How do you guys rate philosophy texts?

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How do you guys rate philosophy texts?

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1NicholasByronHall
Editado: Dic 11, 2009, 10:53 pm

I'm not sure how to edit titles. I'd just like to apologize for using the word "guys" to refer to men and women. Sorry about that.

When I read literature, I rate the book on on what thing. Did I enjoy it. The literary experts might criticize me for not judging quality of writing. But honestly, I've never enjoyed a book where I'd say the writing is terrible. I have disliked books where the writing is good.

Philosophy gives me more trouble. A lot of writers aren't clear or particularly good at writing. Then there are the biases. I'm going to like Dennett better than Descartes or Rousseau better than Hobbes. However, my preferences don't always seem to reflect the quality of a particular text.

How do you rate philosophy texts? I often find myself rating them all low because of the poor quality of writing and/or my own biases. I'm not sure I'm doing justice to the works.

2deslni01
Nov 29, 2009, 7:27 pm

Well, I wonder if your dislike of a particular philosopher's writing is actually the translator at fault. Are you reading the original language, or typically translations? I've heard many complaints in both the philosophy field and (particularly) the historical field about the writing. But nearly every single one of those instances the reviewer is commenting on a translated piece of work.

But personally, I don't rate philosophy texts. I'm not an expert in the field (nor am I close to being one) and I feel I would not be giving a proper review unless I was significantly more educated on the topic. So when reading a particular philosophical piece, I merely comment on how it relates to me and what lessons I learn from it. The writing is important to me, however, and when possible I try to read the original language. Of course, that severely limits my reading of original works ;)

3Mr.Durick
Nov 29, 2009, 8:28 pm

Some philosophy is not written by dead white males thence translated.

I read a book by Schact on Nietzsche that seemed deliberately to be obscure. Things like the 'former' or the 'latter' where reckoning their antecedents would require major analysis of long winded exegesis that just wasn't worthwhile made me recommend against the work even for the avid.

If a particular inscrutable work is the only source on a subject important to the reader, he may have to read through it, but he doesn't have to respect it.

Robert

4semckibbin
Nov 30, 2009, 1:18 am

Possible ways to rate philosophy books and essays:

Originality
Knockdown Argumentativeness
Ability to hold its time in thought
World-historical value
Therapeutic value
Debunking value
Entertainment value
Perspicacity

The list is endless, is it not?

5askar
Dic 2, 2009, 11:03 am

A friend once joked that the "Philosophy" section of book-stores in the USA were missing Plato but had plenty to read about yoga! So just be aware that all kinds of stuff may sometimes be described as "Philosophy". It is a term often favoured by proponents of various religions, pseudo-sciences, mere opinion or any kind of nonsense.

You only need to remember that philosophy is the ultimate non-fiction, that philosophy and science derive from the very same tradition, that philosophy engendered the sciences and that each scientific field is but a sub-field of philosophy. "Hydrodynamics", for example, is a part of philosophy ... though a very narrowly specialised aspect of it.

Philosophy is a meta-field of research that emerges from all non-frivolous paths of exploration. It is not restricted to one "field" of research, like biology, physics, cosmology or neurology and can encompass them all. Philosophy is self-referential, epistemological and includes ethics (and its derivatives like politics).

You rate a philosophy text, at least at first, in a somewhat similar way that you may rate a science text. If what you are reading improves your understanding (at least as far as humans have collectively managed to understand up to now), then it's a good text. If a text offers greater understanding than all previous texts on a subject, it's a great text. If suddenly the whole world makes perfect sense ... then it's a fantastic text! :)

6semckibbin
Dic 2, 2009, 12:16 pm

...philosophy engendered the sciences and that each scientific field is but a sub-field of philosophy.

That view seems very quaint. I wonder if the physicists and neurobiologists see it that way.

7polutropon
Dic 2, 2009, 1:09 pm

>6 semckibbin:, Agreed. Furthermore, the idea that philosophy subsumes science seems contradictory to the later claim that "philosophy is a meta-field that emerges from all non-frivolous paths of exploration." This claim suggests (to me anyway) that particular paths to knowledge are the original inspiration for philosophy, and not the other way around. I think the latter statement is far closer to getting right the relationship between philosophy and the sciences, etc., than is the one you quoted.

