What are you reading?

[zefloid13]

Hello, I imagine everyone has lives not entirely concerned with technical philosophy, but I just thought I'd ask if anyone happens to be reading something in the philo department at this time. If so, what, and where is it taking you?

[Holiday20310401]

I have yet to read a philosophy book, something on my to do list.

I am reading symposium the next long weekend I get, I share where this takes me.

[jgweed]

I am currently working through two books:Heidegger's What is Called Thinking? and Schultz's The Structures of the Life World.

[VideCorSpoon]

I just got this new companion reader series through amazon called the "A guide for the perplexed" series. Haven't picked it up in a while, but I want to read over certain sections of Spinoza's Ethics. There is a really good section in the perplexed Spinoza book on substantial ontology. It is a very good companion reader to help you connect the dots if you don't have a professor on your case. From what I have seen so far, I'm glad I bought the books they have out already. They also have Aristotle, Leibniz, etc.

[zefloid13]

It's funny you bring up Spinoza's Ethics, VideCorSpoon; I happen to be juggling it myself at this time. Not to mention, when I read the phrase "guide for the perplexed," I initially thought you were referring to the medieval work of Moses Maimonides.

[Didymos Thomas]

Reading for school, mostly. Raboteau's Slave Religion, Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi at the moment.

[validity]

The Philosophy of Space and Time by Hans Reichenbach, I read this about once every 6 months as it is so easy to understand and yet deeply profound. The bit I am up to at the moment shows that geometry is relative ie the geometrical form of a body is not an absolute fact, but depends on a co-ordinative definition. I am hoping this will deepen my understanding of Relational Theory.

The only other philosophy book in my pile of "books to read on the train this month" is Bioethics by Gareth Jones. I have never really read much on Bioethics and I thought it is about time I did. I got this book in the hope to understand the question "When does life begin?" and what happens when you know such an answer.

[Khethil]

I try to vary my reading a lot; and since retirement have been keeping up 3 to not burn out on any one genre. I'm currently working on Maggie Jackson's "Distracted", Chaucer's "Troilis and Cressida" and Dostoevsky's "The Idiot".

[VideCorSpoon]

Zefloid13,

Actually, if I’m not mistaken the company that makes the series have a guide for the perplexed book on Maimonides.

If your reading Ethics, for school or for enjoyment, I would seriously recommend the “guide for the perplexed” book. Spinoza is immensely more pleasurable to read with a companion reader. And companion readers can be very bad and actually make the situation worse. I remember reading “Roadmap to Metaphysics Zeta” and it was so vague and ambiguous that the only useful section was a summation of the sub-books in the introduction. But my first exposure to Ethics was in an undergraduate class I had and I did not come by nearly as many points as they had. After I had posted my message last night I read a little of the first part of the book. The books proof of a substantial God is way more complex than the way I was taught in school. The culmination in proposition 14 is tied into 11 which is dependent on definitions 5, 7, etc. They even give a better explanation of the reductio argument in 11.

[Deftil]

Still working on a book I checked out about a month ago called Philosophy of recent times Volume II: Readings in twentieth-century philosophy, edited by James B. Hartman. Contains selections from the writings of William James, Henri Bergson, V.I. Lenin, Edmund Husserl, W.P. Montague, George Santayana, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick, A.J. Ayer, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, P.F. Strawson, John Wisdom, Gilbert Ryle, and J.L. Austin.

It's quite good and a nice survey of philosophy from different philosophers on a variety of subjects, obviously all written in the 20th century. I'm about 320 pages into it, and it's about 540 pages long.