Ask HN: Learning about philosophy

So a lot of philosophical writing references a sort of general canon, at least as far as western thinking is concerned. Other traditions I'm sure have their own details but I can't speak intelligently to them. The field is enormous, and without more specific information regarding your goals it is difficult to pinpoint the classics in subfields that may interest you. That said, there are a few highlights I think you're bound to come across reference or allusion to in many, many other works that would benefit you to get some exposure to. I am strongly biased toward a western analytical philosophy tradition--you'll want to check into things far more broadly than I'm recommending to find your own path. My little list is not meant to be exhaustive and is coming from personal memory of "aha!" moments in my own life, but will perhaps serve as a useful beach head for your own investigations:

* Descartes' Meditations

* Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding

* Hobbes Leviathan

* Kant Critique of Pure Reason

* Kant Prolegomena

* Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolution

* Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit

* Foucault Discipline & Punish

* Sellars Epistemology and the Philosophy of Mind

* Sellars The Scientific Image of Man

* Quine Word & Object

* Davidson On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme

* Nagel What is it like to be a bat?

* Searle Minds, Brains, and Programs

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [0] has a ton of great summary articles and bibliographies that could definitely keep you busy for a few decades or so. I've never been tremendously into ancient or non-western philosophy, which is a deficiency I aim to correct one day, but there are a ton of great essays there as well.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/

The best way to learn about philosophy is to take a good introductory course.

Books aren't nearly as good because you won't get to discuss the ideas with other students who are also learning the subject, which is half the fun and half the point of philosophy. You'll also miss out on the insights and explanations of the professor, which will be very valuable, if the professor is any good.

As for books, the Socratic dialogues are probably the best place to start, since the ideas pretty easy to grasp compared to later philosophy, they're written in an engaging way, and give you plenty of food for thought. Also, much of later Western philosophy is a reaction to, comment on, or has been influenced by Socrates and Plato. You'll be much more "in the loop" after getting some familiarity with ancient Greek philosophy than if you just dived straight in to later work.

Something else you'll want to be aware of is that in contemporary philosophy there are two major approaches: Analytic and Continental. Adherents of these approaches generally despise one another, denigrate, or ignore one another's work, though at least more recently the Analytics have been starting to read, re--envision, and appropriate Continental thinkers.

The Analytic approach dominates philosophy in the English-speaking world (and is coming to dominate the rest too), and when you take philosophy courses that's the view you'll most likely be exposed to, and it's Analytic philosophers you're most likely to be recommended when you ask about philosophy, especially on sites like HN, which are more likely to be peopled by fans of logic, rigor, and science, which Analytics themselves are huge fans of.

But your exposure to philosophy would be incomplete and probably really biased if you were mostly exposed to Analytic thought or viewed philosophy primarily through an Analytic lens.

This is apparently an unpopular opinion, but READ THE PRIMARY SOURCES.

"There is a strange idea that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about ‘isms’ and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire." -C.S. Lewis

I attend the best "Great Books" program in the country, the Torrey Honors College. Here are the strictly philosophy texts they had us start off with the first semester: Plato's Meno, Symposium, and Republic, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. You can find the full reading list here: https://www.biola.edu/torrey/academics/reading-list

If you want to dig in more, I would encourage you to look into the "Great Books of the Western World" set compiled by Mortimer Adler. There is an accompanying curriculum that walks you through reading them without a teacher or classroom [https://www.thegreatideas.org/tgi-program.html]. You can typically find them on eBay for relatively cheap.

If you want to learn about philosophy, I highly recommend Russel's History of Western Philosophy. It's usually frowned upon and recommended to avoid for Philosophy students exactly for the same reasons I think it's one of the best books ever written:

It doesn't shy away of critique and dispute, as it was written by a practicing philosopher (who still values objectivity and holds to high standards of reasoning). The language is wonderful and historical bits to set the context are great.

I also recommend Anthony Gottlieb's "The Dream Of Reason" and "The Dream of Enlightenment", as the second and third book (if you liked the first one). They are more recent and sometimes expand on some things Russel deemed of lesser importance. Again, exceptionally well written.

A long time ago someone recommended to me a small Norwegian book called Sophies World [0] as a very basic introduction to the history of philosophy and its served well.

It was written by a teacher and geared at young adults. So its not a rigorous introduction. But its a short read and by the end you'll have enough leads to follow.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_World

I recommend the Philosophise This podcast[0]. It has a lot of episodes on the classic philosophers but it also delves into some of the contemporary philosophers that I find very interesting. I lot of other philosophical discussions seem to act like philsophy stopped around Russell and Wittgenstein.

[0]https://www.philosophizethis.org/

I was a philosophy major at a good (but not top) department. You are getting a lot of advice from autodidacts here that is well-intentioned but, in my view, unproductive.

First, as a general heuristic, if there's some topic (in philosophy or otherwise) you want to learn, find syllabuses of courses in that subject at good universities and figure out what books they use.

If you do this for philosophy courses, you will find either anthologies of (contemporary) articles, or modern textbooks like Jaegwon Kim's Philosophy of Mind. At a high level, these more or less follow the same format (after perhaps some historical prologue). A reasonable view is presented, then in the next chapter (or essay) an important objection is discussed. This goes on for a while until you understand the strengths and weaknesses of various positions. At the end, you may favor one or another, but rarely is there is a clear winner.

Note that philosophy is distinct from the history of philosophy. If you care about what is true, and not the historical development of ideas, there's not much point in reading things written before, say, 1900, or even 1950. So no Hume or Hegel or whatever. In general these texts are poorly written and unclear compared to modern ones. And of course, they can't treat the developments that have taken place in the intervening years. Consider an analogy: you would not read Newton's original manuscripts to learn calculus.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a good reference work, but it presents mainly literature overviews, not pedagogical essays. Again, you wouldn't read an encyclopedia to learn math; it is similarly unwise here.

You write about developing models that address "the bigger questions of life," and "a personal philosophy." This is not something that contemporary academic philosophy talks much about, at least in the broad sense. But, in this direction, you might enjoy "Six Myths About the Good Life: Thinking About What Has Value" by Joel Kupperman. There's a good review of the book here: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/six-myths-about-the-good-life-think....

Generic advice: skip the classics and read a modern introductory text about them.

If your goal is to understand, why would you read Newton rather than an entry-level college textbook?

It's best to start with epistemology, epistemology is the foundation for all works in philosophy, which an understanding of is necessary for not only a good rigor but to know what is possible to know, so you don't your waste time.

Like others I recommend going through Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates--they are valuable in themselves but it will further allow you to see the motivation for the later works I'm going to recommend.

In the same way, Descartes is necessary, at least a general idea of his works. Read a bit about the exchanges between Hume and Berkeley to finally reach Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Not only is the Critique a cornerstone of all philosophy but it shows you how philosophy should be conducted--carefully, rigorously, and by finding the limits of the scope of a subject so it may be necessarily true knowledge; this is what 'Critique' traditionally means, the limit of the scope.

That being said my interest in formal philosophy (I've always been interested in epistemology) at all came from "The Life You Can Save" by Peter Singer. I ended up disagreeing with the argument Singer advocates for but he provides both the argument and the counter-argument. With the fairness being so remarkable, the book remains invaluable in one's philosophical journey, and at the very least a great introduction to the philosophy of morals/ethics

As a philosophy major, I would advise you to pay attention to the order in which you expose yourself to materials. The earlier stronger impressions in your journey will naturally have a weight on your opinions of later materials. In addition, academic departments usually have an -ism bias so that will also influence their content recommendations.

A neutral starter would be: Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

Once you have some formal thinking tools, I would approach philosophy building organically by writing down your beliefs and identifying questions and gaps, and then researching those ad-hoc. You may also discover that your current existing informal / intuitive model is mostly sufficient for a 21st century life.

Philosophy is a huge field, and you first need to figure out what part of philosophy you're interested in.

Moral and political philosophy is one area of philosophy -- Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, etc. That's more practical, and associated with probably the majority of the "names" you've heard of.

But then there's philosophy around deeper things like how we know things, what knowledge is, debates over free will, etc. Epistemology, metaphysics, etc.

Those two areas of philosophy have virtually nothing to do with each other.

Then you talk about "mental models" which isn't philosophy at all -- that's psychology.

And when you talk about developing a "personal philosophy" I don't know what that means -- it sounds more like religion or spirituality perhaps?

But honestly I'd start with Wikipedia. Just start with the "Philosophy" article and start following links until you find the stuff that seems to resonate. (Also look up the article for "Mental Model", and especially check out all the "See also" links at the bottom.)

* For an (opinionated) overview of philosophy up until the first part of the 20th century you can try Russell's History of Western Philosophy [1].

* A very detailed and useful resource for a lot of topics is also the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [2].

* You can also try the Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction series [3]. These cover a broad range of topics, not just philosophy; plus, you can approach each topic separately, without having to go through things that might not interest you.

Of course, these recommendations completely ignore non-western philosophical traditions. Hindu and Buddhist traditions might also be interesting to explore.

Personally I have approached philosophy strictly as an autodidact, hence quite haphazardly. After having explored a bunch of topics I however find most use and interest in those more modern and analytical parts of philosophy that touch on science, mathematics, cognitive science, logic.

