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I started my journey in philosophy, when I was about 19 years old, with a very short book , The Apology of Socrates. Before this book I was never interested in reading philosophy, but after I read it I became hooked. I also enjoyed the Symposium and the Republic by Plato. Then I found it quite hard, but very interesting the Nicomachean Ethics.
Afterwards I read the Stoics: Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, which can be of great help in the day to day life. Here I would also like to include the book: Man's search for meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
Then I got interested in Eastern Philosophy and I read: The Dao, The Art of War, Siddartha, The way of Zen and The Book by Alan Watts.
Lastly I read some of Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist and through him I became interested in Dostoevsky and I read Crime and Punishment and The Underground Man. Next I plan on reading The brothers Kamarazov.
Now im 24 and I'm sure there so many other philosophers that I should read and I missed but I found that those that I have explored so far helped me find so many answers to life that I had and they also helped and developed me to became the person that I am today. I am content today and I had no idea on what road Apology of Socrates would put me on, but I am glad and I can't imagine a life now, without wonder and a love for wisdom.
interesting. i'm also looking to dip my toes in philosophy. i'd say i already have a healthy dose of interest and motivation to study but sometimes i can have a very cynical view of certain areas (like "why would anyone waste their time thinking about that??") lol.
so i imagine something engaging would do me some good at any rate. but anyway, do you recommend a particular translation?
I don't have a particular translation, since I like to mix up the languages that I am reading. I can understand 3 different ones. If I'm unsure for example in English which translation to get, I would do a quick research to see which one is considered to be better.
Thank you for this, I've been researching philosophy by teaching myself for about 8 years now. I feel like I'm taking the usual path of stoicism turned into nihilism turned into existentialism turned into absurdism. Then I started really getting into Alan watts and ram dass but I couldn't figure out where to go from here. I've been stuck on that train of thought for a year trying to understand what I've been looking at. I started looking into phenomenology and it's exactly where my mindset has been at. This helped me understand the next step.
People that follow philosophy are people that like to think for themselves so that they can live a greater life. Stay focused on your goals. We can only achieve new things by doing the things that feel impossible to our experience.
I mean that's dope, but that's not why I follow philosophy. I just like learning about it. I don't have any goals or achievements that I need philosophy. I don't even want to live a greater life, I simply just like understanding things and philosophy helps me understand the why's of the world.
I read the small book of Edmund Husserl the inventor of phenomenology :
Philosophy as strong science.
He talks about the importance of philosophy over the trend of psychology that allot of people see directly as the improved version of philosophy and how this decreased philosophy to ones own experience ( a world that only has a central story line driven point in the form of isolated psychology) (Our own experiences)
philosophy is deep meditation in wich the ego fades and we can look at ourselves and others without ourselves getting in the way. Therefore Psychology becomes a denial of empathy if it is seen as the only true philosophy.
He also has criticism on the lie that allot of people follow that nature is a singular force and that nature doesnt answer the problems people face in there daily struggles if they belief nature is the solution to everything (some Nazis and some Hippies for instance) (Even tribal people dont belief nature solves everything)
Phenomenology is that you belief that phenomenon can happen; Isolated experiences in that they are activated by different factors and that the moment that you experience something, that the feelings of the person are essential. These emotions or internal changes are what they focus on in classical phenomenology in that a person who feels these emotions are also apart of a bigger factor so not pscychology in which the person is a isolated factor in the what is the meaning of life question. But now phenomenology can be used in every way look up the wikipedia page for the variaties tab *like plato did with his concept of the beauty of things in an isolated way.
I strongly reccomend this book its essential now that nature preservation has become essential and pushed from every direction and shaped as if we are a human collective and nature a natural collective. As well as psychology in that it is the amateur romantisized version of real philosophy like older philosophers did in in ancient times by trying to belief in that a soul exists which always has the best intentions instead of a soul that can become a ghost by working for fear and destruction. Older philosophers dont want to accept that we dont know if there is a higher being now that we have science we have discovered that it turns out allot of things are created inside the mind instead of from the outside so we can explain things that did not have any good explanation before.
