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- Here's my promised list (note it's only a rough guide). As mentioned, I couldn't post earlier versions as they were too big. Even this new rehash (which was already rehashed from much older posts) is too big, so I'll post the first two thirds now and the remainder later. What's missing (compared to my initial attempt) are large sections of my commentary. For additional details use Wiki (these books are well known, hence they all should have entries). Most are out of copyright so you can download them from the I.A. (Internet Archive).
1. The Republic (Book 1 only)—Plato Begin study here; it's an excellent intro to formal argument (v. important), as it's the basis of arguing things out in logical ways. It's a dialogue between the philosopher Socrates and a sophist Thrasymachus about the meaning of justice. It's also fun to read, watching Socrates demolish Thrasymachus' selfish stance of 'every-man-for-himself' in logical sequence is like watching a chess game between a master and a cocky arrogant rookie. The book's passed the test of time, it's still in print nearly two half millennia after it was written. Use Jowett's translation, 1892 ed will do. Jowet's info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Jowett
2. Last Days of Socrates—Plato (Read only if you've time.) It's important in the grand scheme of Greek philosophy and the fact that Plato was affected by the execution of Socrates (his teacher).
3. Nicomachean Ethics—Aristotle (Likely too long now but essential later). Any Aristotle text is worthy of study, he's a giant in the field, his influence is still stamped all over Western culture today. Phil. is incomplete without studying him. The book's deals with ethics and how people should live their lives.
4. Meditations on First Philosophy, & etc.—René Descartes Very influential book. Initially, just read Discourse on the Method, it's about finding the truth, especially the sciences. Here, you'll find the famous phrase "I think therefore I exist/am". It also turns up in the 'related' Principles of Philosophy as Cogito, ergo sum. If you advance further, you'll be taught about breakdowns in reasoning/faulty logic and Descartes isn't immune to them either. One of his logical steps is a misstep and is famous for it—no, I won't tell you what its is.
5. Sir Francis Bacon—Rather than give specific references just get his collected essays (they're all short), select any relevant tiles to read.
6. The Leviathan—Thomas Hobbes. Herein Hobbes addresses statecraft, society, civil power government (actually very important). Written in the aftermath of the English Civil War when such matters were still raw and fluid. BTW, our modern understanding of the word commonwealth comes from Hobbes, the book's full title is: Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil.
7 & 8. Two Treatises of Government | An Essay Concerning Human Understanding—John Locke Locke is an English empiricist Enlightenment philosopher, his ideas had a strong influence on governance structures in the U.S. Locke was an early epistemologist, so his words are well chosen and noted for the fact. He had a very influential effect on later philosophers. The Two Treatises of Government deals with civil society, one's rights, property and contracts. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding deals with empiricism, fundamental ideas, innate concepts and notions such as 'color', 'good' etc. Locke had a great influence on philosophers such as Hume, Kant, Berkeley, Moore and many others.
9. The Prince—Niccolò Machiavelli He gets a bad press although he doesn't deserve it. It's questionable that he was truly 'Machiavellian' himself. Simply, The Prince is sound practical (worldly) advice to a prince about how to conduct oneself and how not be screwed by one's enemies (be wary/aware of likely enemies, avoid situations that could lead to one's dethronement). It's a very short book, just a few hours to read.
10 & 11. On Liberty | Utilitarianism—John Stuart Mill. Both books were highly influential and still are. On liberty deals with a theory of liberty—re liberty itself, also concerning political rulers, tyrants and tyranny. Utilitarianism is about utility, the notion of the greatest good for the greatest number, it still underpins the philosophy behind the running of most modern cities/states today.
12, 13 & 14. A Treatise of Human Nature | An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals—David Hume It is impossible [I almost said 'almost'] to cover these works in a couple of sentences, so I won't. At least you should know about them and what they are about. Hume is a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and much more. His works are uncannily modern and prescient nearly 300 years after they were written. He's hugely relevant to philosophy, science and culture in general; a true giant in the field. Like Locke, he was not a believer in innate ideas but rather that they come from experience (like George Berkeley's Tree in the quad arguments). He's the principle founder of philosophical induction and much more.
15. The Social Contract—Jean-Jacques Rousseau This is a great work (and fun to read). The most famous opening sentence of any philosophical work likely ever written, ancient or modern, is at the very beginning of Chapter 1: L'Homme eft né libre, and par-tout il eft dans les fers.—Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Words of great influence and they were in fact so. Those words were much the truth in 1762 and they're still pretty much true nowadays (unfortunately)!
Frontispiece: https://archive.org/details/jducontractsocia00rous/page/n7/m...
Chapter 1: https://archive.org/details/jducontractsocia00rous/page/2/mo...
It's Rousseau's most famous work. He discusses political society and conjectures all people will be free if everyone equally gives up certain rights then all accept the responsibility and obligation thrust upon them in equal measure for their own collective governance. Here, he posits the notion of the The General Will of the Citizenry, it's this that should drive legislative government. The General Will should always hold government to account, especially when it exceeds authority or legitimacy. The Social Contract was revolutionary at the time (1762), only 27 years later the French Revolution took place and Rousseau's ideas, at least in part, were influential in causing the foment that led up to it. It changed governance for the better and today we're its beneficiaries (at least so in democracies).
