Where to start when beginning to study philosophy?

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dje101

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Greetings to you all!

I would like to start studying philosophy, but I don’t quite know where to begin.

I know there are plenty of philosophy books out there that would probably be a huge waste of time.

So, I would like to ask the members of CAF where it would be best to start?

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut!

God Bless!!!
 
 
dje101 said:
Greetings to you all!

I would like to start studying philosophy, but I don’t quite know where to begin.

I know there are plenty of philosophy books out there that would probably be a huge waste of time.

So, I would like to ask the members of CAF where it would be best to start?

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut!

God Bless!!!
Click to expand...
You could start with reading some dialogues by Plato. The Republic, for example.

Plato through Socrates teaches us how to think. You may not agree with all Socrates says, but you will begin to appreciate what it means to be a full-fledged philosopher.

amazon.com/The-Republic-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486411214/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1400186745&sr=8-3&keywords=plato
 
Guys wouldn’t it be okay to concurrently read the really old stuff from Western philosophy like Plato and something more “cutting edge” and recent (turn of the last century) stuff like Ferdinand de Saussure or Ludwig Wittgenstein,letting yourslef cross-analyze stuff as you go into less dated stuff?.
 
sidetrack said:
Guys wouldn’t it be okay to concurrently read the really old stuff from Western philosophy like Plato and something more “cutting edge” and recent (turn of the last century) stuff like Ferdinand de Saussure or Ludwig Wittgenstein,letting yourslef cross-analyze stuff as you go into less dated stuff?.
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I doubt there is anything more cutting edge than Plato who uses Socrates to teach us how to think.
 
Start with Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Also, Mortimer Adler has some good introductory books, such as How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization.
 
dje101 said:
Greetings to you all!

I would like to start studying philosophy, but I don’t quite know where to begin.

I know there are plenty of philosophy books out there that would probably be a huge waste of time.

So, I would like to ask the members of CAF where it would be best to start?

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut!

God Bless!!!
Click to expand...
I would recommend the following.

1.Aquinas by Dr.Edward Feser

2.Thomas Aquinas by Dr. Taylor Marshall

3.One Minute Summa by Kevin Vost

4.Summa of the Summa by Dr. Peter Kreeft

5.Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer Adler
  • I recommend # 5 highly, perhaps even before the others because one must have a basic grasp of Aristotle before going on to Thomas.
A previous poster gave the following.

tanbooks.com/index.php/p…to+Philosophy/

amazon.com/Philosophy-101…PRRQKJ71JE3RDE

amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginn…=aquinas+feser

Also, here is helpful site:
fmmh.ycdsb.ca/teachers/fmmh_m…hilosophy.html

A particularly interesting article from the author can be found here: catholiceducation.org/art…phy/ph0027.htm

#'s 1 & 3 are the only ones I would recommend for now. #'s 2 & 4 seem fine but I think they would be too difficult for now.

I would discourage reading any other sources until you have read these and I would not go into anything else until you have finally gotten into the actual works of St. Thomas, himself - the two Summas, etc. Other posters have recommended the other early Greek philosophers. I would avoid doing that until you are much further along and have read Thomas, himself.

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
I would discourage reading any other sources until you have read these and I would not go into anything else until you have finally gotten into the actual works of St. Thomas, himself - the two Summas, etc. Other posters have recommended the other early Greek philosophers. I would avoid doing that until you are much further along and have read Thomas, himself.

Linus2nd
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I believe this is to put the cart before the horse. He should learn how to ride the horse before he tries to pull the Thomistic cart of the Summa Theologica. 😉
 
I would not jump into the big guys right off the bat.

Find an intro to philosophy.

I have a great book with charts at work. I will post the link tomorrow.
It gives a good general overview of all the different forms of philosophy and the philosophers involved with them from the beginning.

The Great Courses have some good resources also.
 
Here is a great book for the young and new student of philosophy.

amazon.com/The-Mansions-Philosophy-WILL-DURANT/dp/B002MVNUT8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400420931&sr=8-1&keywords=mansions+of+philosophy

Mansions of Philosophy was written by Will Durant when he was still a young man and believed he would become a philosopher rather than the historian he became.