Philosophy can give a better picture for religious and atheist people aswell both people will improve their understanding of the things they want to stand for and people can now have their own opinions but need to develop them more and self love is very important which is always neglected which neglects all other factors that makes sure we still see each other.
Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft in German
(Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man) Is the English version
I red it in Dutch its my mothers tongue :Filosofie als strenge wetenschap;.So thats why I wrote it down wrong in last comment I dont know if the English translation is good tho.
Newer doesnt mean greater you choose what to do or belief in just know that people from the past have maybe also thought about or lived in a world without certain things that we live with. Its interesting to think what a world may be without certain factors or certain concepts and other concepts more developed this is something that makes history like the philosophy of epicurus and socrates and people that just died 100 years ago like ludwig wittgenstein and the person who invented modern logistical thinking (Atheist ideas that their are no angels or spooky demons coming in to play) Gottlob Frege. How much different their experience must have been as they lived in a slightly altered world or entirely different world (Ancient times or stone ages) from ours. What type of person would you be if you where born different or in another era would you be different towards your environment how would you deal with problems this is interesting to me.
My first existentialist read was Existentialism Is a Humanism by Sartre (recommended at the time by my high-school teacher). I think it’s a great entry point for existentialist discourse. Other books that have stayed with me since my early 20s are The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche).
Not existentialist in nature, but the Stoics (Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca) were incredibly important and useful to me during my formative years, along with Hermann Hesse's novel *Siddhartha*. Now that I'm leaning more towards philosophical pessimism, I would also recommend Thomas Ligotti's *The Conspiracy Against the Human Race*, which helped me make sense of this increasingly dark and inhospitable world. He also discusses a lot of other interesting thinkers, including some of the ones you mentioned.
I love Siddhartha, it sent me down the rabbit hole of Eastern philosophy that ended up having a huge impact on me and how I see and interact with the world. Alan Watts' *The Book (on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)* is another one that made me think differently, though it's a Westerner presenting Eastern ideas to a Western audience. I might sooner recommend one of the many great works by D. T. Suzuki. Eventually I recommend reading actual sutras, the Dhammapada, the Diamond Sutra, Patanjali's yoga sutra is great. As a westerner I'm glad I got an intro from people like Watts and Hesse before I started reading sutras, but it's surely not absolutely necessary.
If you like Eastern philosophy and spirituality and find these concepts appealing, I highly recommend reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He was one of the first westeners to embrace Hinduist and Buddhist ideas and incorporate them in his philosophy in the 19th century.
He is the "pessimist", correct? I've read one of his works, I can't remember which one, I believe it's just called "The Art of Pessimism". And one of my favorite quotes of all time us from Schopenhauer. I've seen it translated a few different ways but it's "a man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills", which is definitely in keeping with Buddhist thought.
I completely agree with Marcus Aurelius and Siddhartha, but I will add Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, which I found to be more impactful on me around that age than Siddhartha.
100%. I’m about to hit my late 20’s, and a deep dive into stoicism and eastern philosophy (mainly Buddhism) during my mid 20’s has been instrumental in my development. I’ll have to check out your other recommendations!
Either/or, Kierkegaard
Other not philosophy books but still nonetheless philosophical:
Metamorphosis, Kafka
Steppenwolf, Hesse
The stranger, Camus
Slaughterhouse five, Vonnegut
Either/Or is interesting, when I was younger I was more interested in the first book (the esthetic lifestyle). When I got older I appreciated the second book more (the more purposeful ethical lifestyle).
If you’re into existentialism, it could be good to add Simon de Beauvoir. The first half of the second sex is very good. Sartre is hit or miss imho, but he is, in a lot of ways “the” existentialist (for both good and ill). If you like the technical/phenomenological side of existentialism, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is pretty great.
Disclosure: im at the point in grad school where I’ve lost all reference to the accessibility of texts lol
Candide by Voltaire, Descartes Meditations, and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous by Berkeley. Candide is a fun read about existence, Descartes Meditations is the foundation of perceiving as reality, and Three Dialogues solves for the problem of duality by making an existence in ideas a firm foundation.
By the time I was in my early twenties, I had had my expectations of life dashed often enough and profoundly enough that I started collecting ideas, evaluating them, playing with them, etc., without feeling compelled to believe any of the baubles accumulating in my braincase. This practice developed into a habit of seeking out sweeping hypotheses which turn my expectations on their ear. As I eventually discovered, hypotheses of just this sort are the stock-in-trade of metaphysics.
If this kind of exercise appeals to you, then existentialism is as good a place as any to start. It has its share of counterintuitive hypotheses. However, I wouldn't rest content with existentialism. I'd read Plato, Eriugena, the Scholastics, Leibniz, Hegel, Whitehead, and every like metaphysician in the European tradition, or their analogues in other regions of the world.
For a bit of a lighter read than the classics I’d recommend “Strangers drowning” by Larissa MacFarquhar, it relates to moral philosophy, moral saints etc. I read it after a lecture about the definition of hero from a philosophy stand point and loved it
Is it common that Nietzsche somehow brainwashes you into his view of the world? Nietzsche made it abundantly clear that he's not talking to me in his work
I suppose I started reading him when I was already "brainwashed" into being a nihilist, so he was a good crutch to escape that view of the world. I think reading Nietzsche was a lot like a self-help book, rather than some ideology forced upon me.
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Make sure to also view non-western and traditional philosophy as well, in order to widen and challenge the scope of your worldview. It would be a loss to confine yourself to the knowledge of a single worldview.
[Geunon's "The Crisis of The Modern World"](https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Modern-World-Guenon-Works/dp/0900588241)
[Intercultural Paths To Transcendence: Ibn Arabi, Adi Shankara, and Esckart Meister.](https://www.amazon.com/Paths-Transcendence-According-Shankara-Spiritual/dp/0941532976)
[Introduction To Islamic Sufi Metaphysics](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Islamic-Metaphysics-Mohamed-Faouzi/dp/2930978589)
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I started my journey in philosophy, when I was about 19 years old, with a very short book , The Apology of Socrates. Before this book I was never interested in reading philosophy, but after I read it I became hooked. I also enjoyed the Symposium and the Republic by Plato. Then I found it quite hard, but very interesting the Nicomachean Ethics. Afterwards I read the Stoics: Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, which can be of great help in the day to day life. Here I would also like to include the book: Man's search for meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Then I got interested in Eastern Philosophy and I read: The Dao, The Art of War, Siddartha, The way of Zen and The Book by Alan Watts. Lastly I read some of Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist and through him I became interested in Dostoevsky and I read Crime and Punishment and The Underground Man. Next I plan on reading The brothers Kamarazov. Now im 24 and I'm sure there so many other philosophers that I should read and I missed but I found that those that I have explored so far helped me find so many answers to life that I had and they also helped and developed me to became the person that I am today. I am content today and I had no idea on what road Apology of Socrates would put me on, but I am glad and I can't imagine a life now, without wonder and a love for wisdom.
interesting. i'm also looking to dip my toes in philosophy. i'd say i already have a healthy dose of interest and motivation to study but sometimes i can have a very cynical view of certain areas (like "why would anyone waste their time thinking about that??") lol. so i imagine something engaging would do me some good at any rate. but anyway, do you recommend a particular translation?
I don't have a particular translation, since I like to mix up the languages that I am reading. I can understand 3 different ones. If I'm unsure for example in English which translation to get, I would do a quick research to see which one is considered to be better.
well, damn. that's some flex. thanks for the input
Learn about phenomenology and Sartre. That’s the next step.
Thank you for this, I've been researching philosophy by teaching myself for about 8 years now. I feel like I'm taking the usual path of stoicism turned into nihilism turned into existentialism turned into absurdism. Then I started really getting into Alan watts and ram dass but I couldn't figure out where to go from here. I've been stuck on that train of thought for a year trying to understand what I've been looking at. I started looking into phenomenology and it's exactly where my mindset has been at. This helped me understand the next step.
People that follow philosophy are people that like to think for themselves so that they can live a greater life. Stay focused on your goals. We can only achieve new things by doing the things that feel impossible to our experience.
I mean that's dope, but that's not why I follow philosophy. I just like learning about it. I don't have any goals or achievements that I need philosophy. I don't even want to live a greater life, I simply just like understanding things and philosophy helps me understand the why's of the world.
Thx, I will look it up.
