Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Guidance for an educated layperson wanting to read important philosophy articles

Brian Leiter

A civil engineer in Sweden writes: 

I am not a professional or academic philosopher, my interest in philosophy came to me rather lae in life, with family, house, daytime job already being factors in my life. I have read a lot in the 7 years since I took my initial course in  "history of thought" evening time at Uppsala University. In my spare time, which is getting more substantial as my kids now are almost grown up–and unfortunately since the work situation for Swedish engineers in multinational companies is rather poor with the competition from low-salary countries–I read philosophy. Philosophy magazines, original works, internet forums et al.

Already having read a lot original works in philosophy(Sein und Zeit, Tractatus, much Nietzsche, Plato's dialogues…), I want to get in the business of reading academic papers. I've read a few, classical ones like "On Denoting", and some contemporary ones that I have found, but rather randomly and without knowing my way around. What I'm looking for, is there a place or an article that can suggest good papers for "beginners"? And "how to read academic papers"? Since I have no formal education in modal logic and the like, articles filled with such, looking like computer programming logic (which I know but not love) is not maybe my cup of tea. Papers on ethics, aestethics or other humanistic subjects seem to be more readable, and ethics, and political philosophy is of a great interest to me (I read ATOJ and ASU by Rawls/Nozick earlier this year, to get "background"). But I am also interested in logic and language. But are there some starting points for an amateur interested in the papers from the universities?

Any help would be appreciated!

Comments are open for suggestions.

Leave a Reply to Ian Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8 responses to “Guidance for an educated layperson wanting to read important philosophy articles”

  1. Rob Tempio

    Probably the new Norton Introduction to Philosophy edited by Gideon Rosen, Seana Shiffrin, Josh Cohen, and Alex Byrne would be a very good place to start:

    http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Introduction-Philosophy-Gideon-Rosen/dp/0393932206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442402326&sr=8-1&keywords=norton+introduction+to+philosophy

    Reply
  2. Jeff Glick

    For someone without serious training in philosophy, and without a professional philosopher on hand to explain confusing passages and technical terms, it may be in Swedish Engineer's interest to read good textbooks on specific subject areas so that the academic papers can be put into context. I have in mind books like Kim's Philosophy of Mind, Feldman's Epistemology, Lycan's Philosophy of Language, Brighouse's Justice, and the like. Such textbooks also have extensive bibliographies that can simplify the search for accessible and relevant academic papers.

    Reply
  3. Post Doc

    Blackwell has a series of books called: 'Reading Philosophy of [X] – selected text with interactive commentary', which have a selection of classic articles followed by extensive comments on how to read such articles and suggestions for further reading from the editors. The only one I have read is the 'Reading Philosophy of Language" book, edited by Hornsby and Longworth, which was excellent. But I believe there are a bunch of others in the same series.

    Kind of in the same vein, the Curd and Cover (eds.) anthology of classic Philosophy of Science papers has comments from the editors after each essay plus helpful introductions – and it is also a really excellent collection. And of course, 'The Mind's Eye' eds Dennet & Hofstadter has lots of approachable philosophy of mind papers mixed up with some philosophical stories also with comments after each piece from the editors . . .

    Reply
  4. Ian

    Regarding the "how to read academic papers" question, I would recommend checking out Jim Pryor's advice on how to read philosophy. Here's the link: http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/reading.html

    Reply
  5. Phil

    When I was a teenager I told anyone who'd listen that I wanted to study philosophy; unfortunately (I think), one of those people talked me out of it. Many years later, having studied English Literature, History & Sociology and ended up teaching Criminology, I found myself reading Pashukanis and Fuller and Waldron and Simmonds and Hart and Kramer and Gardner and Green and Coleman and Leiter(!), among others, and felt like I'd come home. (Quite a chilly & angular home in parts, but it suits me.)

    So the original question resonates with me, but I'd like to ask something more specific: if I want to understand legal positivism in a more than superficial way, is it worth reading Wittgenstein? And, if it's worth reading the later Wittgenstein, is it worth starting with the Tractatus? And if it's worth reading the Tractatus (final question!), is it worth getting a bit of logical notation under my belt so that I can make sense of it?

    BL COMMENT: I'll take the liberty of offering an answer: probably not. The later Wittgenstein was part of the ordinary language ethos at Oxford when Hart was working, and had a loose influence on his way of thinking about things. The Tractatus had no influence at all. The Investigations are worth reading in any case, but I don't think they will do a lot to help you understand the positivist tradition in legal philosophy.

    Reply
  6. Joey

    I find the London Philosophy Study Guide ( http://www.ucl.ac.uk/philosophy/LPSG/contents.htm ) a great resource at outlining various topics and giving pointers to relevant readings (both books and articles). I'm not sure it is still being updated but I find it very useful when there is a new aspect of philosophy I wish to investigate and don't want to go through lots of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles (although I'm sure the reader will also find some good pointers to relevant articles there).

    Reply
  7. Jason

    I think this guide is a pretty good one:

    http://fuckyeahlogical.tumblr.com/post/128964910533/analytic-philosophy-reading-list-for-the-self

    I also second Jeff Glick's (comment 2) mention of Kim's philosophy of mind and Lycan's philosophy of language. Both are excellent books.

    Reply
  8. Phil

    BL – thanks, and hmmm. Any philosophical recommendations that would come closer to home than Wittgenstein, in terms of unpacking legal positivism?

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress