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# System prepended metadata

title: Teach yourself philosophy

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# Teach yourself philosophy

## Website structure

* Intro
    * How to read philosphy, reading strategies
    * The fact that philosophers respond to each other (to read 19th century German philosophy you need to understand the major philosophers from the pre-socratics to the 19th century)
    * The fact that philosophies are sometimes products of their time, so getting historical context is important as well to get the full understanding; secondary sources give this sometimes, 
    * Sometimes reading secondary sources first helps you understanding the primary sources
    * Philosophy terminology explained
    * How to use this reading list
* Curriculum
    * Overview book as intro to philosophy
    * Chronological reading list per time period (pre-Socratics to analytical) with required reading and optional reading
    * Further reading/electives categorized per time period/category
* FAQ
    * Why this website?
    * Who is the target audience?
    * For people who are already intermediate: Copleston
    * Who have created this website?
    * Biases in reading list
    * Why not book X? (Like Russell, Grayling, explain beginner book choice)
    * Which edition of book X should I buy
    * Why am I a cunt if I buy books on Amazon?
    * Correctly judging books and other sources
    * Finding good sources online

## Yorgo list message

> So, books I'm p sure about:
> 
> Kenny's hist of phil (not the single volume, the multi-vol one)
> 
> inwagen intro to metaphysics
> , 
> chalmers, intro to phil of science
> , 
> cottingham's anthology
> 
> lindberg's origins of western science
> james 
> rachels, intro to ethics (or sthg similar)
> 
> Kolakowski: Main currents of Marxism (I'd buy the whole thing as a reference work, but for our purposes I'd read only the first volume)
> Logic for Dummies by Zegarelli
> 
> This is already quite a lot frankly: Kenny alone is around 2k pages and Cottingham another 850
>  and Kolakowski 300/400
> 
> Maybe (??) An anthology on the phil of religion too, it's very well made but im worried we are getting too much material here.
> 
> We need sthg on epistemology
>  
> There is a companion by Dancy 
> and Sosa: it's well made but not the kind of thing I would myself read, it's all over the place. you can easily find similar info on the SEP and it's better organized there frankly.
> 
> I think for pedagogical purposes there are two volumes which are better (one on the rationalists by Cottingham, which I have read, and another on the empiricists by Woolhouse - havent had the time to look at it carefully, but plan to do it). We can leave a choice to the reader here, although if I were advising a friend I'd go with Cottingham and Woolhouse.
> 
> 
> In addition to this, I think there should be some great but accessible books, here's my list: Myth of Sisyphus, The Apology, "On the suffering of the World" by Schopenhauer, Fuller the intellectual, existentialism is a humanism, Mark Fisher's Capitalist realism. 
> 
> Some of the choices are idiosyncratic (Fuller, Fisher) and I'm very open to removing them, but im quite confident of the first nine titles I give.

## List Yorgo

* Kenny: History of Philosophy (not the single volume, the multi-vol one)
* Inwagen: Introduction to Metaphysics
* Chalmers: Introduction to Philosophy of Science
* Cottingham's Anthology
* Lindberg: Origins of Western Science
* James Rachels: Introduction to Ethics (or sthg similar)
* Kolakowski: Main currents of Marxism 
  (I’d buy the whole thing as a reference work, but for our purposes I’d read only the first volume)
* Zegarelli: Logic for Dummies

This is already quite a lot frankly: Kenny alone is around 2k pages and Cottingham another 850
and Kolakowski 300/400

For epistemology:
* Rationalists: Cottingham
* Empiricists: Woolhouse

Great and accessible books:
* Myth of Sisyphus
* The Apology
* “On the suffering of the World” by Schopenhauer 
* Fuller the intellectual, 
* existentialism is a humanism, 
* Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism.

## The list content

### Getting the necessary background knowledge to understand what you read

Read the book that you want to read, the one that seems interesting. 