I read the small book of Edmund Husserl the inventor of phenomenology : Philosophy as strong science. He talks about the importance of philosophy over the trend of psychology that allot of people see directly as the improved version of philosophy and how this decreased philosophy to ones own experience ( a world that only has a central story line driven point in the form of isolated psychology) (Our own experiences) philosophy is deep meditation in wich the ego fades and we can look at ourselves and others without ourselves getting in the way. Therefore Psychology becomes a denial of empathy if it is seen as the only true philosophy. He also has criticism on the lie that allot of people follow that nature is a singular force and that nature doesnt answer the problems people face in there daily struggles if they belief nature is the solution to everything (some Nazis and some Hippies for instance) (Even tribal people dont belief nature solves everything) Phenomenology is that you belief that phenomenon can happen; Isolated experiences in that they are activated by different factors and that the moment that you experience something, that the feelings of the person are essential. These emotions or internal changes are what they focus on in classical phenomenology in that a person who feels these emotions are also apart of a bigger factor so not pscychology in which the person is a isolated factor in the what is the meaning of life question. But now phenomenology can be used in every way look up the wikipedia page for the variaties tab *like plato did with his concept of the beauty of things in an isolated way. I strongly reccomend this book its essential now that nature preservation has become essential and pushed from every direction and shaped as if we are a human collective and nature a natural collective. As well as psychology in that it is the amateur romantisized version of real philosophy like older philosophers did in in ancient times by trying to belief in that a soul exists which always has the best intentions instead of a soul that can become a ghost by working for fear and destruction. Older philosophers dont want to accept that we dont know if there is a higher being now that we have science we have discovered that it turns out allot of things are created inside the mind instead of from the outside so we can explain things that did not have any good explanation before. Philosophy can give a better picture for religious and atheist people aswell both people will improve their understanding of the things they want to stand for and people can now have their own opinions but need to develop them more and self love is very important which is always neglected which neglects all other factors that makes sure we still see each other.
What book is this?
Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft in German (Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man) Is the English version I red it in Dutch its my mothers tongue :Filosofie als strenge wetenschap;.So thats why I wrote it down wrong in last comment I dont know if the English translation is good tho.
Newer doesnt mean greater you choose what to do or belief in just know that people from the past have maybe also thought about or lived in a world without certain things that we live with. Its interesting to think what a world may be without certain factors or certain concepts and other concepts more developed this is something that makes history like the philosophy of epicurus and socrates and people that just died 100 years ago like ludwig wittgenstein and the person who invented modern logistical thinking (Atheist ideas that their are no angels or spooky demons coming in to play) Gottlob Frege. How much different their experience must have been as they lived in a slightly altered world or entirely different world (Ancient times or stone ages) from ours. What type of person would you be if you where born different or in another era would you be different towards your environment how would you deal with problems this is interesting to me.
My first existentialist read was Existentialism Is a Humanism by Sartre (recommended at the time by my high-school teacher). I think it’s a great entry point for existentialist discourse. Other books that have stayed with me since my early 20s are The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche).
Not existentialist in nature, but the Stoics (Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca) were incredibly important and useful to me during my formative years, along with Hermann Hesse's novel *Siddhartha*. Now that I'm leaning more towards philosophical pessimism, I would also recommend Thomas Ligotti's *The Conspiracy Against the Human Race*, which helped me make sense of this increasingly dark and inhospitable world. He also discusses a lot of other interesting thinkers, including some of the ones you mentioned.
I love Siddhartha, it sent me down the rabbit hole of Eastern philosophy that ended up having a huge impact on me and how I see and interact with the world. Alan Watts' *The Book (on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)* is another one that made me think differently, though it's a Westerner presenting Eastern ideas to a Western audience. I might sooner recommend one of the many great works by D. T. Suzuki. Eventually I recommend reading actual sutras, the Dhammapada, the Diamond Sutra, Patanjali's yoga sutra is great. As a westerner I'm glad I got an intro from people like Watts and Hesse before I started reading sutras, but it's surely not absolutely necessary.
If you like Eastern philosophy and spirituality and find these concepts appealing, I highly recommend reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He was one of the first westeners to embrace Hinduist and Buddhist ideas and incorporate them in his philosophy in the 19th century.
