

Ask HN: What kind of philosophy do you read? - trendroid

I have been fascinated with ethics and questions on free will recently but the historical philosophical discussions tend to be too boring and use unnecessarily complex words to explain the concepts. That puts me off. How often do you read philosophy and if yes, how do you deal with the style of writing?<p>Or maybe some of you think reading Science in general is better investment of time?
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brudgers
One of the things I learned quickly when I became a philosophy major is
reading philosophy is a skill. I remember the sensation of realizing I had
read six pages of Descartes _Meditations_ and had been at it for an hour.
Philosophy requires unpacking in some of the same ways a book about a
programming language written without mercy for beginners will.

To a first approximation, if I am reading philosophy these days it's
Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ unless I am looking for a
reference [e.g. last week I looked at Putnam's _Reason Truth and History_
because I was thinking about the ant's portrait of Churchill in relation to
the role of interpretation of data. I'll also find myself in Plato
occasionally...though that's often via the internet rather than the bound
Jowett volumes.

Stretching philosophy a bit, I am these days often looking at logic and
mathematics, and regretting a bit roads not taken. These have the same
interest in accurate language I enjoy.

Anyway, reading philosophy as an investment sounds horrid. Read something you
enjoy.

[edit] You might enjoy the philosophy bites podcast:
[http://www.philosophybites.com/](http://www.philosophybites.com/)

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staunch
If you haven't already read them, Sam Harris' Free Will and Moral Landscape
are totally worth reading.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451683405](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451683405)

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/143917122X](http://www.amazon.com/dp/143917122X)

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alejohausner
My favourite is Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals". Here is a taste, from a
section on punishment, in his second essay (text from
[http://home.sandiego.edu/~janderso/360/genealogy2.htm](http://home.sandiego.edu/~janderso/360/genealogy2.htm)):

In order to give at least an idea of how uncertain, how belated, how
accidental “the meaning” of punishment is and how one and the same procedure
can be used, interpreted, or adjusted for fundamentally different purposes,
let me offer here an example which presented itself to me on the basis of
relatively little random material: punishment as a way of rendering someone
harmless, as a prevention from further harm; punishment as compensation for
the damage to the person injured, in some form or other (also in the form of
emotional compensation); punishment as isolation of some upset to an even
balance in order to avert a wider outbreak of the disturbance; punishment as
way of inspiring fear of those who determine and carry out punishment;
punishment as a sort of compensation for the advantages which the law breaker
has enjoyed up until that time (for example, when he is made useful as a slave
working in the mines); punishment as a cutting out of a degenerate element (in
some circumstances an entire branch, as in Chinese law, and thus a means to
keep the race pure or to sustain a social type); punishment as festival, that
is, as the violation and humiliation of some enemy one has finally thrown
down; punishment as a way of making a conscience, whether for the man who
suffers the punishment— so- called “reform”—or whether for those who witness
the punishment being carried out; punishment as the payment of an honorarium,
set as a condition by those in power, which protects the wrong doer from the
excesses of revenge; punishment as a compromise with the natural condition of
revenge, insofar as the latter is still upheld and assumed as a privilege by
powerful families; punishment as a declaration of war and a war measure
against an enemy to peace, law, order, and authority, which people fight with
the very measures war makes available, as something dangerous to the
community, as a breach of contract with respect to its conditions, as a rebel,
traitor, and breaker of the peace.

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PaulHoule
I like Badio.