Political and moral philosophy are also quite important because they allow you to get a grasp of the intellectual framework modern institutions are built on. A lot of the things that we take for granted (e.g. representative democracy, the ubiquity of nation-states, the central role of economic institutions in society) are actually not at all dictated by nature, but more by cultural norms and various philosophical ideas and systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosoph...

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/

[3] https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-short-...

I majored in philosophy and I think one of the biggest missteps in how I approached my degree was what I thought I would get out of learning philosophy.

I thought I'd learn about "truth" from my degree, and I was initially very disgruntled when learning about very incomplete philosophies. I learned eventually that the goal of a philosophy degree was not to find "truth", but to learn about the myriad arguments and models people had for "truth", and how to critique and understand truth.

If you're on your journey to developing your personal philosophy, then a basic understanding of philosophy will help you escape pitfalls and traps a lot of annoying armchair philosophizers fall into. A lot of people read a single philosopher and think they understand everything.

What is your goal for developing your personal philosophy? It might be faster and more meaningful for most people to start with theology/spirituality, books on justice (Rawls, Nozick, feminist literature), or carefully selected business books than to start from the basics because that road is long and full of fallacies.

I think it's very important that for every philosophy you learn about, learn the critiques of those arguments. You kan't learn about all the great critiques of Kant from reading Kant. This is where professors and peers are really useful with discussions to tease out nuances of particular arguments and models.

My personal favorite philosopher is Iris Marion Young. I think her work on intersecting democracy and feminism is wonderful.

AC Grayling edited a pair of introductory volumes on philosophy, aptly titled Philosophy I and Philosophy II. They are meant as a guide to the subject from a modern, Analytic perspective. Each volume contains extended, self-contained, essays on philosophic subtopics and history.

Why AC Grayling's Philosophy I & II instead of the Stanford Encyclopedia: It is 2 volumes, so much, much shorter. I have no idea how long the SEP is in print, but I imagine somewhere near an order of magnitude longer, maybe two orders of magnitude. It is meant to be useful for philosophy grad students and professors. You asked for an introduction.

Why AC Grayling's Philosophy I & II instead of his History of Philosophy. Actually, they are pretty similar. The History is a single volume, so it has the advantage of brevity. But it is more idiosyncratic and Grayling is more out of his depth. Russell's History of Philosophy is worse still in this regard. Scott Soames has a history entitled The World Philosophy Made, which is even more Analytic in outlook.

Why not primary sources: Why not? It is how I went along in the subject. Just start with Plato. Apology (who is this Socrates character anyway?) -> Meno (What is knowledge anyway?) -> Republic (is it better to do injustice or be injusticed?). That will be enough to start. There are plenty of other good suggestions here.

Why not an introduction to Continental philosophy: Actually, I can recommend one. Robert Pippin's Modernism as a Philosophical Problem.

(My credentials. I was a philosophy major at the University of Chicago, which is an Analytic program, where I tried to pursue Continental philosophy, and I have a master's from The New School, which is a Continental program, where I tried to pursue Analytic philosophy.)

Start with G. K. Chesterton's _Orthodoxy_ - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769 It is not an overview of philosophy, but it is one person's account of how he found one and it touches on a lot of questions you may want to ask yourself.

This is a controversial opinion but I think that an introduction to philosophy should probably focus on commentaries and summaries of the great works rather than the original source material. This is stems from a general point about education that it is usually easier to absorb knowledge from a text book that summarizes research than to get it from the original research itself. Philosophy as an academic discipline is somewhat exceptional in that it strictly emphasizes the original works/classics as opposed to most sciences which focus on summaries of key concepts (nobody reads Darwin to learn about evolution or Keynes to learn about economics though both authors are worth reading at some point). This is probably not the best approach for new comers. Obviously things will be missing but these are much more accessible and provide a lot of context that would be lacking if one were to simply jump in.

The advice to take an intro course is solid. Open culture has a few linked courses that look good (it’s all about the quality of the lecturer). Also a compendium book is a good place to start.

For an introduction to theology and eastern philosophy I suggest Alan Watts' lectures, you can buy them as audio files or try to find them on video streaming websites.

What I've learned trying to do this:

* Thinking and argumentation are not closed on propositional- or predicate-logic. They are closed on natural language. So confusing good arguments with their logical form will filter away a lot of philosophy that seems logically wild while still containing insightful content. Likewise presuming that no purely rhetorical devices can be employed to make a truthful point will restrict your ability to engage with texts.

Nietszche comes to mind as a case where a philosopher was highly influential, but did not use strictly logic to make points. Yet the contents of his ideas are insightful if not sound.

* Identifying the relative strength of arguments is a taste that one picks up by reading, closely and attentively, prior arguments widely considered to be good or insightful; particularly the primary sources, for they are direct examples of how philosophy is done. You'll soon pick up that nuances of language, and opening up what actually counts as evidence for an argument, are what matter in assessing an argument's points.

* It is easy to fool yourself into not holding your understanding up to a high standard. Philosophy is an ur-discipline, it ponders ideas which lack prior codification, and does so with a strong commitment to both veracity and self-honesty. This lack of codification means that philosophers struggle with the meaning and significance of terms in a way which must be holistic and involved, since original philosophical ideas by definition lack prior context. Particularly if you're aiming for a "personal philosophy", you will be put in a position where you will create your own context for certain ideas, and, for good or bad, you will only have your own reference points to characterize their truth, requiring care.

* The three banes of those sympathetic to the Enlightenment tradition (and its spinoffs), are: Pancriticalism, Postmodernism and Pragmatism. Know these three positions. They are the among the primary problems modern analytic philosophy struggles with, as they on the surface appear to eliminate the possibility of being objective and doing philosophy at all. This quite frankly isn't true, but they make intellectual honesty in the analytic tradition that much harder. Macintyre is the go-to for how one may claw one's way out of these three problems, but they are worth struggling with on your own.

* Over the last year or so I've had the "luck" of engaging with people highly critical of my thinking and ideas. It was to the point where the discussions were frankly impolite and belligerent. But they were arguments that I was losing because their criticisms did not seem prima facie wrong, or because my own counter-arguments were obviously weak. So I took it as a trial by fire to learn how to properly argue (and I did get better and it did help). You might benefit from doing the same, and if you ever get in the shit arguing with people I would stick with them in case you still have something to learn.

* In the long-run I've begun to care a lot less about philosophy because I've begun to understand its costs. Philosophy is an easy thing to do poorly; worse, when you do it poorly it's basically indistinguishable from being a pseudointellectual, a clever silly, or an idiot. Think about what "having a personal philosophy" actually means to you. Think about what it takes, what the work really is, to become an informed and thoughtful individual. And then if you must, do that work.

You might try: https://www.openculture.com/philosophy_free_courses

Introduction to Logic

Ancient Philosophy

For quick reference: https://iep.utm.edu/

For the first few months at least, I'd suggest staying away from more modern philosophers like Kant, Nietzsche, etc. For the most part, classical education up until the last century studied the history and classics first, because they made more sense and endured that time for a reason.

Don't caught up in what can't be known, natural of reality, or getting stuck in a belief system which may feel grand, but is myopic or stunting. Don't force it- it can be like hard math. Some philosophy and (anti-)theology can even f- you up. If you feel like you're falling into a hole or learning the secrets of the universe in a way that is starting to make you feel like you don't belong, switch to something else or drop it completely. If you have nightmares or lose yourself, maybe try (self-)EMDR or get a hypnotist to help you forget it, like Peter Gibbons.

It sounds like you're interested in ethics, but I'd suggest not starting with that. Although I personally believe in having ethical and moral behavior, for me it developed from experience more than my studies; you don't need to be like Chidi from The Good Place, unless that's what you dig. If you get too pedantic, try Metaphysics or just take a break.

If you're looking for practical life guidance, and you can take a little stoicism, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is good gateway into that (Penguin Classics, or Munro's audiobook).

> Are there any books that are considered a must for someone new to the field of philosophy? > Mental models address a lot of 'practical' situations but I am realizing that they fall short when it comes to bigger questions of life. > What path did you follow to develop a personal philosophy?

The "field of philosophy" is different from "spirituality/personal philosophy/meaning of life/etc". If you want an introduction to philosophy, you could start with logic/reasoning/plato/pre-socratics/etc. It will help you think rationally and logically. But it won't give you answers to "life's bigger questions". It'll give you tools to think about them and introduce you to what others think/believe/etc.

If you want the answers to "life's bigger questions", then you are really talking about religion rather than philosophy.

I studied philosophy at the undergraduate level only, so take these opinions with a grain of salt.

Philosophy is a cosmos, the same way that science is: you study particular fields within it based on what you want to get out of them.

The "questions of life" fall into several categories (not exhaustive): biological, phenomenological/experiential, emotional, moral, existential, absurd. Do any of those interest you?

Edit: I also want to say that I strongly encourage people interested in reading and learning philosophy to do it in a class or group setting, at least initially. It's good to be an independent reader and interpreter, but most philosophy makes heavy use of terms of art that can be profoundly misleading or easy to misinterpret on one's own, particularly when getting started.

In my opinion, philosophy as a means of understanding ourselves and our world beyond what science can tell us is essentially futile. In Plato's day, there was no delineation between science, philosophy and mathematics. The word "philosophy" meant "love of wisdom" in Greek. A philosopher was just someone who wanted to discover knowledge of any kind. Over time, philosophers systematized certain areas of knowledge, giving us math, logic, and science. The areas of knowledge that we were able to systematize are no longer considered to be philosophy. Philosophy today, almost by definition, is the study of problems that have resisted all attempts at systematic understanding for two thousand years. It has no wisdom for us. If you want wisdom, look to math and science.

