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. Claudio's avatar

    I teach both large courses, like Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Thinking (a.k.a Legal Argumentation), and small seminar-based courses at Edinburgh…

  2. Charles Pigden's avatar

    Surely there is an answer to the problem of AI cheating which averts the existential threat. . It’s not great,…

  3. Mark's avatar

    I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…

  4. A in the UK's avatar
  5. Jonathan Turner's avatar

    I agree with all of this. The threat is really that stark. The only solution is indeed in-class essay exams,…

  6. Craig Duncan's avatar
  7. Ludovic's avatar

    My big problem with LLMs at the present time, apart from being potentially the epitome of Foucault’s panopticon & Big…

Books you should have read but haven’t

Brian Leiter

Adam Patterson, a PhD student at Syracuse University, writes with a fun idea:

I've recently learned of a game philosophers play at dinners: philosophers say what books that they are embarrassed to have not read in their area. For example, I heard a metaphysician say that s/he was embarrassed to not have yet read Material Beings or The Nature of Necessity.

I think a poll to see what books in what areas philosophers would think is most embarrassing to have not read would be fun and interesting.

I told Mr. Patterson that, rather than a poll, which would be hard to design, I'd open this for comments from readers.  I'll start:   I've never read all of A Theory of Justice. But how many people have I wonder?   If you want to post anonymous or pseudonymously, please at least indicate what area of philosophy you work in.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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

21 responses to “Books you should have read but haven’t”

  1. JDF

    This game is called "Humiliation". As far as I know, it originates in the David Lodge novel "Changing Places". The literature faculty play it over dinner, and one member, in an effort to best the others, admits to never having read Hamlet. He ends up flunking his review and losing his job as a result of it.

    Reply
  2. Diego Ramirez-Degollado

    Political Philosophy: I have never read Heidegger's Being and Time.

    Reply
  3. Phil

    Jurisprudence*: nothing longer than a journal article by Rawls, or Dworkin, or Finnis. (In half-hearted self-defence: those are big books; from what I've gathered I wouldn't agree with a single one of them; and in the specific case of Dworkin, the write-ups** have not been good.)

    *not so much my professional field as a semi-professional hobby
    **those by philosophers at least

    Reply
  4. Jeffrey L. Tucker

    My guilty never-read-it: Quine's Word and Object, although I own 2 copies

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Epistemology: Williamson's Knowledge and Its Limits

    The question "but how many people have [read _all_ of A Theory of Justice] I wonder?" is an apt one. I suspect the answer's the same for other big texts such as:

    The Critique of Pure Reason
    Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
    Making it Explicit

    Great books (so I hear) but life is short!

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I'm an epistemologist who's read only one book by Ernest Sosa.

    Reply
  7. Daniel Kaufman

    Never read the following:

    Plato, The Laws
    Spinoza, Ethics
    Hegel, Phenomemology of Spirit (or anything else, other than Philosophy of Right)
    Heidegger, Being and Time

    There are more, but these strike me as the most glaring.

    Reply
  8. John Rapko

    Glaring General Omissions:
    Mencius
    Buddhaghosa
    Aquinas (except First Part of the Second Part of Summa Theologica)
    Locke
    Spinoza

    In my field of the philosophy of art:
    George Dickie–indolence perhaps, but the standard paragraph-length summaries make it seem like such a non-starter

    Perhaps even better later than earlier: I only read Faulkner starting in my 30's, and Boswell's Life of Johnson at the age of 50.

    Reply
  9. Steven Hales

    "The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul's reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish." –A. Edward Newton. Based on this, I conclude that I am well on my way to infinity.

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    Social and political philosophy, and also never read all of a theory of justice.

    Reply
  11. Jeremy

    I look forward to the companion question about books one *has* read but shouldn't have, for which I have a list too long to mention.

    To play this game, though: I work in ethics, and I haven't read a word of On What Matters.

    Reply
  12. Alex Parrish

    Someone has probably said this already about On What Matters, but if not, here goes:
    Parfit’s cover photos are a metaphor for his theories: they’re beautiful constructions but devoid of human life.

    Reply
  13. Sam

    Wittgenstein, Tractatus
    Heidegger, Being and Time

    Reply
  14. Russell Blackford

    Strangely, I actually have read the entirety of A Theory of Justice (more than once) and both volumes of On What Matters. But there's such an ocean of important material by philosophers that I'm sure we could all name many books we "should" have read for the sake of completeness (or whatever). I know I could. The most glaring omission that comes to mind, in my case, is Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics. Having identified it in that way, I suppose I should now go and read it. Sounds daunting.

    Reply
  15. David H

    Bah, books? I mainly just read papers and learn about what's in books second hand. [Pretty embarrassing attitude, right?]

    Reply
  16. Bob Paulson

    "I'll start: I've never read all of A Theory of Justice".

    No, Brian. The game is about books you are EMBARRASSED not to have read/finished.

    BL: Well, I am slightly embarrassed about this!

    Reply
  17. historytime

    I've never read Aristotle's Poetics or Rhetoric. I'm an Aristotle scholar.

    I also never read any Kant other than the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals until fairly recently, when I was asked to teach Kant.

    I have, however, read every last word of A Theory of Justice. Thank you, undergraduate senior seminar on Rawls!

    Reply
  18. Cheater

    I want to cheat. I’ve read it all in my field. But I want to tell you a story of a very, very, very famous philosopher who also works in philosophy of law. Some years ago he told me he had pretty much stopped reading anything published in law reviews. He said he had never read past chapter 3 of Law’s Empire ‘because it is so bad’. He said he read Theory of Justice many times, and still keeps reading it. As far as I can tell, his acknowledged illiteracy has no effect on the quality or influence of his own work. I’m not sure what this means, but you have to admit that is a bit depressing.

    Reply
  19. Chris

    “Perhaps even better later than earlier: I only read Faulkner starting in my 30's, and Boswell's Life of Johnson at the age of 50.”

    Then surely you should remember this famous passage Boswell wrote about Johnson:

    “Adam Smith, than whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me that 'Johnson knew more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end.”

    Apparently many other writers of genius, including Nietzsche, read this way too. They felt some books were meant to be read carefully from cover to cover, and others were meant to be skimmed. So don’t feel bad about not having read a particular book, or having only skimmed your way through it. That was Dr, Johnson’s method, and it worked for him.

    Reply
  20. WL

    This game can be refined in a certain way: books that you have discussed and criticised in your writing, without having read more than the few pages you needed to quote from. In my case, Hume's Treatise.

    Reply
  21. Robert C. Hockett

    I tried to read 'Naked Lunch' by the philosopher Bill Burroughs, who was my neighbor during undergraduate years. It opened brilliantly, but after five pages or so I grew bored. I tried again several times later, but never could manage to get past that opening. At length the thought struck me: if Mr. Burroughs could COMPOSE the thing using 'the cut-up method' (which not he, but Tristan Tzara invented), I could bloody well READ it that way too. Ever since then I have loved 'Naked Lunch.' Ditto the 'Philosophical Investigations,' which I tend to read similarly. The method is not well suited, however, to the 'Tractatus,' the propositions of which are best read in their published order.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress