What's your favorite work of philosophy?

[jpgray]

I was really pleased with Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations. It's mostly a distillation, but it was a truly fascinating and personal read.

[tedoll78]

1. You're gonna laugh..

but in high school and college, I was obsessed with 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.' The combination of novel and philosophy really got to me, as I was bawling at the end of the book..

[chiburb]

10. A MOST excellent book...

I didn't read it 'till I was 40, and wow! I'm glad I waited... I think I got more out of it.

12. Great influential book

I read it between my freshman and sophomore year at the University of Chicago & then when I got back to school in the fall I actually had a class in the room that Pirsig went crazy in. I figured this out one day when I was looking around and thought "...wait a minute.... " So I went and read the description of the room in the Classics building and it could only be one room from the description


I won't even attempt to pick my favorite philosophy book, too long a list especially when you consider both Western and Eastern philosophy.

[Whitacre D_WI]

2. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Though the whole "end of philosophy" idea would've rang truer had old Ludwig not written the "Philosophical Investigations" later in life.

[GumboYaYa]

3. Wittgenstein...ugghhh, I suffered through that in

undergrad.

For me it's "Being and Time."

[mobuto]

16. How about Foucault?

In order to get admitted into the most-podernist school (or whatever they're calling it), I think you have to promise to describe simple concepts cryptically, using the greatest number of words possible.

If the reviewer in the Chronicle of Higher Education can't understand your book's preface, then how can he or she possibly give it a negative review?

[markses]

24. Any examples of these simple co

?

I must be an elitist most-postern ass, cuz I think Foucault's work is deeply moving and quite brilliant. I suppose it requires reading more than just "What is an author" and the first chapter of Discipline and Punish in sophomore literary theory, and - you're quite right - avoiding, or at least engaging, the many, many, many bad readings of Foucault that circulate in the American academy. Even throwing Foucault in as "post-modern," or "most-podern," or other such designations seems to miss the force of his work. And certainly, nearly all philosophical thought has been derided by the so-called skepticism of "common sense," usually trivially.

But, of course, to each his own.

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write."
- Michel Foucault, "The Archaeology of Knowledge"

"The last point is a request to my English-speaking reader. In France, certain half-witted 'commentators' persist in labelling me a 'structuralist.' I have been unable to get into their tiny minds that I have used none of the methods, concepts, or key terms that characterize structural analysis."
- Michel Foucault, "The Order of Things," Preface to the English edition.

;-)

[Zuni]

29. I hate Foucalt

some of the most infantile leftism I have ever seen. I had to read some of his stuff about how society forces people to oppress themselves and other garbage.

[markses]

31. You're right

I guess he was just a dumbass.

[tishaLA]

33. Hmmmmm. I have every Foucault book

and I have never run across him saying that "society forces people to oppress themselves." Maybe it's a willful way of reading him.

[markses]

35. Of course

Foucault never said anything of the sort.

[mobuto]

18. How about repeating myself

Maybe if I just hit the post button twice my point can be twice as profound.

Or not.

Apologies for consuming your bandwidth.

[bobbieinok]

21. Being and Time ...... what's your take on the

'Heidegger was a nazi' controversy?

[GumboYaYa]

23. Heidegger was a card carrying member of the Nazi party,

so I don't see much controversy on whether he was a Nazi. He did begin to distance himself from the Nazis in the mid-30's. My take is that Heidegger was attracted to the idea of the philosopher-king (or a group of philosopher kings) as the rulers of Germany. At first he thought that was what he was getting with Hitler, then reality set in. Unfortunately by the time reality set in he was where he was and complete withdrawal and repudiation of the Nazis would have probably meant death for a prominent philosopher like Heidegger. As you well know, there are vast differences of opinion on this issue and none of us can read Martin Heidegger's mind, so take my opinion for what it is worth (basically nothing).

I do not think "Being and Time" is a Nazi text much the same as I disagree with the interpretation of "Also Sprach Zarathistra" and "The Will to Power" as promoting Nazism. I read both Hediegger and Nietzche as promoting freedom of experience and expression without the myths and constraints of convention.

[bobbieinok]

20. he changed his mind, right??

Philosophical Investigations contradicts/'destroys' Tractatus

[Whitacre D_WI]

30. The very EXISTENCE of the Investigations contradicts the Tractatus.

Probably part of the reason he didn't publish it, and didn't want it published posthumously.

Elisabeth Anscombe had to go and screw everything up....

