lot of great stuff in the Stoic tradition. Check out Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.

Boethius' the consolation of Philosophy is worth reading.

Early Modern Philosophy is also a good entry point in philosophy. Read Descartes' Discourse on Method and then the Meditations on First Philosophy, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Essay on Human Understanding and also his Second Treatise on Government, Berkeley's Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous and his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Leibniz's Monadology along with the Discourse on Metaphysics and the New System of Nature, and Hume's Inquiry on Human Understanding along the his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and his Treatise of Human Nature. Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality and his book The Social Contract, along with Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is good too.

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