Cassirer, Ernst.
IV V
VI(c)
VII
VIII
IX
Language and Myth. trans. Susanne Langer.
Harper. 1946.
---------------- The Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms, vol. 2. trans. Ralph Manheim. Yale. 1955.
---------------- Rousseau, Kant, and
Goethe. (1945) trans. J. Gutman, P. O. Kristeller, and J. H. Randall
jr. Princeton. 1963.
Christianity
introduction VI(a)
VI(c) |
|
Volume 3 of Cassirer's symbolic
forms set, The Phenomenology of
Knowledge,seems unsurpassed as a finely tuned
summary and example of traditional philosophy's culminating phase.
Philosophy's Thomas Mann?
|
 |
Deleuze, Gilles.
IX X
XII
appendix
Nietzsche and
Philosophy. (1962) trans. Hugh Tomlinson. Athlone.
1983.
------------------, and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand
Plateaus. trans. Brian Massumi. 1980 Minnesota.
|
|
Deleuze's Nietzsche book, and also his
Kant's Critical
Philosophy, rank among the most brilliantly
concise and coherent accounts of one thinker by another. See also
works on Spinoza, Bergson, Proust and cinema.
|
|
Derrida, Jacques.
appendix
Writing and
Difference. trans. Alan Bass. Chicago. 1978.
------------------Margins of
Philosophy. trans. Alan Bass. Harvester Press. 1982.
Descartes, Rene
introduction VI(b) XII appendix
Dilthey, Wilhelm
introduction III VI(a) VI(b) VI(c)
VII IX
Einstein, Albert
VI
appendix
|
|
Is Derrida contemporary thought's
Paginini?
|
|
Ermarth, Michael.
Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of
Historical Reason. Chicago. 1978.
|
|
Ermarth's book is an overview of
Dilthey's vast range of work, with extensive excerpts. Because
Dilthey infused his work with many academic disciplines, and
refused to embrace the primacy of any particular one, none have
found it in their 'heart' to carry him to us with any
comprehensiveness.
|
|
Ferm, Vergilius. (ed.)
A History of Philosophical
Systems. Philosophical Library 1950.
Foucault, Michel
X
Fuller, R. Buckminster
XII
Freud, Sigmund
appendix
Godel, Kurt
VI(a) IX
Goethe, Wolfgang
VI(a)
VI(c)
VIII XII
appendix
|
|
Ferm's book is a philosophical
bestiary, with contributions by scholars and advocates of many
philosophic stripes.
|
|
Griffin, David R. (ed.).
Physics and the Ultimate
Significance of Time SUNY. 1986.
|
|
In Griffin's collection, Whitehead's
ideas are considered in the light of modern physics. See especially
contributions by Bohm, Prigogine, and Cobb
|
|
Hegel, G.W.F.
III
V
VI(a) VI(c) appendix
The Phenomenology of
Spirit.(1807) trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford. 1977.
|
|
Josiah Royce, Stanley Rosen, Hans-Georg
Gadamer,
as well as Heidegger
are among authors who may be particularly helpful in an encounter
with Hegel. Is he the biggest brain or the biggest idiot on record?
How should we find the synthesis between these two equally fervent
receptions of his work?
|
|
Heidegger, Martin.
introduction IV V VI(a) VI(c) VII VIII IX XI
appendix
Being and
Time.(1926) trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Harper and Row.
1962.
-------------------- Identity and
Difference.trans. Joan Staumbaugh. Harper and Row. 1969.
--------------------- What is Called
Thinking.(1955) trans. J. Glenn Gray. Harper and Row
1968.
|
|
Being and
Time is an important and astonishing read for
serious thinkers. What is Called
Thinking, however, ranks as Heidegger's most
enjoyable and accessible book. Magda King, Loy Vail, Theodore
Kisiel and Otto Poeggler are among many who have
written helpfully on Heidegger. Additionally, Michael Murray and
Fredrick Elliston have both edited excellent anthologies on his
work. (The latter also edited an outstanding Husserl anthology.)
|
|
Husserl, Edmund.
V VI(a) VI(c)
VI(c)
VII
XI
Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology. (1913) trans. W.R.B. Gibson. Collier.