Choices for introductory work for the history of philosophy:
* For beginners: Kenny single-vol one (±1000 pages)
* For readers with existing basic knowledge: Copleston complete series (±6000 pages)
* For people who are not ready to read 1k pages: Sophie's World (±400 pages)
* For people who prefer listening: the audio version of Adamson's A History of Philosophy on https://historyofphilosophy.net/
* Alternative podcast intro: https://www.philosophizethis.org (remove this?)

Of course it's possible to mix and match here.

After the introductory work: Cottingham's Anthology

### Getting started reading philosophical works

* Plato's Apology and Crito in Socrates' Last Days
* Plato's Republic
* Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (lectures by Sadler)
* Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes
* On the suffering of the World (Schopenhauer)
* John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism
* Myth of Sisyphus


### Doing further (electives)

#### Branches and schools

##### Pre-Socratics

* The First Philosophers: The Presocratis and the Sophists (Waterfield)
* The Presocratic Philosophers (Kirk, Raven, Schofield)

##### Plato and Neo-Platonism

* Plato: Phaedo, Euthyphro, Symposium, Timaeus, Laws, Phaedrus, Sophist
* Xenophon: Conversations of Socrates
* Plotinus: Enneads
* Julian the Apostate:

##### Stoicism

* The Practicing Stoic (Farnsworth)
* The Cambradige Companion to Stoics
* Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: Annotated Edition
* Enchiridion video series by Sadler
* Cicero De Officiis
* The Philosophy of Crysippus (Gould)
* The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition

##### Existentialism

* Copleston vol. 9 - 11
* Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, by Walter Kaufmann
* Either/Or (Kierkegaard)
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche) or The Portable Nietzsche
* Sartre: Being and Nothingness, No Exit, Existentialism is a Humanism
* Camus: The Stranger

#### Subjects/fields

##### Metaphysics

* Inwagen: Introduction to Metaphysics
* Plato: Phaedo
* Aristotle's Metaphysics
* Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
* Being and Time (Heidegger)

##### Epistemology

* Plato: Theaetetus
* Descartes: Discorse on the Method
* The Rationalists (Cottingham)
* The Empiricists (Woolhouse)

##### Science

* Chalmers: Introduction to Philosophy of Science
* Lindberg: Origins of Western Science
* Two books by Lloyd on Greek Science

##### Ethics

* James Rachels: Introduction to Ethics

##### Political thought

###### Important founding works

* The Prince (Machiavelli)
* Leviathan (Hobbes)
* Social Contract (Rousseau)
* Second Treatise of Government (Locke)

###### Classical Liberalism
* John Stuart Mill's On Liberty
* Rousseau's Social Contract
* Rawls's A Theory of Justice

###### Socialism
* Kolakowski: Main currents of Marxism 
  (I’d buy the whole thing as a reference work, but for our purposes I’d read only the first volume) 
* Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism

###### Minarchism and Anarchism
* The Conquest of Bread (Kropotkin)
* Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick)

###### Progress and primitivism
* Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (Huxley)
* Industrial Society and its Future (Kaczynski)

#### Time periods

##### Hellenic and Roman philosophy

* Copleston vol. 1
* The Hellenistic Philosophers by Long and Sedley (vol. 1 + 2)
* From Epicurus to Epictetus (Long)

##### Medieval philosophy

* Copleston vol. 2 + 3
* Aquinas

##### Continental philosophy

* Copleston vol. 4 - 7
* Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit
* The Portable Nietzsche by Kaufmann (and the Kaufmann biography)

##### Analytical philosophy

* Compleston vol. 8
* Logic for Dummies (Zegarelli)
* The two books by Wittgenstein

##### Post-structualism

* Copleston vol. 9
* The Foucault Reader

# Archive

## Domain name options

* teachingyourself.org
* teachityourself.org
* tutoryourself.org
* teachityourself.info
* educateyourself.info
* selfacademy.org
* *selflearner.info*
* selfschool.info
* self-learn.info
* learningyourself.com
* selfscholarship.com
* publiclearningacademy.com
* publicacademy.info
* *theloversofwisdom.com*
* *learnthehumanities.com*
* theclubofwisdom.com

Philosophy list can be *`domain.ext/philosophy`* or `philosophy.domain.ext`.