Philosophy for beginners?

[mozzy]

Hi folks

I was wandering if any of you know of any good philosophy books to recommend to beginners? I met a bloke today (age 23) who is a very keen thinker but who never went to school so does not have much confidence when it comes to reading. He has considerable mental health difficulties and suffers from high levels of boredom/anxiety. I think the two maybe connected and I wondered about any books which may be able to help him. We spoke a bit about politics, and he was saying his mates all take the piss cause he stays up and watches newsnight and is "wierd" cause of this! (I added that so you could get a perspective on this mans life and influences). The books I thought may help him:-

Malcolm X - THe Autobiography

Thomas Szasz - THe Myth of Mental Illness

Herman Hesse - Siddhartha

Aldous Huxley - THe Doors of Perception

I don't want to overload this bloke but don't want to be patronising either. He lives on quite a rough estate and does not have much influence on these matters but is clearly a clever bloke. I was just wondering what my first books were into philosophy so I could recommend them to him. I know reading helped me sort out my head a bit when I was his age, and wondered what your first influences were so I could pass these ideas on to him - cheers!

 

[purplex]

sophies world

 

[revol68]

Communist Maifesto is good, fast paced and short.

JP Sartre - Existentialism and Humanism, again good and short but deals with lots of things.

 

[butchersapron]

Give him the manifesto and you've made his world

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Might he be better off starting with novels?

(I know Sophie's World pretends to be a novel, but it isn't really. It's just a pretext for lectures. It's the philosophy equivalent of porn.)

Putting philosophical ideas into the context of a novel or the story of a person's life can be easier to handle than raw, dry philosophy, which can be very very hard going. To someone who has not read many books, I'd recommend reading a wide range of things, and probably not starting on straight philosophy texts just yet.

Lots of novels pose interesting philosophical problems in all kinds of ways. He might like, for instance, something by Milan Kundera – anything really, but The Unbearable Lightness of Being is as good a place as any to start. It's not too heavy a read. The great Russian writers are also very rewarding. I don't know if he would be intimidated by Dostoevsky – maybe you could try his Notes from the Underground. Camus's The Outsider would deluge him with more existentialism. In some ways, I think existentialism is a reasonable place to start in philosophy. You sometimes need to get it out of your system before you can move on.

 

[butchersapron]

That's philosophy though - is he after that?

 

[Jonti]

sounds good to me

 

[kabbes]

Will people never learn not to mention Sophie's World? You KNOW what Alex does when he hears the mention of that book.

 

[Jonti]

Who he?

 

[butchersapron]

One of the boring big brains

 

[kabbes]

You can call him many things but boring is not one of them.

 

[Jonti]

how many of you are there?!

 

[kabbes]

Three of course. Father, son and holy goat.

 

[butchersapron]

I call him boring. It's a great trap though. Pretend to be nothing then grab them with your middle brow mainstream understanding of what we talk of. Well done

Damn the pope too!

 

[kabbes]

Dam the pope? Why? Can we derive hydroelectric power from his waterways? Or would this be hydrocatholic power?

 

[Jonti]

mmm marketing

 

[littlebabyjesus]

How many boring big brains are there, then?

 

[Jonti]

oh, bloody hell, not another

 

[kabbes]

It's all just one central big brain with dispersed parallel processing power. That's why it forms a monothought clique.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm easily confused, and I'm confused.

 

[butchersapron]

How many boring big brains are there, then?

There four now. One went away, maybe popped or something.

 

[Jonti]

It's the philosophy equivalent of porn.

Oh dear, I can't see how I can avoid reading it now

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If you tell me the one that went away, maybe I can work out the others?

 

[butchersapron]

Knotted/gorskisvenn/

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Oh dear, I can't see how I can avoid reading it now

I like Umberto Eco's definition of porn. Porn has to have boring bits. If it doesn't, it isn't porn. The boring bits come in between the sex scenes – they are the swiftly pushed through plot devices. But they have to be there, because without them you just have one level of scene, and there's no anticipation or excitement.

Sophie's World is philosophy porn because its philosophy 'classes' are interspersed with boring bits of swiftly pushed through plot. Unfortunately, the excitement roused by the non-boring bits is minimal.

 

[butchersapron]

Is the philo content correct

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It is not incorrect, but it has limited insight. It's a kids' book really, except kids would probably find it too dull to read.

But it has sold by the bucketload.

Mind you, so does Jeffrey Archer.

 

[butchersapron]

I liked it.

 

[Jonti]

yeah, sure, but the porn's good, right?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think I finished it – I read it quite a few years ago – so it can't have been appallingly written. It didn't tell me anything new, though, which is always what I want from any book.