1969.
---------------- Cartesian
Meditations.trans. Dorion Cairns. Martinus Nijhoff. 1960.
--------------------- Crisis of European Sciences
and Transcendental Phenomenology. trans. David Carr.
Northwestern. 1970.
Islam
V VI(c)
|
|
Husserl, an epochal philosophical
hairsplitter in these volumes proffers rewarding labors. Bring
aspirin.
|
|
James, William.
V VI(b) VI(c) VIII IX
The Writings of William
James. Random House. 1967.
|
|
James gives great relief from
philosophical hairsplitting. Try A Pluralistic
Universe. Husserl, Dilthey, Bergson and
Whitehead all held James' 'adorable genius' in high regard.
|
 |
Jaspers, Karl.
VI(c)
Nietzsche: An Introduction to
the Understanding of his Philosophical
Activity.(1935) trans C.F. Wallraff and F.J. Schmitz.
Gateway. 1965.
Kafka, Franz
appendix
Kant, Immanuel
I II III VI(a) VI(b) VI(c) XII
Kennedy, Michael
Mahler.
Schirmer.
1991.
Kroner, Richard
III
Kuhlenbeck,
Hartwig
XII |
|
Jaspers is the sort of person one
would be most fortunate to have as a teacher of philosophy. His
Great
Philosophers series remains a useful
contemporary perspective on earlier thinkers. Like Heidegger,
Jaspers remained in Germany during Nazism. Unlike Heidegger, he
remained uncompromised - despite remaining with a wife of Jewish
extraction. Perhaps the strength visible in Jaspers' face tells
something of how he achieved this. Jaspers own philosophy examples
something of the durability of the Kantian orientation, even in the
throes of existentialism. Among 'philosophers of existence', Jaspers, Gabriel
Marcel, and Jean Wahl seem to me most worthwhile.
|
|
Langer, Susanne.
VI(c)
IX
XII
Mind: An Essay on Human
Feeling. (3 vols.) Johns Hopkins. 1967-1981.
|
|
The first half of Langer's first
volume here is a bit dry, but volume two is a pure joy, teaching
philosophy and biology simultaneously.
|
|
Levinas, Emmanuel.
IX XI
XII
appendix
Totality and Infinity: An
Essay on Exteriority. (1961) trans. Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne.
1969.
---------------------- Otherwise than
Being or Beyond Essence. (1974) trans. Alphonso Lingis. Martinus
Nijhoff. 1981.
---------------------- The Levinas
Reader.Sean Hand, ed., Blackwell 1989.
|
|
Some Levinas
should be on your bookshelf, for one cannot predict when he will
seem comprehensible. The essays in Outside the
Subject, (trans. Michael B. Smith, Stanford, 1994),
include some of Levinas' most accessible essays, including accounts
of his similarities and differences with Gabriel Marcel and Martin
Buber - two of the other most well known 'philosophers of dialog'.
An approach to this kind of thinking which also more nearly
resembles prose may be found in Maurice Blanchot's The Infinite
Conversation.
|
|
Libertson, Joseph.
appendix
Proximity, Levinas, Blanchot,
Bataille and Communication. Martinus Nijhoff. 1982.
|
|
Excellent but difficult, Libertson
identifies thinking's contemporary phase from a basis resembling
the approach adopted in this essay. See also Mark C. Taylor's
Altarity.
|
|
Lingis, Alphonso.
Excesses: Eros and
CultureState University of New York Press. 1983.
---------------------- Deathbound
SubjectivityIndiana University Press. 1989.
Lowe, Victor.
Understanding
Whitehead.Johns Hopkins. 1962.
Lowith, Karl
III VI(a)
From Hegel to Nietzsche : The
Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought. trans. David E. Green.
Holt. 1964.
Mahler, Gustav
IV XII
|
|
Two very different books from one
interesting fellow. Lingis was
Levinas main translator. His own writings swing between extreme and
informally written philosophical travelogs to quite densely
technical existential phenomenology. Besides Levinas, Lingis finds
Nietzsche and Heidegger centrally important. So do I.
|
|
Marias, Julian.
