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Romano is Back!

Brian Leiter

Reader Ken Lakritz writes:

I'm writing to give you the annoying news that C. Romano, one of your favorite bugbears, has written a book. Here he is on the literary circuit, getting interviewed and producing on demand an annotated list of 5 of his favorite philosophical texts. (Not surprisingly, his choices are mostly either trivial or unrelated to philosophy).

Many of your readers, myself included, take vicarious pleasure from your well-justified irritability and intolerance of fools, so why not keep us entertained and have another go at this poor dope? And to be constructive, I suppose you could also ask those learned readers to supply better quality listings of their 5 favorite books.

CHE has also run an advert for the book.  The "argument," if there is one, appeasr to be just a massive non-sequitur:  it is quite consistent with American being an anti-intellectual country that its well-heeled research universities produce massive amounts of philosophy.  In any case, per Mr. Lakritz's constructive suggestion, I invite readers to name their five favorite philosophical texts.  Signed comments only:  full name and valid e-mail address.

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8 responses to “Romano is Back!”

  1. praymont

    Do you mean any philosophy books or did you have in mind something more specific (e.g., works accessible to the layperson)? Romano was asked for five 'off-the-beaten-path' texts. In that category I like Martin Gardner's The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener. There's also Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (for the latest edition of which Thomas Hurka has written an introduction).

    BL COMMENT: Either is fine. You're right about the ambiguity in the question. It might be fun to see what five "off-the-beaten-texts" philosophers would recommend.

    Reply
  2. Mark Simpson

    Off the beaten path…

    "The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism" by Todd May
    "The Philosophy of Sex and Love" by Alan Soble
    "America's New Economic Order" by Donald C. Hodges
    "The Retreat to Commitment" by W.W. Bartley
    "Liberation as Affirmation: the Religiosity of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche" by Ge Ling Shang

    Reply
  3. Michael V. Wedin

    Parmenides' WAY OF TRUTH
    Plato's SOPHIST
    Russell's ON DENOTING
    Frege's SENSE AND RFEFERENCE
    Quine's WORD AND OBJECT

    Reply
  4. Matthew Miller

    "Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant
    "On What Matters" by Derek Parfit
    "After Finitude: An Essay On The Contingency Of Necessity" by Quentin Meillassoux
    "The Language of Morals" by RM Hare
    "Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches" by a whole bunch of fantastic people (it's an anthology)

    Hopefully none of these choices reflect too horribly on my sensibilities, but they're probably the books that have most influenced my views, and I love them all.

    Reply
  5. Allen Hazen

    Five books?
    Hmmm.
    When I was in college, I had high-school-age friends who asked me what philosophy was like, and could I recommend a sample? I gave away at least two copy's of J.L. Austin's HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS… with the covering comment "This isn't what philosophy is like, but it's what SOME philosophy is like, and it's probably unlike any preconceptions you may have, and it IS good."

    Two books I discovered as a student and re-read many years later with great pleasure: W.V. Quine's MATHEMATICAL LOGIC and WORD AND OBJECT. (I suspect my pleasure in re-reading them was as much about enjoying the artistry of Quine's exposition as about the substantive doctrines, but….)

    Two books I have read over and over, wrestling repeatedly with them, amazed at the brilliance (and the occasional blindnesses) of two great philosophers: Descartes's MEDITATIONS and Russell's PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY.

    If I had to choose five philosophy books to take with me into exile on a desert island, would they be these? Maybe not, but it would take a lot of thought to choose a list I'd cherish more than these.

    Reply
  6. Bryan Frances

    Far off the beaten path is a work of fiction (epic fantasy) that has a lot of philosophy in it: The Darkness That Comes Before, by R. Scott Bakker.

    Reply
  7. Dennis Apolega

    I would say:
    1. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche (Kaufmann's translation was one of the first philosophy texts I read not just for the philosophy but for the mere enjoyment of it).
    2. Word and Object by Quine (I was led to Quine via Nietzsche. Quine's name was in the index of one the Kaufmann translations of Nietzsche, and so I got to "Two dogmas").
    3. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Rorty (I think there are many "outside philosophy" who overstate his characterizations and conclusions from this book. I got into Quine, Sellars and Davidson even more because of this.).
    4. On Certainty by Wittgenstein (To be read with G.E. Moore).
    5. Pragmatism by James (Well my reading of this is influenced by Putnam's. I would have to say also that it helps if we look at James here as struggling with the implications of naturalism. Of course, James would take the religious/supernaturalist view in the end).

    Reply
  8. William Burns

    Plato, Symposium
    Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods
    Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
    Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire
    Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

    Reply

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