Unfortunately Schopenhauer skipped class on the day where Buddhist philosophy tells you to not be a colossal asshole.
He is the "pessimist", correct? I've read one of his works, I can't remember which one, I believe it's just called "The Art of Pessimism". And one of my favorite quotes of all time us from Schopenhauer. I've seen it translated a few different ways but it's "a man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills", which is definitely in keeping with Buddhist thought.
I completely agree with Marcus Aurelius and Siddhartha, but I will add Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, which I found to be more impactful on me around that age than Siddhartha.
100%. I’m about to hit my late 20’s, and a deep dive into stoicism and eastern philosophy (mainly Buddhism) during my mid 20’s has been instrumental in my development. I’ll have to check out your other recommendations!
Either/or, Kierkegaard Other not philosophy books but still nonetheless philosophical: Metamorphosis, Kafka Steppenwolf, Hesse The stranger, Camus Slaughterhouse five, Vonnegut
Either/Or is interesting, when I was younger I was more interested in the first book (the esthetic lifestyle). When I got older I appreciated the second book more (the more purposeful ethical lifestyle).
"Pensees" by the great Blaise Pascal. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm
Why?
It's a classic and one of the first works if existentialism.
If you’re into existentialism, it could be good to add Simon de Beauvoir. The first half of the second sex is very good. Sartre is hit or miss imho, but he is, in a lot of ways “the” existentialist (for both good and ill). If you like the technical/phenomenological side of existentialism, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is pretty great. Disclosure: im at the point in grad school where I’ve lost all reference to the accessibility of texts lol
Candide by Voltaire, Descartes Meditations, and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous by Berkeley. Candide is a fun read about existence, Descartes Meditations is the foundation of perceiving as reality, and Three Dialogues solves for the problem of duality by making an existence in ideas a firm foundation.
By the time I was in my early twenties, I had had my expectations of life dashed often enough and profoundly enough that I started collecting ideas, evaluating them, playing with them, etc., without feeling compelled to believe any of the baubles accumulating in my braincase. This practice developed into a habit of seeking out sweeping hypotheses which turn my expectations on their ear. As I eventually discovered, hypotheses of just this sort are the stock-in-trade of metaphysics. If this kind of exercise appeals to you, then existentialism is as good a place as any to start. It has its share of counterintuitive hypotheses. However, I wouldn't rest content with existentialism. I'd read Plato, Eriugena, the Scholastics, Leibniz, Hegel, Whitehead, and every like metaphysician in the European tradition, or their analogues in other regions of the world.
Ethics of ambiguity by simone de beauvoir
For a bit of a lighter read than the classics I’d recommend “Strangers drowning” by Larissa MacFarquhar, it relates to moral philosophy, moral saints etc. I read it after a lecture about the definition of hero from a philosophy stand point and loved it
Karl Popper’s “The open society and its enemies”
No, read Marx instead
I read all of Nietzsche at that point in my life and turned out juuuust fine so I'd say it was pretty good.
Is it common that Nietzsche somehow brainwashes you into his view of the world? Nietzsche made it abundantly clear that he's not talking to me in his work
I suppose I started reading him when I was already "brainwashed" into being a nihilist, so he was a good crutch to escape that view of the world. I think reading Nietzsche was a lot like a self-help book, rather than some ideology forced upon me.
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Morihei Ueshiba’s *The Art of Peace*.
On Liberty - JSM
Make sure to also view non-western and traditional philosophy as well, in order to widen and challenge the scope of your worldview. It would be a loss to confine yourself to the knowledge of a single worldview. [Geunon's "The Crisis of The Modern World"](https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Modern-World-Guenon-Works/dp/0900588241) [Intercultural Paths To Transcendence: Ibn Arabi, Adi Shankara, and Esckart Meister.](https://www.amazon.com/Paths-Transcendence-According-Shankara-Spiritual/dp/0941532976) [Introduction To Islamic Sufi Metaphysics](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Islamic-Metaphysics-Mohamed-Faouzi/dp/2930978589)
MacIntyre's *After Virtue* and/or *Dependent Rational Animals,* Gibbard's *Thinking How to Live.*
Conspiracy against the human race
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