Psychology, sociology, biology, physics, astronomy, and mathematics offer knowledge that can help you understand the world and your place in it. Philosophy simply does not offer that kind of knowledge, as much as it does try.

If you are interested in Western Catholic philosophy (considering its dominance from 500-1500 and ongoing influence in our world), I'd recommend reading from the Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. Even if you are not Catholic, it will give you a much better understanding of the origins of modern Western thought.

From Wikipedia: "Throughout the Summa, Aquinas cites Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, and Pagan sources, including, but not limited to: Christian Sacred Scripture, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Boethius, John of Damascus, Paul the Apostle, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, Anselm of Canterbury, Plato, Cicero, and John Scotus Eriugena."

I spent a good 5 or 6 years reading philosophy and psychology in my spare time. I don’t claim a formal understanding of the subject that would come close to what you would get from a college degree, but I do feel like I understand the zeitgeist a lot clearer than before.

I preface with that to say that my recommendation is to pick and chose which parts are of interest to you and then dive in further to the source material. If you take the approach that you must start at Aristotle, you run the risk of burning out before getting to areas that might be life changing to study.

I got my start by grabbing all of the “Introducing...” [1] series of graphic novels about subjects I commonly heard referenced but didn’t understand. From there, I dove into the underlying texts of everything I found interesting.

Again, I didn’t gain an academic understanding of the subject, but I came away with a wildly different worldview than when I started. Life’s too short to be an expert at everything, but that doesn’t have to stop you from exploring on your own.

[1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Postmodernism-Graphic-Gui...

These books have some pretty deep illustrations, not just cartoon drawings of the subjects. One favorite of mine was a scene showing Monet painting haystacks, frustrated that a worker had left a ladder on one he was studying — I think the implication was Monet wasn’t _really_ trying to capture impressions of the haystacks as they appeared throughout the days and seasons, just his preferred impression.

For me, the biggest boost lately was Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Black Swan, Antifragile. He's a real philosopher in a sense that he addresses real world problems instead on messing with theory. He's an insightful practitioner who builds proper terms to describe phenomena he observes and follow consequences. For me, his books were not only very inspiring because of its messsage (not popular, but seems very true, using terms he proposes contributed much to my understanding of the world), but set a good example of forming a good base for finding out stuff. He's inspiring, because he has similar interests to me, especially cognitive biases and he shows with his success that you can refuse to do bull*t people do nowadays and be successful. Plus, he's much into Probability Theory, so he's a good choice for an engineer who prefer mathematics over more social stuff.

I would also recommend The Structure of Science Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn), very important book to understand how science works, what are its limitations, how should we treat scientific facts. It also show very nature of learning about world (it's not lineary incremental like most people think). It also emphasize that there is always quite a lot of dogma in science (you need some assumptions that can't be really proved right, only wrong if you dwell on it and eventually fail). If you are interested in modern science belief system and what are stuff it can't explain (according to Kuhn, any science paradigm has smaller or bigger blind spot), it's quite well explained in The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake.

If you are interested in nature of non-linearity of learning, what were steps in forming human's worldview, I think Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West make a good point. I can't say for sure, because I have only started (it's very long, 1500 pages), but I definitely like the guy. :)

This is really more history of philosophy, but the "Secret history of Western Esotericism Podcast" at https://www.shwep.net is really something. If nothing else, it'll make you want to go read Plato's works to see what your high school philosophy class didn't go into.

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant is a good if slightly outdated intro. I also read Sophie's World and would recommend reading that first, but you can skip it if you don't want to read fiction.

If you want something that talks purely about ideas without reference to the famous names, Bertrand Russell's book The Problems of Philosophy is also good. It give a very good overview of the major questions that philosophy keeps coming back to without dwelling too much on the history of the different answers. He also gives his own opinions on some of these issues, but you don't have to take that too seriously.

Glad to see this on here. Plenty of good comments. And I'd say there is no downside to spending a particular portion of your daily mental exertions wrestling with The Big Questions

You won't find a better place to begin that the Alain de Botton School of Life series (though perhaps could use a more balanced Western to Eastern ratio). Start with Kant, see if it tempts your interest, and you should be able to consume the whole lot in a short sitting:

https://www.youtube.com/c/theschooloflifetv/playlists

For a deeper dive, there is a classic series of audio lectures that used to be sold via mail-order and arrive on cassette tapes! You can find many online (narrated in Charlton Heston's authoritative voice no less):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncS8x4RUjlso...

Then take to twitter to communicate directly with giants in the field: Slavoj Zizek, Daniel Dennett, Alva Noe, and many others are active

https://twitter.com/PhilosophyNow

And finally you'll be ready to dive into the Arxiv of Philosophy Papers: PhilPapers

https://philpapers.org/

Best of Luck, Rupi ;)

The History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell, is a great starting point. It reviews probably 30 prominent philosophers from the Western world, starting with the ancient Greeks and coming to modern day.

It's not comprehensive, and Russell isn't focused on staying completely objective on each subject. But it's a great overview, and in my opinion the subjectivity from Russell adds a bit of personality that makes it easier to read.

Take any suggestions with a grain of salt. Philosophy as a discipline has terrible quality control, and there is a great deal of status worship and outright charlatanry.

Often the big interesting questions are unanswerable, so the field is split between those who pretend to give answers (sometimes via bait-and-switch tactics, whereby a trivial or only tangentially relevant question is swapped in for the interesting one; sometimes via obscure, grandiose, ultimately hollow nonsense), those who fiddle around the edges making 'progress' that can never resolve anything important, and those who give boring history lessons about the failures of the past.

On the other hand, philosophy can provide you with a toolset for dissolving confusion, crystallising concepts, and minimising self-deception. In its more poetic forms it can be inspiring and emotionally resonant, if you are that way inclined. Follow your nose, delve deeply into the areas that interest you, and make sure it's an active process: always be thinking, rather than hoping to passively receive knowledge.

Depends on your age. If you are in college, taking an introductory course or two on ethics and metaphysics could be useful. If that's not possible or realistic, Nicomachean Ethics, A Critique of Pure Reason, and Utilitarianism were the most useful classic philosophy texts I have read, and should be available on the internet and in most large public libraries. Be warned however that all can be quite daunting, companion books could be useful if you do not have a professor or TA to provide context.

There really aren't any must-read books, except for certain areas there are a bunch of must-read books, and none of them make a good entry point to the study and practice of philosophy.

Like most mature fields, philosophy has a well developed body of theory, and jargon for discussing it, and understanding it often requires a decent knowledge of the history of philosophy (most philosophy is done in reaction to earlier philosophy). The person here suggesting Heidegger's Being and Time is suggesting the equivalent of "try doing brain surgery" to someone thinking about learning more about medicine. It's literally one of the hardest texts to even start, let alone understand.

From your question I get the feeling that you're not looking to gain academic expertise in philosophy so much as general understanding and practical application to your life. So, here's a suggested list of things to try and see which seem accessible and applicable to you:

1. Listen to the podcast A History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps [0]. It's an excellent high level survey of the history of philosophy that does a good job making the very abstract ideas concrete and applicable, without getting into the weeds. It's also a gentle introduction to the jargon.

2. Take a university course on contemporary moral issues. Every philosophy dept in North America runs this course regularly as one of the best hooks into the field for students. It directly takes current issues like abortion, pornography, climate change, etc. and discusses them in terms of moral philosophy, introducing the key concepts along the way. I have a friend teaching philosophy whose central work now is on the moral issues surrounding sex with robots [1].

3. Read Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. This book is not very good philosophy, or as an introduction to Zen or motorcycle maintenance, for that matter. But I read it in my teens and fell in love with what the author does, namely thinking really hard and rigourously about his life, his circumstances, and his place in the universe, and walking through all that thinking in a pretty clear and compelling way. It doesn't help with philosophical knowledge much, but it's an excellent depiction of the mindset that pursues philosophy, questioning and reasoning about everything.

4. Read some Plato. His works are small and topical, the dialog form is very accessible, the Socratic method is a great application of rigourous thinking and analysis, and you're definitely dealing with some of the foundational ideas in philosophy that keep recurring in various ways. The list at https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2019/08/18/a-platonic-r... is a pretty good reading order, but read only as far as Plato holds your interest.

For more advanced stuff that's also contemporary here's a list of some essays or books that are well-written, fairly important in their area, and raise interesting questions:

* Descarte's Meditations [2] is frequently used as an accessible introductory text

* Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [3] (someone else mentioned this as well)

* Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons [4], especially section 3 where he discusses what constitutes personal identity in the context of Star Trek style transporters.

* W.V.O Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism [5], on truth and logical positivism

I did a BA Honours in philosophy and it was life changing only insfar as I spent those years reading, writing and analyzing. It screwed my head on very tightly. I didn't have strong opinions on most philosophical topics coming out of the degree, but I felt very much equipped to read and understand philosophy and apply it to my life.

[0] https://historyofphilosophy.net/

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/robot-sex

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosoph...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasons_and_Persons

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Dogmas_of_Empiricism

My only suggestion is don't read hegel!

Plato’s dialogues are mostly accessible and deal with basic philosophical questions. He was not the first philosopher, but his works are a great starting point to understanding the foundations of western philosophy. I forget the names of each one, but the series of dialogues involving Socrates’s trial and imprisonment are quick to read and thought-provoking. The best part of Plato is that he doesn’t just tell you what he thinks, he teaches you how to think critically and philosophically.

Once you’ve finished Plato, you can move onto Aristotle, particularly his Ethics.

As for “how to deal with bad things,” the Stoics are very popular now. Also check out the Epicureans. I think you should balance out these views with alternate approaches, maybe from Laozi.

After that, you may be interested in the rationalist-empiricist debate. (I’m skipping over a lot of medieval work that laid the foundations for this.) Descartes and Hume are the most readable of each group, respectively, in my experience.

If you are interested, you can move onto questions of “the meaning of life” or however you want to phrase it. A lot of this work rests on the very difficult works of Hegel and Kant, which would take a ton of time and effort to read and are probably not worth it for a non-academic. Kierkegaard is wonderful but also difficult to read. Fortunately at this stage, there are novelists who have read this stuff and put it into novels. Dostoyevsky and Camus provide a good synthesis of existential thought, coming to very different conclusions.

Everything I’ve mentioned in this comment can be read in a year or less, assuming you read at least the major one or two works from each author I’ve mentioned. At that point you won’t have an academic understanding of the field, but you’ll have a solid practical philosophical foundation for your daily life.

Start with the basics. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle form the foundation of Western Philosophy.

Note that philosophy requires a significant amount of thought on your own part. There are parts of these three (and many others that follow) that are absurd. See Aristotle on many scientific matters. They lived in a society with slaves, so you’ll find some hierarchical views of humans that we now reject.

What’s most important from there is what you care about.

Is it epistemology — the study of knowledge? Or ethics — what is right, wrong, just? Is it political philosophy, be it democracy or monarchy or anarchy? Are you curious about power? Want to explore consciousness, what it is to be a “self” and the repercussions of those answers? Maybe linguistics, how we communicate, use language, and the strengths/weaknesses of it.

There is philosophy of sport, of war, of aesthetics; on gender and race; on the meaning (or not!) of things; on life and death and god(s) and spirituality; on machines, computers, and artificial intelligence.

I believe that the Greeks are important because they are so foundational to what comes after. Everything, the saying goes, is a footnote to them.

But after that, follow your questions. You can spend a hell of a lot of time reading things you don’t deeply care about. It will be a slog and without an external forcing function, you’ll probably lose interest and give up. For me that is philosophy of language, specifically a fair bit of what I consider to be nonsense in the past sixty years.

A good way to find who to read is to first know what people call it (e.g. epistemology) and then either find college courses or online lists. Go back to the early work and work your way through the Core. From there you’ll know enough of what the questions are that you can branch out.

For introductions, my favorite is Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy.

It's a fascinating subject but be prepared to be utterly confused the deeper you dive. I've concluded, like philosopher Michael Huemer, that few philosophical principles can be uncontroversially concluded. Excerpt from The Problem of Political Authority [1]:

"Questions of this kind are notoriously difficult. How should we approach them? One approach would be to start from some comprehensive moral theory–say, utilitarianism or Kantian deontology–and attempt to deduce the appropriate conclusions about political rights and obligations. I, unfortunately, cannot do this. I do not know the correct general moral theory, and I don’t think anyone else does either. The reasons for my skepticism are difficult to communicate, but they derive from reflection on the problems of moral philosophy and on the complex, confusing, and constantly disputed literature about those problems. It is a literature in which one theory after another runs into a morass of puzzles and problems that becomes ever more complicated as more philosophers work on it. I cannot fully communicate the situation here; the best way of appreciating my skepticism about moral theory is to delve into that literature yourself. Here, I shall simply announce that I will not assume any comprehensive moral theory, and I think we should be very skeptical of any attempt to arrive at sound conclusions in political philosophy by starting from such a theory. Nor, for similar reasons, do I start by assuming any general political theory, though we shall arrive at a political theory in the end."

As far as an overarching philosophy, I've concluded on intuitionism, closely approximated by Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism [2].

[1] https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/1.htm [2] Excerpt: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/5.htm

If you find yourself struggling to parse traditional philosophy, which honestly is likely if you aren't planning on taking a philosophy course I'd suggest reading philosophical novels. Camus's the stranger and Sartre's no exit are great works that are foremost page turners while also demanding considerable thought. I like thus spoke zarathrustra a lot but it will be difficult with no background. If you want to get serious read the greeks. Beyond that it really depends on which area you're interested in. The Stanford encyclopedia is a great resource. I'd stay away from Hegel and Kant at first, although they are incredibly influential. They'll probably turn you away because it's so hard to parse.

Not reading.

Living, observing, and reflecting has been the most beneficial to my pursuit of knowing myself, finding peace, and then realizing it's all futile (yes, even the reaching the mountain top of enlightenment -- a sham).

Keep a journal. Write down your thoughts and observations for the day -- observing your thoughts and emotions as you do. From there, you can understand what you think, how you feel, and make changes as you see fit.

Books and philosophers can offer you nothing but a distraction off the path.

It's Zen Koan in a way; the underlying pattern between all of them is that it's all subjective, there is no truth. Stop looking so hard, and just live.

Rather than list all the classics like Plato, Aristotle, Hume, etc., I always suggest that those new to philosophy pick a book that will “shock” them, so to speak. Something that makes the reader go, “Wow, I had never considered the world from that perspective before.”

For this purpose, I recommend some of the following:

- Max Stirner. Sort of a proto-anarchist that critiqued everything and denied the authority of everyone.

- Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morality. The concepts in this book will radically shake up your understanding of modern ethics and values.

- A work about Zen Buddhism. Zen in particular is very focused on the everyday moment, in a way distinctly opposite from the common YOLO / carpe diem idea we’re all familiar with.

- Spinoza. HN’s especially will appreciate the complex, mathematical nature of his metaphysics.

I strongly recommend reading Peter Singer.

His Practical Ethics [0] and other books are excellent.

Primarily, I think it's important to very seriously think about our moral obligations to others, especially in today's interconnected world (where we not only can, but inevitably do affect others whether we like it or not).

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521...

Some thoughts:

1. Francis Schaeffer said that the problem of modern man is basically epistemological. (Epistemology is what we know, and how we know, and how we know we know.) You can see this showing up in things like "post truth" politics, the replication crisis in science, and the problem of determining what's going on from news reports that are biased in various directions. In whatever route you take, it might be worthwhile to make sure that you get at least some epistemology in your studying.

2. It sounds like you're interested in a rather pragmatic way, rather than academic. If so, I'm not sure groveling through the original authors is the optimal way to do what you want. Explorers take dead ends. Those dead ends are interesting, in an academic way, but not so interesting to a pragmatist.

3. If you're not going to read the original authors (all of them), then you're going to be relying on some kind of a guide (or more than one). Choose carefully, because who you choose will shape your journey, and probably your conclusions. Maybe more than one guide, from more than one perspective, would be useful.

4. Personally, I really like Francis Schaeffer. I'd recommend Escape From Reason and He Is There And He Is Not Silent as very short overviews of much of philosophy. But you're going to have to do some work, because in a short book, he does not answer every objection or fill in every blank. You are left the exercise of applying his ideas to your questions.

Schaeffer is a Christian, and his philosophy is explicitly Christian. If that turns you off... then it does.

The best book for this is “How To Think About The Great Ideas” by Mortimer Adler. I studied philosophy undergrad and ran the philosophy club. We used a lot of material from this book to structure our meetings.

Many people have mentioned taking a class (I agree too) where you can engage in a conversation. This book’s content is transcribed from a series of TV shows with Adler, the host having a back and forth dialog with questions coming from audience. Adler speaks in a way that makes complicated ideas in a way a child could grasp. This book accomplishments the classroom setting.

The second reason is that the content is structured about ideas. Chapters are broken down into “How to think about law”, “How to think about freedom”, “How to think about love”, “How to think about philosophy”, etc. I find survey books with this organization much better say diving into a book by a major philosopher. This way you can jump around and read the chapters that interest you first, coming back to the others later.

I’ll close with two quotes from my favorite philosophy professor.

“I know how much you know not by the answers you give but by the questions you ask.”

“Philosophy is the subject that when ALL thinking is done, there’s still more thinking.”

An important note is that reading is entirely auxiliary to philosophy. The important thing is to think, and to interact with others who are thinking, either orally or in writing. I'd even go so far as to say you could be a philosopher in the fullest sense without ever reading a page of philisophy, although you'd need to know some smart philosophers to get away with that, and you'd be unnecessarily holding yourself back anyway.

The purpose of reading in philisophy is to become aware of interesting problems, challenging arguments, to notice and comprehend tools of thought, and to avoid spending your time developing your thoughts in a direction someone has already travelled. You can get all of this by talking to smart people, it's just that reading is much more efficient.

But what you can't get away with is just reading, or even just reading and writing. You need others to read what you write, and have them respond to you. Or engage with them back-and-forth orally (although writing really helps to organize your thoughts).

If you want to study philisophy, then, you'll need to find a way to interact with others who have studied philosophy, and the best place for that is a university, where you could ask to audit a class, or to join in a discussion hosted by a philosophy club.

If that's not an option, there are internet communities where people discuss philosophy, just be aware that these communities usually form around groups of people who share some philosophical view, and can be insular echo chambers, and they may not be interested in discussing any old philosophical topic. Academic philosophy is filled with bad ideas and counterproductive norms of discourse, and can guide you in completely the wrong direction, but they're still the best environment in which to learn to think.

Wittgenstein is an important philosopher in the 20th century, not just for having answered questions, but because he also pointed out important questions,that we did not see. Seeing them now in this way is bringing us closer to answers needed now. He raised doubts about functionalism, the theory that is the basis of the computer revolution's theory of mind. So for example, he showed that just knowing the rules for computation was not enough to bring forth intelligence, much the less the wisdom that is the deeper need.His private language argument, that language is not private, speaks to the community needed to make computers work. One of the more important aspects in philosophy is Kant's post Church, post science goals, was for us to think for ourselves; we can't just pass the problem off to others. Much of this is happening now, even taken for granted, but Wittgenstein helped bring it about.

The problem I found in reading, or general media consumption is, you'll very likely to directly take everything the authoritative figures say, without resolving internally, if you don't have strong personal philosophy yet. I hate to talk with people who quote Hegel or Kant all the time, using them as natural laws. Even I agree with some of it and respect them a lot, I don't think in essence they're more valuable than any random homeless people say. There are people who read a ton but have the poorest mind. The same goes to artists, there're a ton of artists who read a lot, watched a lot and listened to a lot but still make absolute crap.

I think getting into the field of philosophy is very different from developing a personal philosophy. The "field" sounds to me like you'll be talking to other people who study philosophy, and you're expected to read certain materials to stay literal. But to develop your own personal philosophy there's no requirements about what you need to read. I consider myself to have strong personal philosophy, where I have a general rule / ideal mindset that explains everything (ideal meaning I might not act to what I believe in), and my philosophies are the direct reason that I'm always very happy in life (which is my primary goal). I rarely talk to other people about these, so I consider myself not in the field of philosophy.

So no, I don't think there's a general clear path to develop a personal philosophy. What is personal philosophy? It's your own personal way of living. I would say it's a lot luck, either you found it or not. It's possible to read something, or watched something that coincidentally matched very well with your underlying personal philosophy that you haven't discovered yourself yet, and discovered a bit after experiencing those, so my only advise would be stay honest with yourself, keep reading / watching / listening to whatevery you're most interested in. Personally I think the film First Love: The Litter on the Breeze (1998), 20th Century Nostalgia (1997) and The Troubleshooters (1988) helped me discover my personal philosophy, but that's highly personal, just written here for reference (also recommend to everyone because they're good).

Because the field is so broad and often highly technical I strongly recommend avoiding getting rabbit-holed. Focus on breath rather than depth.

Survey the landscape first - get a hand-wavey high level understanding on the two primary schools today: analytic vs continental philosophy. Then study each one’s history and origins.

Read this book (also available as YouTube videos I think): https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explaine...

This will give you high level introduction of the landscape across the various epochs, the big ideas and their main purveyors.

At the end of that you should have a good idea which philosopher/era/ideas interest you most. Only then consider diving deeper.

Specifically because you speak of mental models and “developing a personal philosophy” (and because you are on this website I am making some assumptions about your background ans familiarity with computer science/information theory) I also recommend Luciano Floridi. The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design

https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Information-Theory-Philosophy-C...

Not a classic nor even something that's stood the test of time nor even something that's done yet, but I've been interested in David Chapman's stuff

https://meaningness.com/

https://meaningness.com/eggplant

https://meaningness.com/further-reading (some of his influences and suggestions for reading, much of which is philosophy or philosophy-adjacent)

Mental models are one of his primary focuses (especially in In the Cells of the Eggplant). (He has a background in formal AI and a longtime academic interest in how an AI, or a human, could usefully model and act in the world. More recently he's been a serious student and practitioner of some less-well-known-to-English-speakers sorts of Buddhism, which he mostly tries to describe to his website readers from a secular, naturalist perspective.) I appreciate that he's kind, curious, thorough, intelligent, and eclectic. I sometimes think I'll be doing well if I get to 30% of his attainment in any of these areas!

Everyone has a personal philosophy, and your path of personal growth is the path by which your personal philosophy is developed.

There are many great interviews with Mike Tyson where he gets highly philosophical. He has some amazing lines, and they just keep hitting hard.

Steve Jobs had great philosophy, arguably laying the foundations upon which Apple was built. Many great entrepreneurs share this pattern.

Einstein and Feynmen are known for their philosophical genius also.

Great philosophy can come from politicians, artists, writers, and even comedians. George Carlin and Patrice O'neal are my favorite. There's great philosophy surrounding sports too. The Last Dance is a great watch.

My only point is, don't marginalize yourself to the field of philosophy. Philosophy is deep thinking, and the ability to articulate and navigate those thoughts. The books under the philosophy section are the thoughts that have nowhere else to be. Great philosophy about computation will be under Computers.

If you're serious about your personal philosophy, then start writing your thoughts down. Then organize them and edit them and pursue them. Pick up books that answer your questions and read the organized thoughts of your role models. Every field has its great philosophers, and more often than not, they're the trail blazers of their field. They will not be found under philosophy.

The podcast The History of Philosophy without any gaps is a great way to get into it. I found the philosophy of the pre-socratics all the way through to the scholastics was easy to understand and grasp as a lay person. After that, the language gets a bit dense. However, I was still able to understand it.

https://historyofphilosophy.net

Check this: https://scholar.harvard.edu/sandel/justice

I saw this years ago and I am still so impressed by how engaging these lectures are. Michael Sandel is great.

Of course this is not holistic review of philosophy, but I guarantee you, you'll watch it as if it was the best netflix drama.

Read as much as you can on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [0] and Wikipedia. Switch over to real books once you’ve got some clarity on what you’re most interested in. Read books on the history of philosophy as well.

Don’t worry about “mental models” and “personal philosophy.”

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/

As others have mentioned, that's a very difficult question to answer. Philosophy is huge and incredibly subjective, often based on what each persons perspective considers a certain context of reality to be worth philosophizing. Personally I enjoy Bertrand Russell and Terence McKenna very very much, I've invested a lot of time in both of them. .

The author of Existential Comics offers some advice:

https://existentialcomics.com/blog/1/How_to_study_philosophy...

I like courses or philosophical works, which focus on a common themes, common threads. That allows one to see more connections across different thinkers.

One instance of this is John Vervaeke's Awaking from the meaning crisis (which isn't only philosophy, but also cognitive science).

Other courses like that are those from John Searle (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind).

Hubert Dreyfus has a course on existentialism in literature and film.

Thinking of it, there is also a channel called Like Stories Of Old. The maker publishes video-essays, which are often philosophical in tone and reference existential thinkers like Kierkegaard.

My own journey into philosophy started with Wittgenstein (apart from an introduction in Greek Philosophy in high school).

You want to develop a personal philosophy? Travel the world, meet all kinds of people, work different jobs. Start a family, raise kids, build something, help others, get out of your comfort zone.

These things will shape your worldview. Reading books is just a small piece in this puzzle, and I'd definitely skip books written by professional philosophers.

I think having a good introduction before reading the big books suggested here is a good idea. For an introductory book, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy is pretty good. It's short, and covers the important topics and how philosophers thought about them. You can then move on to reading the classics.

I think that it is best to approach the practice of philosophy and the output of that practice as really meaningful, but not that important. I believe that there is an inverse relationship between the tangible life benefits of studying philosophy and the weight of meaning that you require from that study. And, I hereby do attest to the real good that the study of philosophy can render in one's everyday life! But, it seems to me that this benefit is greater during times where I am comfortable treating it as a great way to train the mind and spirit for the real world. Rather than mistake the training for the actual fight of living. To maintain a good life contending with all the whorling complexity and dizzying vastness of the universe is where the work done on the sparing grounds pays its dividends. Or, as it were, doesn't

As a philosophy graduate I would say that learning philosophy solely from books would be a very ambitious / dangerous attempt. The philosophical books can be very persuasive for the beginner in the field, leading to many misconceptions. I would recommend to take part in some (university/on-line) courses, but not in one, but at least two from different teachers.

As for the books, Plato (Socrates dialogues) is must have to understand the field. Also it's fun to read, so it's great to begin with :) The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle is another beginner friendly book which lays field for others to follow; it's much more practical/friendly than the Metaphysics, which should be approached only with an assistance of a good teacher (unless you're a genius like Avicenna or Thomas Aquineas).

I started down this rabbit hole some years back and am (still) somewhat there

I knew a little already, so I started with topics in metaphysics/epistomology, made up my mind about them, and moved more into meta-ethics/ethics and more "practical" philosophies. Reason being, if you have a strong stance on something like free will, a lot of your ethics can be derived from there.

If you ever want to talk about it, feel free to shoot me an email evankozliner@gmail.com

I've also got a blog and substack where I write sometimes. You need to write about this stuff to really absorb it imo.

https://thinkoutloudnews.substack.com/ https://medium.com/@evankozliner

I recommend you take a look at the topics in Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy and see if any subject matter interests you, and then use their bibliographic references for your readings:

https://plato.stanford.edu/

A few years ago I was on a tram reading one of these alphabet books on philosophy, made especially for the students like myself who didn't pay attention in class and needed to learn the main concepts and authors quickly before the test. A homeless person sat in front of me, and seeing me reading that book, suggested me a book by a French philosopher named Émile Bréhier [1]. The book in question was Histoire de la Philosophie, translated in English, and covers all the way from the Pre-Socratics to the modern philosophy at the time of the author (circa 1930 IIRC).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Br%C3%A9hier

Forgot the books. You're in era of Digital Learning and suggestion is to learn online as per your time from anywhere, anytime.

Here you will find online courses (which can be free) on the topic of philosophy.

https://www.mooc-course.com/subject/philosophy/

MOOC is platform to learn almost anything and you'll find many courses from prestigious university like,

- Harvard University - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Microsoft - Google - Amazon - London Business of School - University of California, Berkeley - Imperial College London

Learning from these university surely will help you to gain critical components of particular subjects and will also help to boost your resume.

My general recommendation would be to read a really high-quality book by a philosopher on an issue you care about. Here are some I would recommend:

* ‘superintelligence’ by Nick Bostrom

* ‘Down Girl: the logic of misogyny’ by Kate Manne

* ‘dialogues on ethical vegetarianism’ or ‘The Problem of Political Authority’ by Michael Huemer.

These are admittedly not going to cover the so-called big questions of philosophy, or survey the history of epistemology. But, like Michael Huemer, I think that most works of philosophy are not worth reading, so that you might as well start with something really good and work backwards (e.g. pick one of these books and then read any of the references that sound interesting).

Peter Singer is someone whose books you could pick up and read straight through as well.

I suggest not wasting your time reading surveys of general philosophy or taking some sort of 'intro' course in comparative philosophy. That's an academic route, and probably won't lead you anywhere. Unfortunately, it's likely the most common response you'll get here.

I'd start by asking yourself a simple question: who do you admire most? Look at what values and 'philosophy' they have. Learn more about what's behind them. Dig deeper. There is no particular path here; you're asking an age-old question that doesn't have a clear answer. Your values are the root of any 'philosophy' you might have. Get clear about your values, then look around.

For very concise introductions, check out the 1000-word essays on philosophical topics written by philosophy professors. https://1000wordphilosophy.com

For a deeper dive also written by philosophy professors, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is unrivaled. https://plato.stanford.edu

Richard Marshall's 3:16am interviews with philosophers are also great. https://www.3-16am.co.uk

I recommend trying to familiarize yourself with the main fields in philosophy first (aesthetics, ethics, postmodernism, whatever) and major contributors. I did this mostly through podcasts. Pick a few philosophers from you favorite field and try to read some of their smallest essays. There's usually an online copy floating around and then flesh out your understanding against secondary sources (reviews, response, wikis or podcasts discussing the piece, etc). Eventually you can work your way up to bigger game, but that's how I do it as an amateur with a passing interest

It's not necessarily a book, but I can recommend "The Philosopher's Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room", by the Great Courses on Audible.

I decided to get it with a remaining Audible credit I had, and found it to be informative and easy to understand for someone without any previous experience in philosophy. It also comes with a 200-page PDF guidebook that includes the bulk of the content and follows along with the lectures. I think it's easier to digest then just reading through a traditional book as well.

James Maffie's "Aztec Philosophy" is pretty great, as is "Filosofia Náhuatl" by Miguel Leon Portilla. (If you are interested in process metaphysics) Oh and the latter seems to be available online: http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/publicadigital/l...

Start by questioning every aspect of your life, your actions, your intentions, your thoughts - why are they the way they are? Books and mental models are mere tools that won't get you anywhere, they just add to the conditioning and the "burden" of knowledge. To find your own philosophy of life you have to start by unconditioning your mind so you can become sensitive to the reality as it is and not what the world around you has taught you.

I’ve been listening to the podcast ‘philosophy, the classics’ which gives a quick explanation of the beliefs and work of history’s most famous philosophers.

Good way to get a general understanding of how thought and argument progressed and followed on from one another

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/philosophy-the-classic...

I really enjoyed Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, which covers the following philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Croce, Russell, Santayana, James, and Dewey.

https://www.amazon.com/Story-Philosophy-Opinions-Greatest-Ph...

The first thing one should know about philosophy is that, just like with religion, there is not one but many philosophies. That’s on a general level. Besides that, there is philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, historical philosophy, perhaps even philosophy of philosophy. Much of studying philosophy, unlike in sciences and mathematics, consists of the study of its history (which is a fun subject in its own right).

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but if you want to learn about philosophy, it's better to learn about law.

IMO, law is essentially applied philosophy, whereas philosophy proper is unconstrained by reality. Which is why you run into situations described here:

https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

I recently started my journey with "Crash Course Philosophy" [0] by PBS. They give you a very accessible, high level overview on many topics with practical examples and thought experiments.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNYJQaZUDrI&list=PL8dPuuaLjX...

To get an overview it makes sense to read about the history of philosophy.

It's not practical to read all of platon, just to learn a few important ideas...

Also there is not one true philosophy. Nietzsche is very different from Kant for example.

One book I really want to recommend you:

Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams

It's more a psychology book, but it is deeply philosophical.

Freud tries to analyse how the brain works, using logic and observation of human behaviour.

I would skip the source texts because they are often hard to read. Unfortunately ground breaking ideas and a clear expository style rarely go hand in hand.

Philosophy Hour with Brian McGee was a great BBC show from the 70s where they interviewed top philosophers in an accessible way. Definitely check it out.

There is also the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, which is a top level resource but also very accessible.

Most replies (and maybe the author too) assume Philosophy=Western philosophy. If you are looking into developing a personal philosophy you need to know yourself better. Many ways of doing that, some kind of meditation needs to be involved. Words in books would have a limited scope withouth power of action. At that point is not better than poetry, just more difficult and boring.

Start from the beginning: learn everything you can about Pythagoras--he coined the term philosophy.

I learned recently that hr credited a woman for his philosophical doctrines, the Pythia of the oracle of Delphi. Nice.

The Pythagoreans conducted the first hypothesis driven scientific experiment: casting bronze chimes in numeric proportions (1:2, 2:3, etc), to test the pythagorean theory of harmony in the cosmos.

There are good introductory books. Like many others, Sophie's World is a good introduction.

In addition, (I'm biased since Spanish is my native language) it's really hard to go wrong with these (in no order of preference): - Manuel García Morente, Preliminary Lessons of Philosophy - Julián Marías, History of Philosophy - Manuel Gonzalo Casas, Introduction to Philosophy.

You could try searching "introductory philosophy course" and it might return some kinds of searches for this... Consider bias, succinct detailing and noteable figures. Some of the greatest philosphers out there had their works changed because of laws and different stories. As for myself. I read biographies and other different understandings of philospophy

As many mentioned, getting into philosophy tends to be best done as an active activity with others due to the value of discussion.

Your specific question, as also mentioned by others, seems to be more about psychology than philosophy. I think in order to really advise further, you need to answer for everyone in this thread what you mean by "philosophy" here :)

For a great introduction to ethics, consider The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachels - a classic introductory text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Moral_Philosop...

For one sentence summaries of various philosophers’ main points (and how they relate to each other), see Deniz Cem Önduygu’s The History of Philosophy: Summarized and Visualized — https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/

I recommend "History of philosophy without gaps". It starts from "scratch" and also ventures out in Islam, India and Africana. So it's not entirely Western. https://historyofphilosophy.net

For an approachable but not shallow introduction to philosophy via Plato, try Holbo and Waring's Reason and Persuasion, available as a free book and Coursera lecture series:

https://www.reasonandpersuasion.com/

Giving a short list of recommendations feels a little silly because it's so personal and contingent what will work for you at this moment.

However, I'll make one concrete recommendation: Philosophy as a Way of Life by Pierre Hadot. It's about the ancient Greeks and the Stoics and the particular ways they saw thinking as bound up with living. It's a serious book but beautifully written.

It is discussed more at length in this list of 5 "life-changing" philosophy books.

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/life-changing-philosophy-bo...

fivebooks.com is a great site where they ask people to recommend five books on their area of expertise and explain why they picked each one. They have a philosophy category and it's organized by topic, including "How to Live".

https://fivebooks.com/category/philosophy/

A treasure trove of lectures on classical philosophy I discovered recently: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncT3FVrZqrLG...

I enjoyed Reason and Responsibility - https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Responsibility-Readings-Proble...

For introductions on broad subjects I always go to textbooks, the kind used in Universities in introductory courses.

On philosophy a good one used in many universities is "The Great Conversation" by Normam Melchert.

Bonus tip: try to find it used online. It will be a lot cheaper.

This was a great intro to political philosophy: “Reconstructing the Classics” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1729979

My journey in philosophy began by reading Plato’s Euthyphro.

It’s a great place to start.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html

For a paperback story about the history of western philosophy wrapped up in "story form"..check out "Sophie's World" by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder. Its not a must but it is fun.

An interesting introduction may be through studying the history of the development of Philosophy. I think Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy is an interesting book to get started with it.

Charles Sanders Pierce and Søren Kierkegaard are both well worth reading.

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

--Albert Einstein

Since you seem to be a complete beginner on the philosophy subject, I’d suggest a beginner approach instead of an academic one. There is a podcast called Philosophy This! Try listening to it.

Stanford encyclopedia is a good reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html

I had the same question a few weeks ago so I went on r/philosophy. They recommend starting with Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Blackburn

In my point of view I follow talking and addressing and doing work with different peoples to know different mentalities to develop my knowledge

Are there any artists that are considered a must for someone new to the field of art? What path did you follow to develop a personal (individual) artistic style?

Learning philosophy or philosophy history is one thing (I'd guess it is more about discussing texts with others than acquiring encyclopedic "knowledge").

To develop your own "philosophy", you need to get rid of other philosophies. Then maybe you will become another philosopher or not. Check my answer on how to think for yourself for the details.

I recommend "Sophie's World". It's a philosophy textbook disguised as a young adult book. I read it when I was 29.

There is a book. Sophie's world. Very pleasant into to all the philosophers over the course of history. Good, easy read.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I recommend Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder for a whirlwind tour of philosophy. It's a great read!

Not a book, but you may like scaruffi.com philosophy section. It has a list of all the philosophers

"A brief history of thought" by Luck Ferry is a great book to get started.

Here's a quick, fun, path, that goes all over the place, but covers lots of areas, while being accessible to a tech guy:

1) Plato's dialogues. They are easy to find, including online, and easy to read.

A.N Whitehead once commented on Plato’s thought: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them”.

And that's not some liberal arts philosopher that doesn't understand science. That's the genius writer and mathematician A.N Whitehead that worked with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica.

2) Aristotle, The Metaphysics

3) Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

4) David Hume's: A Treatise of Human Nature and/or An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

5) Nietchze, The gay science (meaning "the joyful science")

6) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

7) Existentialism Is a Humanism, Sartre

8) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper

9) Against Method, Paul Feyerabend

1. Most of what you want to know has been covered here and it's pretty good advice.

2. That said, it's not been codified or put into order, so I'll do a tiny list of key/starting points.

3. Remember, every professional philosopher or anyone who as studied the subject at one stage beyond a Reader's Digest summary has his/her pet subject! They will push you in that direction. This is not good for a beginner (but maybe so later).

4. Philosophy has and goes through fashions, avoid obvious ones until you're experienced (stick with traditional stuff to begin with).

5. Try not to study philosophy by yourself. As some others have said, you can skew off course, this may make you set in your ways (which many be difficult if you ever need to go 'mainstream' later).

6. Philosophy has a long and wonderful lineage. Don't short-circuit the old stuff in the hope of bypassing it for newer ideas. The reasons are: (a) that the best books on certain subjects are the oldest ones, (b) many later books will assume you've read and are familiar with the propositions and arguments in these older books (they're longstanding classics full of good stuff that's stood the test of time). In essence, many of these ancient books are prerequisites.

7. Philosophy has many threads, however there are some basic ones that are fundamental. You need to understand these. For example:

(Parts of the list below I've lifted straight from Wiki to save time. However, you don't need all of this stuff listed on this site to begin with (however, I've listed the most essential topics below) https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Philosophy/The...:

7a. Epistemology - The theory of knowledge. You have to lean the 'alphabet' of philosophy before you can do much.

7b. Metaphysics - Wiki defines it as meaning 'after physics'. I prefer the one I was taught which is 'above and beyond physics'. It deals with subjects that cannot be solved rationally by science such as first principles, of being (ontology), what reality is, and such. Even questions such as 'does God exist?'

7c. Logic (formal logic) is essential. This can be a dry and sometimes boring subject but it's absolutely essential if you want to argue, or know the subject of a discussion from its predicate, and best (and most enjoyable) place start is Book 1 of Plato's Republic. No only will you get the structure of formal argument, but this wonderful dialogue between the sophist Thrasymachus and the philosopher Socrates presents one of the most important issues/questions in the world which is What is Justice? Watching Socrates demolish Thrasymachus's 'Every man for himself' argument by formally demolishing every line of it is great stuff (whenever I read it, it sends shivers of excitement down my spine). Remember, this book is about 2.300 years old so it must have something going for it if it's still in philosophy courses! [BTW, probably the best and most well known translation is Benjamin Jowett's version first published in 1881 (there are many copies of it on the net).]

That's only the beginning. In logic, you'll soon progress to formal nomenclature and truth tables and words such as 'vel' and 'existential quantifier' will become familiar to you. Logic is essential as it provide the means to stop you getting sidetracked by junk arguments and sophistry.

7d. Ethics is the study of morality, ethical behaviour, morals, etc., (it's sometimes called moral philosophy). It's the study of right and wrong in human endeavours. In today's world where traditional ethics has gone off the rails, the study of ethics is absolutely essential. The key person to study here is the English philosopher G. E. Moore, and the definitive text is Moore's Principia ethica.

7e. Philosophy of Language. an ancient branch of philosophy which gained prominence in the last century under Wittgenstein. Basically it's concerned with how our languages affect our thought. Classic works include Plato's Cratylus, Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Another book in this class is A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic.

7f. Philosophy of Politics/Government : Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and nations, particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what obligations citizens have towards their government, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Two Treatises, J.S. Mill's On Liberty and Utilitarianism and Rousseau's Social Contract. Sometimes students skip this one but it's essential to know how our governance came about and the meaning of the Social Contract that exists between the Citizenry and Government.

There's much more, but the ones I've listed above are the basic/fundamental essentials.

As mentioned, don't train yourself. Instead, seek out an old fashioned philosophy school that hasn't been corrupted with too many new ideas. As I said, you need to read works such as those directly above—and I mention them again such as Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Two Treatises, and J.S. Mill's On Liberty and Utilitarianism and Rousseau's Social Contract (these have been in the philosophy corpus for aeons, as they're very substantial works whose propositions are well known and well argued).

(Others, in the rush, have I missed anything major here?)

Philosophy has been my main interest for many years now. I believe that I have one of the best active philosophy blogs on the web. Please take a look: https://hegelsbagels.net/

Context for my comment: I am not an academic, my focus here is to share books that helped form my personal philosophy.

I am certainly not an expert on philosophy, but I found Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" (especially with the post-script added in 1984) and Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" to be instrumental to becoming the person I am.

I also gained a lot from Plato’s republic (particularly book 7[0][1] - i.e.: the allegory of the cave - and book 8/onward[2][3] - a discussion of government that feels like it could be had today) and Huxley’s "Brave New World"[4] (if you're okay with spoilers and just want a quick glimpse at a good part of the book, I highly recommend reading chapter 16[5] -- it has some great dialog!).

The way thinkers of the past could frame problems of their day in terms that still apply today has been eye-opening to me. It makes today's problems feel less insurmountable. They are instead challenges we as a collective humanity will overcome and (as Frankl would say) give us an opportunity to transform suffering into human achievement[6].

PS: The myth of Sisyphus really wasn't one of my favorites until I got to the middle (the passage on "living without appeal"), it's a slow build that's worth it in my opinion.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)#Book_VII

[1]: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm#link2...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)#Book_VIII

[3]: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm#link2...

[4]: https://www.huxley.net/bnw/one.html

[5]: https://www.huxley.net/bnw/sixteen.html

[6]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6807951-i-speak-of-a-tragic...

Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl, The Ethics Toolkit, 2007.

Can highly recommend the podcast Philosophize this!

Just my 2c below.

I went down a similar path over the last few years. Here is what didn't work well for me:

- Reading books on the history of philosophy summarizing a wide range of ideas from famous philosophers. Examples would be Bertrand Russell's and Anthony Kenny's books. The problem I found is that there's just too much stuff in there that is not of interest to me personally.

- Reading books by author. For example, just reading through Plato's dialogues never worked for me, again because the topics are vast and varied, and many are not of interest to me personally.

What worked for me are diving into specific topics that interested me deeply. In my case: political philosophy, the question of the existence of "God", and topics pertaining to morality and ethics. (There also happens to be a nice overlap across these topics making it easier for me.)

Starting out is the hardest part. I find that the first books you pick seem to set the stage for one's worldview to a large extent. That's just a correlation from personal experience, not necessarily causation. My basic approach to not blindsiding myself to specific views has been to work my way up through history to understand how the ideas and arguments pertaining to a topic evolved over time. I found that during this phase I have to actively suppress my natural impulse to immediately criticize arguments I come across; I rather assume that I missed something. The next phase for me is to actually dig deeper into some of those criticisms that came up, and see if they hold up.

Next, pick your translations very carefully. Research the best translations for each book before purchasing. /r/askphilosophy and /r/philosophy are great resources for this and the deep-dive phase of your research.

A final piece of advice: read slowly. Comprehension is king when it comes to philosophy. I was reading, re-reading, and parsing through 2-3 pages per hour when I started out. This is mostly because many terms that you wouldn't think are technical turn out to be (for example, Aristotle's use of the term "motion" refers to something much more expansive than what we think of motion as today). However, on the bright side, that speed tends to go up (slightly) over time as you become familiar with the area.

So to summarize: my recommendation to you for developing a personal philosophy is to ask questions first, and then seek out answers that you judge on their merit, regardless of who wrote them.

TLDR: Ask questions first, read widely second, and think for yourself.

Bertrand Russel's "A History of Western Philosophy" is both a comprehensive, insightful introduction into the topic as well as incredibly funny and entertaining. It's also fairly opinionated but openly so, which is refreshing. He was one of the founders of Analytical Philosophy and an old school classical liberal/libertarian socialist. Naturally, the chapter on Hegel is beyond hilarious.

That's an excellent question. My road to philosophy was a long one. It took me a while to realize that the kinds of questions I was asking or preoccupied with—often having to do with basic presuppositions and what reality must be like for the facts as we know or accept them to obtain, questions of identity, etc—were ultimately philosophical in nature.

I would first distinguish between history of philosophy from philosophy itself. Sometimes these two things are confused, much like people will sometimes confuse being a philosophy professor with being a philosopher (these two can coincide, naturally, but the former does not necessarily entail the latter). Some history is edifying, of course, because philosophical arguments and discussion occur in time, and indeed, history will incidentally enter the picture on its own as a way of presenting the dialectical refinement of some position (for example, the typical way Aristotle's theory of act and potency is presented is by beginning with Parmenides, followed by a somewhat idealized version of Heraclitus and then by showing how Aristotle's theory resolves the resulting aporia).

In retrospect, I would recommend something in the Aristotelian vein. It not only serves as a strong and sound foundation, as well as a good base from which to examine other positions, but it will save you a lot of grief later (even here, it took me a long time to overcome ingrained biases and habits of mind that were insinuated by the modern education system). I would highly recommend some of Edward Feser's books. He's well known for writing in a lucid style that dispenses with some of the the needless jargon that some philosophers are known for. On the introductory side, "Aquinas" [0] is probably a good starting point. A follow up, or if you can handle something a bit more substantive to begin with, would be his "Scholastic Metaphysics" [1]. I emphasize metaphysics first because the most basic philosophical questions are metaphysical; everything else benefits greatly from a clear understanding of metaphysical issues. Avoid any philosophical approach that begins with methodological doubt. It will destroy your capacity to know or to reason and may actually succeed in driving you mad (no joke). Groarke [5] wonderfully argues how such doubt is ultimately unresolvable through reason because it isn't a rational doubt—something that arises when we are met with, say, conflicting evidence—but a _willed_ doubt.

I'll leave it at that, partly because I would have to take some time to think about what additional recommendations I should make so that they would be most helpful to you, and partly because I think the recommendations I've made above will occupy you for some time and lead you in a direction of inquiry all on their own.

(Some honorable mentions: David Oderberg's "Real Essentialism" is a nice complement to [1]. Etienne Gilson's "Being and Some philosophers" [2] is also a nice trek through metaphysics. His "Methodical Realism" [3] is also a nice quick read in which he argues against idealism, while "The Unity of Philosophical Experience" [4] is a historical tour of how various major philosophers in history have failed.)

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6963088-aquinas

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19160503-scholastic-meta...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2479290.Being_and_Some_P...

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12409190-methodical-real...

[4] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/232542.The_Unity_of_Phil...

[5] https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/an-aristotelian-account-of-inductio...

Find something better to do.

tlp

TLP

I see two slightly distinct questions here, and many people seem to be answering a third, altogether different one.

1) Digging deeper into mental models. There seems to be this fashion these days of people learning "mental models" to improve their thinking. This is about as useful as reading about various basketball techniques to improve your playing of basketball - marginally useful. The best way to improve your thinking is by practicing thinking in diverse, intentional, and intense ways. Learn mathematics and solve a lot of math exercises - you'd be surprised how few people can put a proof together. Many people I know it dramatically improved the rigor of their thinking outside of math as well. Learn to play the drums. It's an entirely different way of thinking. Get a little bit better at chess/go something similar - calculation (very different from math actually!). Read deeply in history to start seeing the major approaches in one area (Annales school for instance, or Whig history and criticisms) and why popular history books are sometimes (rightly so!) criticized by historians. Learn a new language. Get good at a sport / shooting the hoop / tennis / weightlifting. Start painting/drawing so you learn how to see - you learn to think with your eye. Write every day. So #$!$ memorizing mental models and start actually using your brain.

2) You also allude to a personal philosophy, bigger questions of life etc. To me, I found that works of literature, mythology, cinema, traveling to different countries for long periods and making friends very different from my background are what helped me get perspective on bigger questions. We are a narrative-based species (see for instance Sapiens, a book by Yuval Noah Harari); and we tell ourselves a story of our life. A lot of depressed people are people who've lost their story, and are no longer able to make sense of their lives (a second worse category are people living a nightmare narrative they find themselves unable to escape). In great literature, in great friendships, you'll find something nourishing for your inner life, and it'll ring true for you. To me this was how I was able to have awareness around my values, adjust if necessary, and what I think are important to do / not do in life. Our intellect is so often a slave to our heart and prejudices. The key is to know which ones you've inherited from your family, society, your station in life, versus which ones you've consciously chosen and held onto. You first have to identify all your prejudices, which is only possible by understanding society and history. Otherwise you're like a fish in water.

And the third is the question people answered. I found that philosophy as commonly understood today, and as many replies exemplify below, cover a bewildering amount of topics, and many of it might not help you all that much to form a personal philosophy and with the bigger questions, which are very much questions of the spirit and the heart in many ways. Kant, for instance, is a sophisticated response to Leibniz's monads / rationalism, and Hume's empiricism; and doesn't make sense to read prior to understanding the rationalist/empiricist debate. Philosophy devoid of context is hard to understand. Malthus makes sense in the context of early industrious revolution, the political debates of the British at that time, and British population dynamics in 1750. Marx is responding to the early massive shift in labor happening in the first major industrialization in 1830s in Britain etc. It turns out having a good grasp of British history is fundamental to understanding much of English-language philosophy.. etc. I could go on but I think you get the idea.

There's a series of comic books called Action Philosophers that I very much enjoyed. Each issue is about a different philosopher (Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Kant etc.) and for light reading it's really nice for getting a baseline introduction to different ideas.

Note that it is in no way comprehensive. I majored in philosophy in college and had already read the primary texts for all of the philosophers featured in the comics before I discovered this series. That being said, I found the interpretations to be reasonably faithful and that's why I've recommended the series to friends that are curious and want to browse without tackling large, dense tomes.

Just take classes part time at your nearest CC/Uni.

To answer your second question first, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand started me down this path. The sheer brazenness of the title made me pick it up: what I read over the next few days broke me. Or the old me.

I've long left Rand behind, but she's a good start for a bare-knuckle punch to the teeth regarding altruism, egalitarianism and the beliefs of the political Left.

Later I picked up the usual suspects: the Greeks, the Stoics, the modern philosophers. Read the classics of the East and of India, read more modern mystics, read the pragmatists, the existentialists and the Communists. Read the economists (Adam Smith et al.) Read Popper, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Heidegger, Rawls, Kripke, Kuhn, Habermas, etc.

I guess if I were to recommend a starting point, I'd start with Book One of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. Be sure to heed the title of the book--it's a discussion of human nature, not of the world as-is, as-was or as-will-be. And the first book explores how we understand the world (i.e. ideas) and the limits of our understanding. Note it's a little daunting due to the older language (e.g. connexion vs connection, lots of 'tis, 'tho', 'twill, lots of apostrophe-d) and some of his arguments are initially confusing (skip and come back later,) but it will give you a firm grounding on which to consider later philosophy (and much else besides.)

After that, it won't matter too much which books you start with. If you're young, I'd recommend sticking to fiction for a while, pick up some of the old stuff (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante (Inferno,) Rabelais, Cervantes, etc.) Add some new stuff, too (Camus, Tagore, Yoshikawa, Flannery O'Connor, Colson Whitehead, Colum McCann, too many to name.) Once you start hitting thirty or so is when you might pick up some philosophy. The benefit of reading the old stuff first (e.g. Aristotle's Ethics, Plato's Symposium) is that later writers reference them. Even today, were you to read about, for example, the writing craft, teachers still quote Aristotle's Poetics (e.g. all stories have a beginning, middle and end.)

As for personal philosophy, experience will shape you more, especially if/when you have kids, pay higher taxes, buy a house, suffer a sudden medical condition. But understanding the why of it--that's where the philosophers come in handy. Putting your human self--the same human self that is shared by humans from 5,000 years ago--in the context of humanity, of the human community.

(P.S. As a bonus, if you're really itching for philosophy, try out Machiavelli's The Prince as translated by Tim Parks, or for just a little philosophy to start, Rashomon and 17 Other Stories by Akutagawa, esp. "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove". Another little bit of philosophy can be found in The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.)

* edit--typos.

To have a good basic overview of epistemological problems read: Descartes Mediation, Spinoza's On the Improvement of The Understanding and Ethics, Leibniz's Monadology, Kant's three critiques, Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic, Heidegger's Being and Time.

I would stay away from analytic philosophy, if you are not an US based academic.

For starters: 1) Forget the Greeks. Anyone tells you to start from the Greeks they are snobs. Showing off and/or having a laugh at your expense. 2) Think about _your_ own "bigger life questions", what are they, what interests you. Give it time. Read something like Russell's History of western philosophy or list through a Philosophical dictionary. See who feels closer, more relevant to _you_. Maybe try this thing https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/ 3) Don't concentrate too much on the names. Same authors have books or parts on different subjects. Some of them will be to your liking some not. 4) Don't get into large complex works right away. For example Locke's essays on human understanding or Kant's Critique of Pure Reason would be a major pain in the butt to read as first philosophy book and you'd have to reread them later not to mention that you'll have to reread them anyway and not just once... Treatises on Government and/or Kant's Pragmatic Anthropology would give better chances to get hooked on. So you don't just autopilot read through the big ones without properly understanding a thing.

edit: 5) Then the Greeks ;)