It is extremely pleasurable to read and chock full of all the issues every young philosopher should study before taking on the big guns in philosophy.

Get the original harbound issue (1929). 👍
 
I see littlestsouls2 already recommended Sullivan’s introduction, which I would second. I’d also recommend getting Peter Kreeft’s Socratic Logic. It is not specifically a philosophy text, but it has a couple benefits:
  1. Logic is used often in philosophy, and it is very helpful to know the lay of the land in that regard.
  2. Kreeft does go over some philosophical topics such as the problem of universals. He indicates in the table of contents which topics are logic based and which ones are philosophy based.
Once you get a decent grasp, I would very highly recommend you start learning about the history of philosophy as well. It may take awhile as some of it is very challenging, but some authors you might want to look at include Frederick Copleston and Etienne Gilson. I’ve heard good things about Sir Anthony Kenny too. The first and third look at the history of philosophy as a whole, while Gilson is more focused on how we (mistakenly) moved from a more Scholastic-Aristotelian based philosophy to modern philosophy (post-Descartes).
 
Linusthe2nd said:
I would recommend the following.

1.Aquinas by Dr.Edward Feser

2.Thomas Aquinas by Dr. Taylor Marshall

3.One Minute Summa by Kevin Vost

4.Summa of the Summa by Dr. Peter Kreeft

5.Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer Adler
  • I recommend # 5 highly, perhaps even before the others because one must have a basic grasp of Aristotle before going on to Thomas.
A previous poster gave the following.

tanbooks.com/index.php/p…to+Philosophy/

amazon.com/Philosophy-101…PRRQKJ71JE3RDE

amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginn…=aquinas+feser

Also, here is helpful site:
fmmh.ycdsb.ca/teachers/fmmh_m…hilosophy.html

A particularly interesting article from the author can be found here: catholiceducation.org/art…phy/ph0027.htm

#'s 1 & 3 are the only ones I would recommend for now. #'s 2 & 4 seem fine but I think they would be too difficult for now.

I would discourage reading any other sources until you have read these and I would not go into anything else until you have finally gotten into the actual works of St. Thomas, himself - the two Summas, etc. Other posters have recommended the other early Greek philosophers. I would avoid doing that until you are much further along and have read Thomas, himself.

Linus2nd
Click to expand...
Thank you very much Linus2nd!

I appreciate the advice and the many book references. Have you read the Summas? If so, how long did it take you?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Here is a great book for the young and new student of philosophy.

amazon.com/The-Mansions-Philosophy-WILL-DURANT/dp/B002MVNUT8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400420931&sr=8-1&keywords=mansions+of+philosophy

Mansions of Philosophy was written by Will Durant when he was still a young man and believed he would become a philosopher rather than the historian he became.

It is extremely pleasurable to read and chock full of all the issues every young philosopher should study before taking on the big guns in philosophy.

Get the original harbound issue (1929). 👍
Click to expand...
Thanks! I’m glad the used versions are cheaper. Don’t think I can afford the $2,000 option fr Amazon.
 
I guess I should have read all the posts before making individual replies because I want to thank all of you! I’ve received quite a lot of information and resources to start off!
 
dje101 said:
Thank you very much Linus2nd!

I appreciate the advice and the many book references. Have you read the Summas? If so, how long did it take you?
Click to expand...
I’ve read chunks of the S.T. and quite a bit from T’s Commentaries. I rarely use the S.C.G. I have also read chunks of A’s Physics and Metaphysics. How long would it take? Well we are talking about over a thousand pages of very difficult reading. Let’s just say it would take several years to read it all with meaningful comprehension.

