And start with that. Philosophy is divided into several branches. A good overview of these sub-disciplines is located here.
Ethics is the study of morality. Logic has to do with the structure of arguments. Metaphysics involves the ultimate nature of reality. Epistemology questions what we know and how we come to know it. Aesthetics is inquiry about art and beauty. Political philosophy deals with government, justice, and so on.
Some philosophical works focus on all of the above. One of the more challenging aspects of reading philosophy is that philosophers use terms in different ways than in every day speech, and the meanings often change over time. They take up philosophy because it helps them to think deeply about the work they do and how it affects other people. These concepts make it easier for you to identify and respond to ethical issues when they arise during your everyday interactions out in the real world.
To be an informed citizen in the world today, you need to have a high intellect to process the information you consume on a daily basis. Studying philosophy will equip you with the necessary tools you need to separate propaganda from facts—especially when it concerns political and social conversations.
What is your definition of success? Learning philosophy will help you confront your nature and your values, helping you to answer that question more logically. When you are done reading the foundation books on philosophy and ready to start taking new courses, where should you look?
If you are combining learning philosophy with your other everyday activities, you may find it difficult to make out the time needed for your courses. Using mobile apps like Listenable means you can take your courses with you on the go. The courses are split into five-minute audio lessons, helping you to keep learning even while out on your evening walk or doing the chores.
Highbrow is an interesting online learning platform that offers courses in day courses delivered in emails that are easy to digest. These courses range from basic philosophical ideas to the history of famous philosophy.
There are also courses based on specific topics such as utilitarianism. The small-sized nature of the email from Highbrow makes the courses less daunting and easier to understand, compared to reading a book. The emails are also sent out in the morning when many people are most alert. With the course delivered this way, there is a higher chance of finishing it compared to when you have to make out time to wade through a book.
With the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , you get a resource hub of all things philosophy that is updated regularly from time to time. You can always be certain that you are reading the latest information in the field. The encyclopedia goes beyond history and overview information, to provide published works on philosophy concepts based on current research.
This tool is, however, designed for academia, so it may be harder to read and understand for people that are new to the field of philosophy. Podcasts are a great way to learn some of the complex concepts in philosophy. Hearing an expert talk about these concepts in a conversational tone can make them less daunting compared to reading them directly from books. Partially Examined Life is a philosophy blog and podcast. They hold roundtable discussions analyzing philosophical concepts and ideas.
The conversational or casual tone used makes the episodes interesting for everyone, especially the philosophy newbie. Philosophy Bites , on the other hand, invites respected philosophers to discuss a particular concept per episode. Do you learn better with video? You should incorporate watching videos into your self-learning plan. Philosophy Tube is a YouTube channel created to share ideas and allow people to learn philosophy at their own pace. Sure, you can learn a lot by yourself, reading classic philosophical texts and trying to grapple with them.
That would be one way. Yet some do it — successfully. There are lots of philosophy forums out there. You have to use your best judgement. It means that you taught didact yourself auto. It can be done. Forums can help. The biggest stumbling block, however, is writing. Who is going to read what you write? Other autodidacts? I am interested in self-learning philosophy, but I am faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: being dyslexic metaphorically speaking while reading serious philosophical works including books, papers, etc.
All of these things even most SEP entries are way over my head, because they seem either cryptic when written by analytic philosophers or extremely cryptic when written by continental philosophers. My aim is to understand what philosophical giants had to say as well as to be able to comprehend modern philosophical works.
As of now, everything I know about philosophy has come to me from Wikipedia articles, this website, some SEP entries and, most importantly, the book Philosophy: A Text with Readings by Manuel Velasquez. Not all philosophy is equally impenetrable. In contrast, classic philosophy was often aimed at a general ish audience. It can still be difficult, depending on the lucidity of the writer, and how different their cultural context was, but it doesn't require the same level of prior knowledge.
Of course, the concepts themselves are still often difficult to wrap your head around, but that's the whole work of philosophy.
If you go back before the current era, you'll find that the primary sources in philosophy are often considerably more accessible than the commentaries. The commentaries tend to assume prior scholarship, and almost inevitably push their own assumptions and interpretations, which can muddy the waters rather than make them more clear.
Plato's work is all written to communicate directly with different segments of his audience. It isn't hard to read in a good translation, although the unfamiliar cultural context can be baffling at times as can Plato's uncompromising Idealism. Taken together, his Republic and Symposium are the foundational key works of all Western philosophy. Descartes' Meditations are quite short and very clearly written.
I personally dislike Hume , but he's easy to read and has a wicked sense of humor once you get used to the old fashioned style. The literary work by Sartre and Camus is compelling just as literature, in addition to its philosophical merits. Kierkegaard is more poetry than prose, if you can get past that, he's a good read. Lao Tzu is elliptical and aphoristic --that's apparently a core feature of the Chinese language --but not hard to read in a good translation.
Ecclesiastes is very accessible. Conversely, Hegel and Wittgenstein and to a lesser extent Kant and Aristotle, are notoriously hard to read, while Confucius is obscured by an excess of culturally specific references. These cover only some areas of philosophy, of course. Others such as ethics and aesthetics are missing here. These are all accessible the philosophy of mind one a little less than the others.
I'd go with either Epistemology or Philosophy of Language first this is biased of course. Just go with what interests you most.
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