8askar
Editado: Dic 4, 2009, 11:47 am

In reply to semckibbin:
Well, if a physicist knows that physics used to be referred to as "Natural Philosophy", he should have little problem with it. That "philosophy engendered the sciences... " is not really a matter of "... seeing it that way" as it is ... simply so. There exists no controversy about it. And it's easy to check it out (by reading any history of philosophy, the sciences or human thought).

What your "physicists and neurobiologists" may indeed object to, is the statement "... that each scientific field is but a sub-field of philosophy". But this is resolvable by a clearer understanding of what philosophy means. And if, instead of "philosophy", one prefers a term like: "all-the-sciences-self-referentially-epistemologically-and-ethically-taken-together", that's ok. And if all this ... "seems very quaint" ... that's also fine with me.

In reply to polutropon:
I'm somewhat confused by what you wrote. Whether "particular paths to knowledge are the original inspiration for philosophy ..." or the other way around seems rather important to you. To me, whether something like "reason" was the "inspiration" for philosophy or philosophy the inspiration for something like "logic" or the whole thing the other way around ... seems meaningless (at least to me). You also seem to object to my use of the term emerges in reference to "the field of philosophy"'s relation to "all non-frivolous paths of exploration". Again whether "philosophy is a meta-field that emerges from all non-frivolous paths of exploration", "whether all non-frivolous paths of exploration emerge from a meta-field called "philosophy" or whether they are one and the same ... seems besides the point I was trying (unsuccessfully it seems) to make.

We know that historically, "the particular paths to knowledge" that characterised philosophy were those of "nous", reason, logic, observation, analysis etc ... as contrasted to the pre-rational (magical/religious) " paths to knowledge" in existence everywhere before the emergence of philosophy (and still today in many places). We also know that this is the path of the sciences. Now, I'm not sure that the essential aspect of this is whether reason was the inspiration for philosophy or philosophy the inspiration for reason.

As far as I can tell discovering truth is the inspiration for both.

9polutropon
Editado: Dic 4, 2009, 1:27 pm

Well, now we're just arguing about semantics. To say that physics is a subfield of philosophy may be true from certain historical and etymological perspectives. But it is misleading, and probably just plain false, if one uses the word "philosophy" in anything like the way that word is employed today.

I think you are correct that "Philosophy is a meta-field of research that emerges from all non-frivolous paths of exploration." I think you are wrong in claiming "that philosophy engendered the sciences and that each scientific field is but a sub-field of philosophy." At the very least, those two statements mean demonstrably different things; at worst they contradict one another. One asserts a priori that philosophy emerges from science; the other appeals to history to support the proposition that science emerges from philosophy. You may be right (and I think you are) that it's not very important which one is true; but it is certainly impossible for both to be true.

Furthermore, it seems to me that the only way to determine which proposition is true is to ask oneself to classify the stuff Thales was doing as either "philosophy" or as "science." Tradition calls it philosophy, but by any modern standard his concerns would probably be considered scientific in nature. Of course, scientists don't make a big fuss about it, because Thales was wrong about so much; from a scientist's perspective the philosophers can have Thales. It wasn't until the later pre-Socratics, like Parmenides, that anybody was writing anything that qualifies as "philosophy," at least as that word is employed today. Anyway, the rub is that if you call what Thales did "philosophy," then sure, science emerged from philosophy. If Thales was doing "science," then philosophy emerged from science. That should simplify matters.

10picklesan
Editado: Dic 8, 2009, 1:27 am

>5 askar:

"You only need to remember that philosophy is the ultimate non-fiction, that philosophy and science derive from the very same tradition..."

I can't think of a greater discredit to the beauty and greatness of philosophy. To say that philosophy is the "ulitmate non-fiction" is to discredit some of the most creative, imaginative, and sublime works of genius that humanity has produced. One thinks of (to name only a few); Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Kierkegaard's Seducer's Diary, Augustine's The Confessions of St. Augustine, Voltaire's The Optimist, Plato's The Republic...

Not too mention all of the great works of literature that have been inspired and are infused with philosophical thought (i.e., Dostoyevsky, Dante, Edmond Spenser, Walker Percy, Kafka, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn. etc...). I have heard Dostoyevsky for example been refered to as the greatest existential thinker and writer. After reading works of his like, The Brother's Karamazov, The Possessed, Crime and Punishment, The House of the Dead, and The Idiot, it's not hard to see how many have come to that conclusion.

Your comment and ideas about philosophy sound very much like a 19th century "Logical Positivist's" perspective on philosophy.

I think it's safe to say that philosophy has happily moved on from logical positivism.

11jahn
Dic 8, 2009, 3:14 am

Nietzsche proclaimed the necessity of philosophizing with a hammer, and then he lamented Schopenhauer being rude to Kant, thus denigrating philosophy in general – how silly.

A book is worthless unopened: you might see them chase away vampires with a bible in Hollywood movies, and then believe you can chase away “unkultur” with a full set of Goethe, but this is nonsense, the sole relevance of books lies in what they can help us, as isolated individuals when reading, become.

12polutropon
Editado: Dic 8, 2009, 8:54 am

>10 picklesan:, I think that's an unfair criticism. It seems to me that there is a fine distinction between the proposition, "Philosophy is the ultimate non-fiction," and the proposition, "Each and every work of philosophy is a work of non-fiction." The only one of those that askar put forward was the former, but you seem to be criticizing the latter.

13semckibbin
Dic 8, 2009, 9:58 am

And if, instead of "philosophy", one prefers a term like: "all-the-sciences-self-referentially-epistemologically-and-ethically-taken-together", that's ok. And if all this ... "seems very quaint" ... that's also fine with me.

And if one prefers to use a term like "philosophy" to denote a literary genre then perhaps it is not okay. Seeing philosophy as a science as you do seems to me to be an outdated use of the word "philosophy" and a waste of time.

14LolaWalser
Dic 8, 2009, 10:58 am

#13

Askar didn't call philosophy science, he said sciences are sub-fields of philosophy, something which I think is absolutely true, even if one insists on the historical view only (or adds "in a manner of speaking".) The highest scientific academic degree is still Philosophiae Doctor.

Granted that not many scientists would call themselves philosophers (for the sake of modesty and clarity if nothing else), I like to think of the broader role of science in knowledge-gathering as "philosophy in practice".

15picklesan
Dic 8, 2009, 11:56 am

>12 polutropon:

Polutropon,

Thanks for your comments. I wasn't trying to suggest that Askar holds that every work of philosophy is a work of non-fiction. I was trying to comment on the idea that philosophy (or literature for that matter) can be reduced simply to scientific method or theory. I am concerned that this kind of thinking may reflect an "imperialism of science" over what the true nature of philosophy really is.

16polutropon
Dic 8, 2009, 4:54 pm

>15 picklesan:, I was trying to comment on the idea that philosophy (or literature for that matter) can be reduced simply to scientific method or theory.

I want to be careful with my words here, because we may be changing the subject. As I read it, askar's original contention was that philosophy is a kind of science. You seem to suggest that this claim is identical with the claim "philosophy is reducible to science." I'm not so sure.

E.g., I don't think that biology is physics, or even that biology is a kind of physics. To make either of those claims would be to misuse the words "biology" and "physics." I do, however, believe that biology is reducible to physics (in principle). In the same way, I think I can consistently disagree with askar (on purely semantic grounds) when he claims that philosophy is a kind of science, and likewise disagree with you when you claim that philosophy is not reducible to science.

Personally, I have no strong intuitions or opinions one way or the other on the question of philosophy's reducibility to science. But if someone were going to try to sway me, they'd have to do so with an argument. Your umbrage alone is not particularly persuasive. I don't see how scientific reducibility would be a "discredit" to philosophy or literature. I don't see how it would alter my enjoyment of Augustine or Dostoevsky. I don't understand how you can claim that scientific reducibility would do violence to "the true nature of philosophy," except by begging the question.

17picklesan
Dic 8, 2009, 8:25 pm

>16 polutropon:

Again, I appreciate you're comments and feedback. I think you and Askar are raising some really interesting and important ideas that need to be more deeply explored and discussed. I'm not so much interested in entering in a debate and trying to "prove" anything. Rather, I think it's far more interesting and fruitful to listen and engage one another in dialogue.