History of
Philosophy. trans. S. Appelbaum and C. Strowbridge. Dover.
1967.
Marti-Ibanez, Felix.
Tales of Philosophy.Clarkson N. Potter.
1967.
Marx, Karl
introduction
III
|
|
Marias provides an admirable classic
single volume history of philosophy. I know of none better. For a
more narrative approach, Richard Kroner's Speculation and Revelation in Medieval
Philosophy and his
Speculation and Revelation in Modern Philosophy are
wonderful, but very hard to find.
|
|
Melville, Herman.
VI(b)
Moby
Dick.Signet. 1964.
|
|
Is Moby Dick
an American version of Hegel's Phenomenology of
Spirit.?
|
|
Monk, Ray.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty
of Genius. Vintage. 1987.
Mozart, W. A.
IV
|
|
Were sainthood a possibility for
thinkers, Wittgenstein might fit the bill. Like a saint, he chose
paths of greatest difficulty and solitude - and in following them
sharply etched the spirit of his times; its character, needs and
possibilities for healing. Monk's extraordinary biography can be
appreciated at any stage of engagement with this thinker.
|
|
Murti, T. R. V.
The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A
Study of the Madhyamika System. George Allen and Unwin.
1960.
Nagarjuna
appendix
Newton, Issac
introduction III IX
|
|
Murti's book is a classic in Buddhist
studies, I highly recommend it. Writings of Edward Conze, for
example, Buddhist Thought in
India, also deserve to be sought out.
Buddhist Philosophy in Theory and
Practice by Herbert V. Guenther strikes me as a
fascinating fusion of a German philosophical sensibility with an
amazingly condensed history of Buddhist doctrine and practice. I
have not kept up with the avalanche of Tibetan Buddhist
interpretations and translations, but readers may also no doubt
find good hunting in those Himalayan dharma fields.
|
|
Nietzsche, Friedrich.
introduction III IV V VI(a) VI(b)
VI(c) IX X XI XII
The Portable
Nietzsche.Walter Kaufmann, ed., trans. Viking. 1954,
1968.
------------------------ The Will to
Power.W. Kaufmann (ed.) and R.J. Hollingdale trans. Vintage.
1968.
Occam, William of
appendix
Parsifal
IV
Pascal, Blaise
V
|
|
One key to Nietzsche may be to reread
him later and try to figure out why he then seems to be saying
something different than before. The New Nietzsche (David
Allison ed.) is excellent in exhibiting diverse approaches to his
thought.
|
|
Penrose, Roger.
VI(a)
XII
The Emperor's New Mind:
Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of
Physics.Oxford University Press 1989.
---------------------- Shadows of the Mind: A Search
for the Missing Science of Consciousness.Oxford University Press.
1994.
Plato
VI(b)
Prigogine, Ilya
XII
Pynchon, Thomas
X
|
|
Penrose, a physicist and mathematician
of undeniable stature has taken on pretty much the entire
scientific establishment in the nicest possible way. Those who have
ears to hear will find him offering not exactly solutions to the
problems he tackles, but rather Einsteinian 'gedank experiments'
which are of enduring value in keeping one's mind open in the most
important ways. The kind of philosophy I have worked to advance
comes close to presupposing that Penrose is on the right track:
Mind must have microphysical roots that depend on apprehending the
kind of plurality identifiable with non-local quantum processes.
|
|
Ricoeur, Paul.
VI(a)
VI(c)
VIII
IX
XII
Husserl: An Analysis of His
Phenomenology. Northwestern. trans. E. G. Ballard and L. E.
Embree. 1967
--------------- Freud and Philosophy: An
Essay on Interpretation. trans. Denis Savage. Yale. 1970.
------------- The Philosophy of Paul
Ricoeur; An Anthology of his Work Charles E. Regan and David Stewart
eds. Beacon. 1978.
--------------- The Rule of
Metaphor. trans. Robert Czerny. Toronto. 1977.
|
|
Ricoeur's Freud book and also his
Fallible
Man are two of his most accessible and absorbing
explorations, while the Husserl book can be recommended as an early
companion to that difficult thinker. Among philosophers, Ricoeur is
a master teacher whose ways of thinking nurture the kinds of
continuity of mind and multi-faceted interpretations indispensible
for sensitive and responsible thought.
|
|
Rockmore, Tom and Margolis, Joseph
(eds.)
