I will be taking philosophy classes soon and I’d like to get a jump start.
Which books are absolutely essential to becoming a philosophy major?
suggest anything, really. . .
-The Fundamentals of Critical Thinking by Burton F. Porter
-Ultimate Questions, Thinking About Philosophy by Nils Ch. Rauhut
Two books that I know of.
thanks, I’ll get those.
my first introduction to philosophy was a 1st year philosophy text that covered the basics of most branches of philosophy, and was a great start. picking up an outdated (read:two year old) textbook would be cheap and easy to find
Plato’s writings regarding Socrates.
Plato
Rottenberg’s Elements of Argument
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance (I didn’t enjoy this, but the prof. loved it.)
Depends on the class you are taking. Is it Argument, Logic, intro. to philosophy. Locke, Burke, Descartes. This could easily go into religious philosophy as well. There are thousands to choose from. What is the title of the class. Perhaps posters can better help if we knew.
With regards,
aspacia 
I am not a philosophy major, but I recently picked up a copy of “Looking at Philosophy” by Palmer (off a recommendation from this site). It’s a brief overview of the Europe’s main philosophers, there are cartoons, and it makes the concepts easy to understand…I liked it.
i’m going into second year philosophy and recommend, as a very first introduction, simon blackburn’s ‘think’ (for philosophy) and ‘being good’ (for ethics). they’re short, but he writes very well - explaining difficult topics very clearly and accessibly - and is also an adorable man.
‘sophie’s world’ broadly covers most of the history of philosophy, but is a chunky read - make sure you’re dedicated before you begin! and i’m not just mentioning it because of the name thing, i promise.
to add - if you fancy something a little more analytic, russell’s ‘the problems of philosophy’ is a classic introductory text.
He said essential, not random books that you enjoyed, or books that your philosophy class arbitrarily chose as an explination to primary texts that you should have read instead.
Plato’s Republic/Symposium
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
Sartre’s Being an Nothingness
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra/Beyond Good and Evil/ Geneology of morals
Spinoza’s Ethics
These all should be read by any philosophy major, once you finish them I’ll give you more.
Anything by Nietzsche, I am yet to meet a philosophy lecturer who hasn’t admired Nietzsche in one way or another. Plus he is essential if one really wants to understand the zeitgeist in which we live.
Thanks everybody for all suggestions, especially Nihilistic.
I got Being and Nothingness today.
LOL, essential is what the prof. claims is essential for her or his course of study.
I’m sure it is for the science majors who are forced to take a philosophy classes, but I’d like to think that becoming a philosophy major is a little less superficial than mindlessly passing courses. A person with such an attitude has IMO no business pursuing philosophy as a major.
I wouldn’t start with Kant or Nietzsche, myself. If you were going to read only one philosopher your whole life, it should be Nietzsche, though. If you were going to omit one, it should be Kant - but my real point is that Kant is impossible to understand without some sophistication in philosophy, and nearly so even with it. Nietzsche is regularly mistaken by professionals.
Or, you could read Derrida, which, if you knew nothing else about philosophy, might cause you to change your major to something more lucrative, which only makes sense.
Just a personal view.
Here’s a suggestion that no one will take seriously - but I am entirely serious.
Read anything by Dr Seuss and the other authors in that series, which I think is called The Basic Reader Series, My First reader, or some such shit. While it is popular (and quite stupid) now to explore the philosopy of any cartoon character, these books are the real deal. Yertle the Turtle gives a much more coherent view of power and politics than Plato or Hobbes, for instance, and The Sneetches is a more cogent approach to social theory than any British philosopher.
You laugh, but it’s true.
Nihilistic - well-spoken. Philosophy is not only the Queen of all Sciences, but the Bloody King of Arts.
Get it? That was a pun using a British accent.
Get it now?
No wonder Faust dislikes British humour - he’s absolutely crap at it…
For reading - start at the beginning. Read the pre-socratics (or a long introduction to them) and read some ancient Chinese philosophy too. The rest is all just attempts to redefine the playpen. Ignore Kant until you’ve read Aristotle, Descartes, Locke and Berkeley. Otherwise it probably won’t make much sense.
Not more opinions. Anything but that.
Listen to wordless music and read the poems of natural order sketched out between the hills.
siatd - I do entirely regret that. Really, I do.
The book, “After Philosophy:End or Transition” puts you into the heat of contemporary philosophy debates. Will and Ariel Durant’s history of philosophy gives good, human insights about philosophers. Russell’s history of philosophy is good., but the Kaufmann edited history is even better. The Mentor “age of” series is quite good. Any decent library has all these.
bruce lee " Artist of life" then anything you want, mainly the people’s signature quotes. The quotes you see the most. Mainy most used and asked are from plato, aristotle, other users names, confucious, Tao, Zen, chrisitianity
the end 