• anonymous66
    626
    I'm still working on Anger and Forgiveness by Martha Nussbaum.
    And I just started How the Laws of Physics Lie by Nancy Cartwright.
  • Shawn
    12.6k
    P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein's Place In Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy.

    This book is intense.
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    This book is intense.Posty McPostface

    In what way?
  • Shawn
    12.6k



    IDK, just feel that I have to be at a high level of mental exertion to understand what I'm reading most of the time, otherwise my eyes glaze over and I just stare and 'read' the book.

    It is about analytic philosophy and Wittgenstein's place in it after all.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Scott Wilson - The Order of Joy: Beyond the Cultural Politics of Enjoyment
    Daniela Voss - Conditions of Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas
  • SnowyChainsaw
    96
    I just read Imagining the Tenth Dimension, by Rob Bryanton. A curious little tome that helps one visualize ten dimensions and contextualizes them into the omniverse.

    At first, i thought talk of higher dimensions was metaphysical nonsense but after reading this (and watching the odd YouTube video about geometry) I realize that, at the very least, imagining the omniverse in ten dimensions could be a useful tool in defining our universe's position in the cosmos.
    Have a look see and message me your thoughts:

    Imagining 10 dimensions: the movie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg85IH3vghA
    Perfect Shapes In Higher Dimensions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4TqVAbfz4
  • Mitchell
    133
    Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Reading "Proof Four" and am still not convinced.
  • Maw
    2.7k
    Some books I've read in the last few months:

    Melancholy by Laszlo F. Foldenyi (reread)
    Paradise Lost by Milton
    SPQR by Mary Beard
    Ancient Greece by Thomas Martin
    The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar
    Selected Works by Cicero
    The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge
    The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce
    The Once and Future Liberalism by Mark Ilia

    I also finally finished the full essays of Montaigne, having started in 2013.
  • TimeLine
    2.7k
    How good is Montaigne' writings on superstition?

    Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, by Raimond Gaita.
  • Maw
    2.7k


    Quite excellent! Despite being a devout Christian, he was nevertheless highly skeptical of many forms of superstition, best demonstrated in his most famous essay, An Apology For Raymond Sebond (although given his many digressions however, it's discussed elsewhere as well).
  • TimeLine
    2.7k
    Quite excellent! Despite being a devout Christian, he was nevertheless highly skeptical of many forms of superstition, best demonstrated in his most famous essay, An Apology For Raymond Sebond (although given his many digressions however, it's discussed elsewhere as well).Maw

    Indeed, which is why he clearly showed that any 'difference' between genders is largely a product of custom and education which, I think, had an influence on Rousseau. He also has that forceful talent with a hint of humour (although I have certainly not read everything of his, just reminiscing what I did many years back now) that gives me that same joyful feeling that Voltaire does. I will try and remember the title of the essay, I am at work now but it is somewhere at home.
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    full essays of MontaigneMaw
    Some of them are good, but some of them are so boring :-d ... I often get lost in his ruminations. No wonder it took you so long to plough through everything.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Well frikkin done (on the Montaigne).
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    How good is Montaigne' writings on superstition?TimeLine
    Most of it is good - my favorite was "On prognostications". It was short, to the point, and impartial. It would actually make a good topic for a thread.
  • anonymous66
    626
    Reading Putnam edited by Maria Baghramian
  • ConfusedFox
    6
    Awakening Intelligence by Krisnamutri.

    Finding it a bit heavy to be honest, I'm sticking with it though as I feel there's some great lessons in there.
  • Coldlight
    57
    I hope it's okay to ask here.

    I mostly read books on psychology. Currently going through work of Sigmund Freud.

    Also - Stephen Grosz - The Examined Life

    I'm not well read in philosophy, so was wondering if anyone could recommend me anything on 'the philosophy of mind', and if possible at least partially related to psychology. I know there are Encyclopedias that capture the main ideas of philosophy of mind, but I was looking for something more specific, and maybe a bit more practical?
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k
    Mysticism - Evelyn Underhill
    The Divine Invasion - Philip K. Dick
  • anonymous66
    626
    I'm no expert on the mind by any means, and I enjoyed reading David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind and John Searle (I don't remember which book I have.. but this looks good. I just ordered it for myself).
  • Maw
    2.7k
    Thank you kindly ;)
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Merry Christmas all! Here's the 2017 reading list (*** indicate favourites):

    Political Theory

    Hannah Arendt - Between Past and Future: Eight Excercises In Political Thought***
    Wendy Brown - States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity
    Wendy Brown - Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics
    Wendy Brown - Walled States, Waning Sovereignty
    Wendy Brown - Politics out of History
    Wendy Brown - Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution
    Alessandro Ferrara - The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgement
    Raymond Geuss - Philosophy and Real Politics (Reread)
    Raymond Geuss - Politics and the Imagination (Reread)***
    Raymond Geuss - Outside Ethics
    Raymond Geuss - Public Goods, Private Goods
    Bonnie Honig - Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy
    Bonnie Honig - Public Things: Democracy In Disrepair
    Bonnie Honig - Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (reread)
    Paul Patton - Deleuze and the Political
    Linda Zerilli - A Democratic Theory of Judgement
    Linda Zerilli - Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom***

    Sociology/Political Science

    Ivan Ascher - Portfolio Society: On the Capitalist Mode of Prediction
    Melinda Cooper - Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era***
    Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism***
    Christopher DeWolf - Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong
    Nikolas Rose - The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century
    The Invisible Committee - The Coming Insurrection
    The Invisible Committee - To Our Friends***
    Loic Wacquant - Punishing the Poor: the Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity

    Life/Evolution

    Lila Gatlin - Information Theory and the Living System
    Peter Hoffman - Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos
    Evelyn Fox Keller - Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines
    Evelyn Fox Keller - The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Culture
    Nick Lane - The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
    Eva Jablonka & Marion Lamb - Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life***
    Dorion Sagan & Eric Schneider - Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life

    Sound/Analogy

    Edward Campbell - Music After Deleuze
    Aden Evens - Sound Ideas: Music, Machines, and Experience***
    Daniel Heller-Roazen - The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World
    Noah Roderick - The Being of Analogy
    Kaja Silverman - Flesh of my Flesh
    Eleni Ikoniadou - The Rhythmic Event: Art, Media, and the Sonic

    'Theory'

    Giorgio Agamben - The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics
    Giorgio Agamben - The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days
    Maurice Blanchot - The Step Not Beyond
    Judith Butler - Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death
    Colby Dickinson - Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation
    Benjamin Noys - The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory
    Scott Wilson - The Order of Joy: Beyond the Cultural Politics of Enjoyment
    Catherine Malabou - Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality***
    Catherine Malabou - Changing Difference: The Question of the Feminine in Philosophyi]
    Catherine Mills - The Philosophy of Agamben

    Misc.

    Hannah Arendt - The Life of the Mind
    George Williams and Daniel Reynolds - A Charter of Rights For Australia
    Peter Brain and Ian Manning - Credit Code Red: How Financial Deregulation and World Instability are Exposing Australia to Economic Catastrophe
    Luciano Floridi - Information: A Very Short Introduction

    --

    Really happy with this year's reading. Been meaning to revisit both politics and sciences this year, and I think I achieved that. Also super happy with my male/female ratio - this is the possibly the first year I've read as many female authors as I have male ones, which I've been trying to do without success for a few years now. Next year I need to branch out along ethic lines, though I'm not as confident I'll achieve that. Aesthetics, though, is the topic I really want to knock over next year. Have a great year to come everyone!

    -

    Also, started today:

    Hermann Weyl - Symmetry
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    D'Arcy Thompson - On Growth and Form
    Adolf Portmann - Animal Forms and Patterns: A Study of the Appearance of Animals
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k
    -Daniel C. Matt - The Essential Kabbalah
    -The most recent edit of my brother's forthcoming sci-fi novel
  • _db
    3.6k
    Dune by Frank Herbert
  • anonymous66
    626
    Gabriel Marcel by Seymour Cain
    The Existential Drama of Gabriel Marcel edited by Francis Lescoe
    Awakenings by Gabriel Marcel
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Have you read Berdyaev yet? I really think you'd find him interesting.
  • anonymous66
    626

    He's on my short list, I promise! Right now I'm working on a project involving Gabriel Marcel.
    (I'm listening to this today)
  • Maw
    2.7k
    The Heights of Despair by Cioran (rereading)
    The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai

    Oh I also read Moby-Dick by Melville last year, and I thought that worth mentioning. Absolutely breathtaking.
  • _db
    3.6k
    Ethical Intuitionism by Michael Huemer. Now this is some actually-good analytic philosophy.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Giorgio Agamben - Taste
    Giorgio Agamben - What Is Philosophy?
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