You must remember as well that the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations came a couple of decades apart. I admire the audacity of a young man coming out and declaring his text to be the end of philosophy.

Actually, in some sense he was right -- most Western thought to come afterward (including the Investigations) is, in a sense, a footnote to/quibbling about the Tractatus.

"Der Ethik und der Aesthetik sind eins!" -- the rallying cry of music snobs everywhere.

[TrogL]

25. I loved the ending

many times I wish I could learn to "pass over in silence"

[bacchant]

4. Hmm... my favorite work philosophy?

Play the Lotto, play often.

[soothsayer]

5. Nicholas de Cusa "About Mind"

One of his basic contentions: we understand how man names things (you call a thing a triangle cuz it has three sides), cuz we presumably name things logically. So de Cusa sez if you understood the REAL name of even one part of creation (a cat, a plant, a rock, a star) then you could understand the mind of God (God being a rational namer, too).

What's even more fascinating to me is that thing that has happened to stroke victims or other brain damaged people, where if you show them flash cards of manmade things (hammer, truck, chair, scissors, etc.) they can get the names right off, but if you show them NATURAL things (cat, dog, tree, etc.) they are stumped!

[chiburb]

6. Denis Diderot... this is my favorite quote:

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/denisdider126536.html

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. Violence and the Sacred

By Rene Girard.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801822181/qid=1073579161/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-2081527-9861701?v=glance&s=books

Quite enlightening.

also I'm a big of the philosphy of physics itself, especially, of course, twentieth century physics, and what it tells us of the incredbile nature of the universe.

[markses]

8. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

"Capitalism and Schizophrenia" (in two volumes..Volume 1: Anti-Oedipus, Volume 2: A Thousand Plateaus).

Closely followed by

Gilles Deleuze, "Difference and Repetition"
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Genealogy of Morals"
Baruch Spinoza, "The Ethics"
Henri Bergson, "Creative Evolution"

"In fact, concepts only ever designate possibilities. They lack the claws of absolute necessity - in other words, of an original violence inflicted upon thought; the claws of a strangeness or an emnity which alone would awaken thought from its natural stupor or eternal possibility: there is only involuntary thought, aroused but constrained within thought, and all the more absolutely necessary for being born, illegitimately, of fortuitousness in the world. Thought is primarily trespass and violence, the enemy, and nothing presupposes philosophy: everything begins with misosophy." - Gilles Deleuze, "Difference and Repetition"

"...but there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming - the doer is merely a fiction added to the deed: the deed is everything." - Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Genealogy of Morals"

[tishaLA]

34. I agree with you totally

(well, excepting Bergson, for whom I have never had the passion I have for Deleuze, Nietzsche, and Spinoza). I'd add Discipline and Punish, but that's just a minor quibble.

[Loonman]

9. No specific work, but those that address existentialism and nihilism

Being a nihilist.

[mobuto]

13. Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism,

but at least its an ethos!

;-)

[Richardo]

26. Way to go, Walter!

I love that line...

:thumbsup: mobuto!

[markses]

17. LOL!

Tough to *BE* a nihilist, yes? Nicely done.

[quispquake]

11. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

by Hunter S. Thompson...summed up human existence pretty damned well I'd say :)

[catzies]

14. Matt Groening's Love Is Hell.

Love is a snowmobile, racing across the frozen tundra, which suddenly flips, pinning you underneath.

At night the ice weasels come.

[On the Road]

15. Not Pure Philosophy, but

My ex-wife had a PhD in Philosophy. I tried to read Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, etc, but I could never get through them. I prefer books on other subjects that have a philosophical bent.

I love Alan Watt's books like The Wisdom of Insecurity, although they tend to be popularizations of Eastern philosophy. He is really the only interpreter of Buddhism that makes any kind of sense to me.

I also love Eric Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Aggression and Eernest Becker's The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil. Very rewarding view of the darker side of human nature.

[BigDaddyLove]

19. The Stranger.........

:smoke:

[noonwitch]

22. The Tao of Pooh

It's fun, althought the Dorothy Parker in my detests Pooh on one level, I do love Eyeore.

[TrogL]

27. Science and Sanity - Korzybski

http://www.general-semantics.org/Basics/index.shtml

...not that I understand it. I generally start hallucinating about page 450.

[SOteric]

28. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, and Emmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

[arwalden]

32. Atlas Shrugged

[banana republican]

36. Kierkegaard