Wolverine247 Board

I took philosophy once upon a time, and remember working with Venn Diagrams. I may be a little rusty at it, but I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I took it P/F and barely mad eit out alive...it would be highly amusing if ur professor posted here

Yeh it was a major choke taking this course, and my family all suggested that i shouldn't take it. I should have listened.

A^2Wolverines I believe is well versed in the subject.

Interesting.

I absolutely love philosophy, but definitely understand why it lacks universal appeal.

Lol. Personal library consists of books by Spinoza, Kant, Spencer, Voltaire (more of a political satirist), Goethe, Plato, Bacon, Machiavelli, Schopenhauer, et al. Anyone who has cursory interest? Please consider reading Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy." Brilliantly written.

Best of luck in your elective :)

I did a lot of philosophy courses at UM. Of course, that is now ancient history...so I am probably of no practical use to anyone.

That said, if you want useless banter, I'm your guy.

Aw man. Although it isn't by any means exhaustive, it is such a delightful springboard, considering he discusses Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Spinoza, Descartes, Rosseau, Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spencer (Herbert, of course), Nietzsche, Russell, Croce, Bergson, um Santayana..and from there, depending on their individual views, I set out choosing favorites (personally love Voltaire and Bacon).

It has been, in my experience, a pretty unique introduction. The other "must reads" in my opinion? I'd have to include The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli), Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), and of course Plato's Republic.

But I think you'll really enjoy reading Durant's contribution. I've read it numerous times simply because of his inspirational writing ability.

The issue with a lot of the best modern philosophy is that its historically progressive in nature. In other words it builds on work that came before it and assumes you've already read the preceding work. That makes it hard to just pick up a lot of books.

Some great works that you can read on a stand-alone basis and are enjoyable to the casual reader are:

Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil. Just get a compilation like The Portable Nietzsche so you can read more essays if you want, like his works on Greek Tragedy. Nietzsche breaks free from the philosophical methodology of the times, uses the etymology of words to develop his ideas and comes to some very bold conclusions. Wherever you get, make sure its translated by Kaufman. He's the best. The Archie Griffin of translators shall I say?

Karl Marx - Das Kapital. Neoavatara just cringed. You may not like the guy's politics, but his philosophy is spot on. Its hard to disagree with his conclusions even if his remedies were failures.

Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This book is brilliant. The guy takes the concept of the infinite in philosophy, art, music and math and meshes them all together then goes forward to explore number theory, the limits of mathematical systems and of the infinite itself. I warn you, though, the book starts out easy and gets harder every chapter. By the end your mind is really working.

Ha, the Critique definitely was a labor to read through. Every time I think of Kant I can't help but think of the English teacher in Animal House who says something like the following while teaching class, "Oh, who am I kidding, Milton was a terrible bore... even his wife couldn't stand him." I loved how Hegel shredded the Categorical Imperative. The Phenomenology easily is one of the greatest works of philosophical reasoning and ideas of all time and even launched a whole era of followers and responses in its own right, including Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spinoza and Marx themselves.

So now you guys are all philosiphizers.

For understanding our country's founding, laws and principles I 'd reiterate the Federalist Papers then add Tocqueville's Democracy in America and the minutes from the Constitutional Convention. You'll develop a whole new level of understanding of this country and the brilliance of our forefathers.

Unlikely. Most philosophy professors are Buckeye fans.

Kidding...