Linus2nd
 
dje101 said:
I guess I should have read all the posts before making individual replies because I want to thank all of you! I’ve received quite a lot of information and resources to start off!
Click to expand...
If it’s not too late, you might be interested to know that you are highly advised to not get busy reading modern philosophers at all, in the beginning. Before you start developing any curiosity or allurement to writings of the past 4 centuries (generally beginning with Immanuel Kant), do yourself a huge favor and learn about Aristotle, Socrates and Augustine. Be cautious with Plato, but he does offer some helpful material. In this way you can become prepared to read Aquinas. The reason St. Thomas is not such a great starting point is, unless you’re already familiar with some of the basics his lessons will be confusing and you might get tired of losing interest. I have found that it is somewhat typical for sede-vacantists to endeavor to read the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas with the desire to find things to support their agenda, whether its regarding the vacancy of a certain office or some other thing in religion. This is not a good idea, because that is not what the study of philosophy is for. You should not use it to find proof that you are correct about some fad or whatever. You should be approaching the Queen of the Sciences with a supple mind, ready to receive an appreciation for the LOVE OF WISDOM (that’s what philo-sophia means). And that cannot be procured by vending machine consumerism. Going about it the wrong way can risk losing your enthusiasm, and so, rather than risk giving up, begin with the basics and work your way up. The most important place to focus at first is in Logic. It is a bit tedious and you might wonder what it’s all for, but the purpose is to verify that your thinking processes are in order – which is most useful these days, when liberalism has introduced so much bad thinking into our everyday lives. So here too, DO NOT presume that a college textbook from 1958 on “Logic” is going to work for you, because even early 20th century books were starting to substitute mathematical formulas and symbols for logical operations, and all that is JUNK. Don’t waste your time trying to turn Logic into symbolic calculus. Learn instead, how to identify and work with syllogisms. Learn to distinguish effect from cause and cause from effect. Learn about “If A then B; If B then C; therefore, if A then C.” The mathematical discipline that most closely resembles logic is Geometry. But geometry is not Logic. You can know a whole lot about geometry and still be entirely lost in the more challenging Logical exercises. Don’t try to skip chapters and get “right to the tough stuff” but work you way gradually from Logic (often times in two courses) to cosmology to history of philosophy, then on to psychology (not modern psych but classical – much different!), ethics, and epistemology. The last of these used to be of theoretical interest alone, but ever since the invasion of modern philosophy and Modernism (a condemned heresy!), epistemology has become a most valuable study and much new work has been done in the past 100 years, but please beware to avoid this until you have done the groundwork in the previous 6 courses listed above. Finally, after you have learned all that and have worked through epistemology, at last you are ready for ontology. It is very common for unwitting students to want to leap to ontology at the beginning but you are ONLY CHEATING YOURSELF, because you’re not going to be ready for it, and it won’t be interesting enough and you’ll probably think it’s a bunch of nonsense. You have to learn the language of philosophy gradually, so give yourself time. A year or even two is not unreasonable, but if you press on it hard and pay attention perhaps 5 or 6 months is possible, but you’re likely to not enjoy it as much, going that fast.
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Many college rhetoric textbooks for English contain a chapter on the principles of sound reasoning. Acquaint yourself with valid and invalid syllogisms and at least twelve or fifteen common fallacies.

But I repeat what I said earlier in this thread. Study the dialectical reasoning style that we learn from Socrates through Plato. You will sometimes get confused, because Socrates delights in challenging the young people who gather around him to learn philosophy. When you have read enough Plato you will get by osmosis a pleasure in analyzing complex questions and finding answers that give pleasure and satisfaction in getting near the truth.

I would second the previous poster who cautions staying away from medieval and modern philosophers until you have secured a strong foundation in reasoning principles. Don’t get in over your head to the point of getting discouraged. Always remember that philosophy is the search for wisdom, more so than knowledge. Knowledge is easy enough. Anyone with a photographic memory can be a great know-it-all. Few can be great thinkers. To be a great thinker requires a great and abiding passion for truth as opposed to propaganda.

Now philosophy comes in many guises. One that I have always favored is the writings of a man who is not usually thought of as a professional philosopher, G.K. Chesterton. The young Chesterton met the aging American philosopher/psychologist William James during his visit to London. James was amazed at the depth of Chesterton’s insights in the short time they spent together. If you have not yet read Chesterton, try Orthodoxy first. You will soon learn that as a stylist Chesterton is one of the best. Here an example of his wit.

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
 
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