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Ask HN: What kind of philosophy do you read?

5 points by trendroid ↗ HN
I have been fascinated with ethics and questions on free will recently but the historical philosophical discussions tend to be too boring and use unnecessarily complex words to explain the concepts. That puts me off. How often do you read philosophy and if yes, how do you deal with the style of writing?

Or maybe some of you think reading Science in general is better investment of time?

4 comments

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alejohausner
My favourite is Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals". Here is a taste, from a section on punishment, in his second essay (text from http://home.sandiego.edu/~janderso/360/genealogy2.htm):

In order to give at least an idea of how uncertain, how belated, how accidental “the meaning” of punishment is and how one and the same procedure can be used, interpreted, or adjusted for fundamentally different purposes, let me offer here an example which presented itself to me on the basis of relatively little random material: punishment as a way of rendering someone harmless, as a prevention from further harm; punishment as compensation for the damage to the person injured, in some form or other (also in the form of emotional compensation); punishment as isolation of some upset to an even balance in order to avert a wider outbreak of the disturbance; punishment as way of inspiring fear of those who determine and carry out punishment; punishment as a sort of compensation for the advantages which the law breaker has enjoyed up until that time (for example, when he is made useful as a slave working in the mines); punishment as a cutting out of a degenerate element (in some circumstances an entire branch, as in Chinese law, and thus a means to keep the race pure or to sustain a social type); punishment as festival, that is, as the violation and humiliation of some enemy one has finally thrown down; punishment as a way of making a conscience, whether for the man who suffers the punishment— so- called “reform”—or whether for those who witness the punishment being carried out; punishment as the payment of an honorarium, set as a condition by those in power, which protects the wrong doer from the excesses of revenge; punishment as a compromise with the natural condition of revenge, insofar as the latter is still upheld and assumed as a privilege by powerful families; punishment as a declaration of war and a war measure against an enemy to peace, law, order, and authority, which people fight with the very measures war makes available, as something dangerous to the community, as a breach of contract with respect to its conditions, as a rebel, traitor, and breaker of the peace.

brudgers
One of the things I learned quickly when I became a philosophy major is reading philosophy is a skill. I remember the sensation of realizing I had read six pages of Descartes Meditations and had been at it for an hour. Philosophy requires unpacking in some of the same ways a book about a programming language written without mercy for beginners will.

To a first approximation, if I am reading philosophy these days it's Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations unless I am looking for a reference [e.g. last week I looked at Putnam's Reason Truth and History because I was thinking about the ant's portrait of Churchill in relation to the role of interpretation of data. I'll also find myself in Plato occasionally...though that's often via the internet rather than the bound Jowett volumes.

Stretching philosophy a bit, I am these days often looking at logic and mathematics, and regretting a bit roads not taken. These have the same interest in accurate language I enjoy.

Anyway, reading philosophy as an investment sounds horrid. Read something you enjoy.

[edit] You might enjoy the philosophy bites podcast: http://www.philosophybites.com/