In regards to what I posted earlier, I find Michael Polanyi the Oxford Chemist and Philosopher, to be very helpful and enlightening. Polanyi raises alot of interesting ideas about the nature and the relationship between philosophy and science, that I think are worth exploring in light of our discussion. Polanyi writes in his work, Personal Knowledge that absolute scientific objectivity is a "delusion and false ideal." Polyani goes on to attack the idea that "the scientific method yields truth mechanically to the scientist." Polyani argues that "all knowing is personal, and as such relies upon fallible commitments."

Polanyi is definately reacting against the "Logical Positivism" of the late 19th century and the carry over of that into the 20th century (i.e. see Truth, Language and Logic). It seems that even in our time many are unwilling to abandon that sinking ship.

I also apologize for my part in getting away from the topic of this post!

18polutropon
Dic 9, 2009, 12:31 pm

>17 picklesan:, I've never read Polanyi--I've never heard of him before actually. As for what you quoted from him, I can agree with it. His position appears to be that the scientific process is subjective at its root, as is the philosophical process. But I still don't understand how this implies a wide gulf between science and philosophy. If anything, the fact that both of them involve subjective processes implies that they are more alike than different.

Out of curiosity, what sorts of modern philosophical positions would you oppose to logical positivism? I can only think of post-modernism, which in at least some versions is militantly anti-science. E.g. "Science is just another religion." You also have biologists like Gould and Lewontin (and also some anthropolologists) who took similar positions when it suited their political/academic agendas, e.g., to discredit scientific theories of human behavior that included a large genetic component, and replace them with explanations based almost entirely on culture and environment, the data be damned.

I don't think you're taking such an extreme anti-science view, but I'm not sure where the modern middle ground between logical positivism and post-modernism lies, insofar as they advance or diminish the status of science.

19saibancho
Ene 27, 2012, 11:27 am

I am not sure what you mean by 'How do you rate..' Do you mean what do you think of Philosophy texts as a whole? Or do you mean what are the criteria by which you judge or apply a value or meaning to a particular text?

It depends very much on what your philosophical questions are as to which Philosophy text might be of most assistance to you.

20cjbanning
Ene 27, 2012, 12:04 pm

Wittgenstein wrote of the Tractatus that "its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding." I think that's about as good criterion as one gets with which to judge philosophy.

21elenchus
Ene 27, 2012, 2:45 pm

>20 cjbanning:

That's a great line.

22donbuch1
Jun 30, 2012, 6:57 pm


Wittgenstein also rated books according to their therapeutic value. He thought very highly of William James's Varieties of Religious Experiences. Also he at one point thought about using James's Principles of Psychology as a class text. See http://assets.cambridge.org/97805215/32600/excerpt/9780521532600_excerpt.pdf.

23Gail.C.Bull
Editado: Oct 3, 2012, 6:09 pm

Love that Wittgenstein quote, CJ. In fact, it fits my own method for rating philosophy works very well.

I tend to rate philosophical non-fiction on 2 merits: soundness of reasoning and clarity of communication. If the logic is sound and the thread of that logic is clearly communicated and explained, then I give it high marks whether I agree with the position they're taking or not. I can't stand philosophical works that give you lots of conclusions and theories but don't give you enough information about how they arrived at those conclusions for you to test their reasoning. If you want to appear infallible, don't become a philosopher. It's entirely the wrong field for you to be in!

For philosophical fiction (such as The Brother's Karamazov), I rate them as works of literature first (story structure, beauty of language, etc.) and mention the philosophy only as a footnote.

24zahira.amen
Ene 21, 2014, 4:26 am

It depends on the book.

Some can be dry and hard to relate to (too much theory and little of which can be applied to everyday life) while others can really transform your life.

One of the latter is The Jetstream of Success by Julian Pencilliah. He mixes personal anecdotes with his philosophy and as a result its both deeply though provoking but can be easily applied to your life.

25carusmm
Editado: mayo 19, 2016, 5:06 am

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26Dzerzhinsky
Nov 29, 2016, 4:31 pm

I read a lot of philosophy books, and have been doing so since a very early age. Also: books which comment on philosophy are also valuable.

Anyway, there's many that I admire but I've formed a top-tier for the ones I feel are most valuable to men living in the world as it is today. To me, that is the most important thing. Help us get through life today; because that's what we're all struggling with.