16. Critique of Pure Reason—Emmanuel Kant I'm hesitant to mention Kant because he can be so obscure. The trouble is that he's so influential. Kant deals with knowledge, reason, human reasoning, and empirical reason. One cannot ignore Kant or does so at his/her peril, (perhaps this book is better left until you've a fuller grasp of the subject).
17. Principia Ethica—G. E. Moore (George Edward) Prof of Phil., Cambridge, UK at turn of the 20th Century. Since it was published in 1903 Principia Ethica has had a huge influence on philosophers and still does (incl. yours truly, it was one of my early texts). ;-) It deals with the notion that certain ideas and concepts cannot reduced into simpler terms because they're already irreducible. 'Good' or 'bad' can't be reduced further as we've no way of measuring them. We know/learn what 'good' means intrinsically, so too 'very good' but we cannot measure the amount of 'good', nor can we measure how much 'very' adds to it. Here's another case: normal sighted people and those who've gone blind later in life know the colour 'yellow' as they've physically seen and perceived it, but no amount of trying will convey that perceived notion to a person blind from birth (they'll learn a conceptual understanding but can't actually perceive color as the sighted do). There's much more to Moore too: moral philosophy, etc. He was a trendsetter for much of 20th C. philosophy.
18. The Problems of Philosophy—Bertrand Russell Russell was one of the last great polymaths and a social reformer, philosopher, logician and much more (I remember him on TV when a kid). The Book discusses past philosophical problems and equates/restates them in his terms. He questions, discusses, countenances and argues over subjects such as 'what we can actually prove', 'what are causal relationships', 'what is knowledge and validation', 'what is their relationship or relative importance when considered along side metaphysics'. He further develops ideas that began (first logically codified) with Locke (or even Bacon) and continued through to Hume, Berkeley etc. He discusses the important notion of the 'sense datum' (along with G.E. Moore, A.J. Ayer, etc.).
Note: 'The Problems of Philosophy' is only a little book but you are rather unlikely to digest it in just one sitting!
I'd strongly recommend both Principia Ethica and The Problems of Philosophy to those studying Quantum Physics, as they deal with what is real and what we know about real things—and things that are seemingly ephemeral but are in fact real (e.g.: zero point energy, virtual particles, potentials). Grasping Russell's solid logic also gives us the mindset to tackle the 'awkward' practice—the philosophically worrying 'logic'—of renormalization and perturbation theory (Yang-Mills etc.) in Quantum Field Theory/QFT and its sibling Quantum Electrodynamics/QED.
(Items 19 through 22 to follow.)
Plato: Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito (translated by David Gallop)Some from the canon:The Modes of Scepticism by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (a beautiful collection of texts from Pyrrhonian scepticism and analysis of their arguments; the best way I know to meet ancient scepticism)
Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy (The Cambridge University Press edition is very good; it's probably worth buying their Selected Philosophical Writings for a good basic Descartes text)
David Hume: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (I recommend the Oxford Philosophical Texts editions)
Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations (terribly, terribly difficult, but very rewarding)
Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of MindA few contemporary things:Willard Van Orman Quine: From a Logical Point of View
J. L. Mackie: Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
Thomas Nagel: Mortal Questions (short essays, well-written, very accessible)
Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
Michael Smith: The Moral Problem
The Frege Reader by Michael Beaney (for modern logic and the beginnings of contemporary philosophy in the analytic style)Specialist, technical, odd:J. L. Mackie: The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation
William Kingdon Clifford: The Ethics of Belief (he argues, oddly but powerfully, that it's immoral to believe things on insufficient evidence or irrationally - an offense to morality, not just reason)
- >the analytical approach will always outpace the empirical one.
It sounds like you're describing and empirical meta-approach: that we should pick the approach that goes the fastest. I'm not proposing that analysis be thrown away, just that it is and should be controlled by empiricism (at every meta-level). Essentially, I'm arguing that science applies to itself recursively: if you take empiricism as axiomatic, then science can "choose" its own philosophy, just like it chooses its theories: empirically.
>Also, there's a new and growing branch called "experimental philosophy" which includes experiments that test intuitions on philosophical questions.
In that vein, you could claim that all philosophy is empirical: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals was plain evidence that Hume's brain had produced certain beliefs about morals. So, is philosophy of science an exploration of its namesake, or an exploration of the brains of philosophers of science? I say, whenever it has empirical grounding (in the success of science), it works like science and tells us things about how to do science, and when it's inwardly-focused it is just information about how philosophers' brains work.
>but also explanatory power
As far as I can tell, explanations are stories that make our brains feel comfortable with the procedures that we use to predict things. Why? Because perfect stories will be discarded without a second thought if another completely unpalatable theory comes along with better predictive power. Story-sentences about this stuff (for example, "the virtual particles pop in and out of existence in the vacuum") carry as much information about our brains as they do about the universe that they're supposedly describing.
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