I'm really good at making book recommendations. So, after a friend asked what philosophy books I thought every person should read, I decided to take up the challenge.
The problem of course, my introductory philosophy book notwithstanding, I think the line between what is "philosophy" and what is "theology" is fairly well blurred. So if some of these choices seem rather arbitrary or without merit, just know that a theologian is making them. Feel free to dismiss as you're inclined.
First, I decided to leave off the list all the classics -- Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and the scores of modern thinkers. Not because they're rubbish, but because anyone making a request like this one, really should already have been reading them.
These books are really in no particular order, so don't think that just because a book comes toward the end of my list, that it's less important. In all honesty, I simply wrote as I was led to write. That said, I'm sure there will be glaring omissions when I'm finished.
David Walsh's The Modern Philosophical Revolution is the first on my list, but only because most people -- particularly modern thinkers -- have an aversion to anything that deals coherently with Kant. (The undergrad joke was "Kant can't be understood".) But Walsh is able to deal coherently with all sorts of moderns -- Kant, Heidegger, Derrida -- in a way that make them intellectually accessible, and it's still an honest explication. This is, hands down, the best book in philosophy since I was an undergrad.
Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self is next. Taylor does something in this wonderful book that will knock the wind out of so much contemporary philosophy that wants to trace the source of the modern self to Descartes. That's because Taylor obliterates that argument by conclusively demonstrating that the early Christians got there first. Sources is one of those books that puts historical responsibility back into philosophy.
Then, there's Simon Weil's The Need for Roots. Weil wrote this book in the aftermath of World War II, in an effort to make our postwar lives more human. Entire societies are to blame for not taking her more seriously.
No list would be complete without mentioning Soren Kierkegaard. Personally, I think his Philosophical Fragments are the most important. I read through it in high school, when I was reading Nietzsche, and didn't understand a thing. That's because I needed a new way of thinking -- that took me until seminary -- to "get". Fragments is a thought experiment in what is entailed by drinking the modern obsession with doubt all the way down into the dregs. (Which is why I didn't "get" it when I was reading Nietzsche.)
I also can't let Stephen Toulmin's Cosmopolis stay of my recommendation list. Toulmin asks an important question: What would have happened if Montaigne, instead of Descartes, had won the day? We'd certainly be better off, Toulmin rightly insists, because we wouldn't have all that nonsense that separates the thinking from the physical substance.
Oh, and Gillian Rose's Love's Work. For Rose, writing in the final stages of cancer, life is fragile. And if we want to affirm life, we'll have to handle it at its most cringing moments. I hardly ever reference this book but it was so significant to me when I was dealing with my own cancer.
Remi Brague's The Wisdom of the World really should be read alongside Taylor's Sources. The limitations of human understanding were affirmed much, much earlier than the Enlightenment wanted us to believe. And in much healthier ways.
Michel Serres' The Five Senses is a book that most contemporary philosophers really wouldn't want me to mention, and they certainly don't want to engage. But Serres makes some really damaging arguments for the Analytical tradition that ruled the day in England and the US in the 20th century (well, it's never really gone away -- I encounter Logical Positivists all the time).
Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life argues that philosophy started out as a way of life -- kind of like Christian monasticism. This is a book that I think every introductory undergrad philosophy class should be required to read.
Finally, Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. I worked with a student on a thesis about death some years ago. Becker's book shattered what she thought about death (which wasn't much, because our culture had taught her not to think about death). It's an important little book.
The problem of course, my introductory philosophy book notwithstanding, I think the line between what is "philosophy" and what is "theology" is fairly well blurred. So if some of these choices seem rather arbitrary or without merit, just know that a theologian is making them. Feel free to dismiss as you're inclined.
First, I decided to leave off the list all the classics -- Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and the scores of modern thinkers. Not because they're rubbish, but because anyone making a request like this one, really should already have been reading them.
These books are really in no particular order, so don't think that just because a book comes toward the end of my list, that it's less important. In all honesty, I simply wrote as I was led to write. That said, I'm sure there will be glaring omissions when I'm finished.
David Walsh's The Modern Philosophical Revolution is the first on my list, but only because most people -- particularly modern thinkers -- have an aversion to anything that deals coherently with Kant. (The undergrad joke was "Kant can't be understood".) But Walsh is able to deal coherently with all sorts of moderns -- Kant, Heidegger, Derrida -- in a way that make them intellectually accessible, and it's still an honest explication. This is, hands down, the best book in philosophy since I was an undergrad.
Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self is next. Taylor does something in this wonderful book that will knock the wind out of so much contemporary philosophy that wants to trace the source of the modern self to Descartes. That's because Taylor obliterates that argument by conclusively demonstrating that the early Christians got there first. Sources is one of those books that puts historical responsibility back into philosophy.
Then, there's Simon Weil's The Need for Roots. Weil wrote this book in the aftermath of World War II, in an effort to make our postwar lives more human. Entire societies are to blame for not taking her more seriously.
No list would be complete without mentioning Soren Kierkegaard. Personally, I think his Philosophical Fragments are the most important. I read through it in high school, when I was reading Nietzsche, and didn't understand a thing. That's because I needed a new way of thinking -- that took me until seminary -- to "get". Fragments is a thought experiment in what is entailed by drinking the modern obsession with doubt all the way down into the dregs. (Which is why I didn't "get" it when I was reading Nietzsche.)
I also can't let Stephen Toulmin's Cosmopolis stay of my recommendation list. Toulmin asks an important question: What would have happened if Montaigne, instead of Descartes, had won the day? We'd certainly be better off, Toulmin rightly insists, because we wouldn't have all that nonsense that separates the thinking from the physical substance.
Oh, and Gillian Rose's Love's Work. For Rose, writing in the final stages of cancer, life is fragile. And if we want to affirm life, we'll have to handle it at its most cringing moments. I hardly ever reference this book but it was so significant to me when I was dealing with my own cancer.
Remi Brague's The Wisdom of the World really should be read alongside Taylor's Sources. The limitations of human understanding were affirmed much, much earlier than the Enlightenment wanted us to believe. And in much healthier ways.
Michel Serres' The Five Senses is a book that most contemporary philosophers really wouldn't want me to mention, and they certainly don't want to engage. But Serres makes some really damaging arguments for the Analytical tradition that ruled the day in England and the US in the 20th century (well, it's never really gone away -- I encounter Logical Positivists all the time).
Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life argues that philosophy started out as a way of life -- kind of like Christian monasticism. This is a book that I think every introductory undergrad philosophy class should be required to read.
Finally, Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. I worked with a student on a thesis about death some years ago. Becker's book shattered what she thought about death (which wasn't much, because our culture had taught her not to think about death). It's an important little book.