The Heidegger Case: On
Philosopy and PoliticsTemple University Press. 1992.
Royce, Josiah
III
The Spirit of Modern
PhilosophyDover. 1983.
------------------ Lectures on Modern
Idealism. Yale. 1967. (1919)
Russell, Bertrand
V
Scheler, Max
IX
Schelling, Friedrich
III
Schoenberg, Arnold
IV
V
Schwenk, Theodor,
Sensitive Chaos : The
Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air.
J. Collins.
1996.
|
|
You've let Heidegger into your mind
and you'll never be the same? True enough, but wait! Now you have
to deal with the man's Nazi past, hopefully without losing what is
important about his way of thinking. Try this book. Rockmore and
Margolis have put together an excellent collection. The essays by
Kisiel, Poggeler, Taminiaux, Schurmann, and Margolis are
particularly helpful.
|
|
Steiner, Rudolf.
introduction IV V VI(a) VI(b) VI(c) VII VIII IX XII
appendix
The Philosophy of
Freedom. (1894) trans. Michael Wilson. Rudolf Steiner
Press. 1964.
------------------ The Riddles of
Philosophy. Anthroposophic Press. 1973.
------------------, and Barfield, Owen. The Case for Anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner Press.
1970.
------------------ Rudolf Steiner: An
Autobiography. trans. Rita Stebbing. Steiner Books. 1977.
------------------ The Boundaries of Natural
Science. (1920) trans. F. Amrine and K. Oberhuber.
Anthroposophic Press. 1983.
------------------ Friedrich Nietzsche : Fighter
for Freedom. Lindisfarne Books. 1985.
------------------ The Education of the Child :
And Early Lectures on Education. Anthroposophic Press. 1996.
Thomson, John
Natural Childhood; The First
Practical and Holistic Guide for Parents of the Developing
Child. Simon and Schuster Books. 1995.
|
|
The Philosophy of
Freedom.is Steiner's own philosophical
presentation within the idiom of Nineteenth century thought.
The Boundaries of Natural
Science is a late series of his lectures,
lucidly translated, and with an introduction by Saul Bellow, well
exhibiting the range and import of Steiner's 'storytelling', here
particularly with regard to differences between the East and West
concerning their developmental involvements in Imagination,
Inspiration, and Intuition. Riddles of
Philosophy deserves recognition as an exceptionally
enjoyable and nourishing introduction to the history of philosophy.
The Case for
Anthroposophy is a fragment of the finally
translated Riddles of the
Soul, based substantially on Steiner's study with
Franz Brentano, the grandfather of phenomenology. It describes
supersensible perception in a more or less phenomenological light.
The autobiography holds much between the lines, including Steiner's
unmistakable humility. A challenging and representative omnibus of
Steiner's work is found in The Essential
Steiner, Robert A. McDermott (ed.).
|
|
Verene, Donald Philip.
Man and Culture. Dell. 1970.
Waddington, C.H.
XII
Wagner, Richard
IV VII
|
|
Verene has assembled an exemplary
anthology of accessible excerpts from earlier thinkers as well as
from many of those discussed above, Hegel, Dilthey, Cassirer, and
Whitehead amongst them. There is also an excerpt from Karl Jaspers.
|
|
Whitehead, Alfred North.
I V VI(a)
VI(b)
VI(c) VII VIII IX X XII appendix
Process and
Reality.(1929) Corrected Edition, eds. D. R. Griffin and D. W.
Sherburne. Free Press. 1978.
Whyte, Lancelot Law
XII
|
|
The accessibility and poetics of
Whitehead's last books, Adventures of
Ideas and Modes of
Thought, suggest these as the best introductions
to his still state-of-the-art conceptually oriented thought.
|
Wittgenstein Ludwig.
V
VI(b) VI(c) VIII IX
X
appendix
Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus.(1921) trans. D. F. Pears and B. F.
McGuinness. Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1961.
------------------------ Philosophical
Investigations.(1953) trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Blackwell and
Mott 1958.
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