
Eminent Philosophers Name the Most Important Philosophy Books from 1950-2000 - madacoo
http://www.openculture.com/2018/04/eminent-philosophers-name-the-43-most-important-philosophy-books-written-between-1950-2000.html
======
raincom
Since R.M. Hare's "Language of Morals" is on the list, I recommend Alasdair
MacIntyre's "After Virtue" should be on the list for any one who want to study
Moral Philosophy today.

Along with Popper and Kuhn's works on that list, read Larry Laudan's "Progress
and its problems" and "Science and Relativism: some key controversies in the
philosophy of science". This goes under Philosophy of Sciences.

~~~
igravious
> Since R.M. Hare's "Language of Morals" is on the list, I recommend Alasdair
> MacIntyre's "After Virtue" should be on the list for any one who want to
> study Moral Philosophy today.

“After Virtue” is a legit recommendation.

> Along with Popper and Kuhn's works on that list, read Larry Laudan's
> "Progress and its problems" and "Science and Relativism: some key
> controversies in the philosophy of science". This goes under Philosophy of
> Sciences.

I demur. Comparing two giants of the Philosophy of Science (nb: not plural) to
a relative unknown. I would recommend instead “Against Method” (1975) by Paul
Feyerabend or “The Sleepwalkers” (1959) by Arthur Koestler.

~~~
no_identd
I'd recommend against _starting_ with "Against Method". Instead, go directly
for the 'sequel' both to Feyerabend's "Against Method" and to two paper/essay
collections (both published in 1976, two years after his death) that
essentially originated from Lakatos, although they contain numerous
contributions, among others by Feyerabend, "Method and Appraisal in the
Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to Modern Science 1800–1905"
(edited Colin Howson) and "Method and Appraisal in Economics" (edited by Spiro
J. Latsis), namely, "For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on
Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence" 'by' both Imre
Lakatos AND Paul Feyerabend, which Matteo Motterlini painstakingly assembled
from the drafts for the book (which Lakatos and Feyerabend both wanted to
produce, but which never produced a finished result in their lifetimes,
primarily due to Lakatos' unexpected death in 1974.)

I say this because of what I personally like to think of as 'paraduality' in
science which both Lakatos and Feyerabend discuss & address, but from
'opposite' ends. I put "opposite" in single quotes here because I find too
difficult to phrase the point I wish to make, so I can only allude to it:
Reading Feyerabend without reading Lakatos carries with it the same (and not
just similar or the opposite) problems as reading Lakatos without Feyerabend
does - and vice versa. The same applies to science itself, which kind of sums
up the problem both of them approached, from 'different' sides.

I thus find it rather helpful to read the entire matter chronologically
'backwards', starting with 'For and Against Method' and then going back from
there.

~~~
igravious
Thank you for your in-depth comment. I did not mean to imply starting
immediately with ”Against Method”, what I meant is that after exploring Kuhn
and Popper by all means move onto Feyerabend.

I do appreciate your suggesting Lakatos. I was under the impression that one
had to read Feyerabend first, then Lakatos. The work by Lakatos I have made
note of that came up in my travels is “The Methodology of Scientific Research
Programmes: Philosophical Papers”. Would you be able to recommend that text as
well or are you sticking to the ones you have suggested?

If I had to pick one I think you are saying to go with “For and Against
Method[…]”† because it contains both sides of the coin. Thank you Oh random
internet person for such helpful advice!

†
[http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3629717...](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3629717.html)

------
anschwa
> Solomon maintains that “nothing has been more harmful to philosophy than its
> ‘professionalization,’ which on the one hand has increased the abilities and
> techniques of its practitioners immensely, but on the other has rendered it
> an increasingly impersonal and technical discipline, cut off from and
> forbidding to everyone else.”

> As an addendum, Ho adds that “most of the works on the list are analytic
> philosophy,”...

Interesting that analytic philosophy is both seen as being the most harmful
yet also most prestigious.

~~~
exelius
Ironically, I took multiple philosophy courses at the university of Texas
taught by both Bob Solomon (one of the “eminent philosophers”) and his wife.

I graduated from the philosophy program with a profound distaste for
analytical philosophy, believing it to be pedantic BS that really only shows
the limitations of whatever language you’re using for discourse. Hence the
abstraction into symbolic logic, but symbolic logic only works as a pure
abstraction: any link to the real world becomes limited by the language
constructs you can use to describe the world, the subject/object
relationships, etc.

There are many languages and writing systems in the world. I expect the
peculiarities of each to rear its head when attempting to use them to do
“real” philosophy (I honestly view most of the analytical offshoots of
philosophy as mathematics; somewhat telling, the university disagreed and
forced all CS majors to take logic classes in the philosophy department).

~~~
whatshisface
I think that the perceived stiffness of analytic philosphy is really just the
true limitations of philosophy made obvious.

> _that really only shows the limitations of whatever language you’re using
> for discourse._

It's not entirely clear that natural languages are more powerful than formal
ones (in terms of stating true facts,) but what _is_ easy to see is that
English makes it far easier to appear to prove something you haven't. That
gives it an illusion of power.

Ironically Neitzsche had something to say about this: you've got the small
claims that seem pedantic and insignificant, and the grand claims that explain
the meaning of it all, but in the end the small claims can be made so much
more certain than the grand ones that they're what you want to base everything
off of. Viscosity of water vs. angels on the head of a pin.

~~~
exelius
Exactly; I’m not saying natural language is better, just that you can’t really
do any better without running into the same issues around discourse/rhetoric.

------
pmoriarty
Unsurprisingly, this list is heavily biased towards analytic philosophers.

They don't even mention Heidegger, the most influential 20th Century
philosopher in the Continental tradition. _Being and Time_ is his most
influential book.

They don't mention Sartre, who probably comes in 2nd. _Being and Nothingness_
is his most famous book (you can tell the Heidegger influence just from the
title).

Their token Continentals are Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and Ricouer... out
of a list of 30.

Update: Looks like I misread the title of the article as being about
philosophers from 1900-2000, but it's from 1950-2000. Sorry. My bad.

~~~
trentmb
> biased towards analytic philosophers.

I swear I've looked up the difference between analytic vs. continental
multiple times and never understand the difference.

~~~
philwelch
Analytic philosophy was largely a reaction to the idea that philosophy was
developing into a mass of meaningless, incoherent, poetic mumbo-jumbo. For
example, Bertrand Russell said:

> Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved
> the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact
> minds have taken up the subject.

Analytic philosophy is the tradition that grew out of this reaction, and
focuses on precision in language and logic, with a particular focus on the
philosophy of language because it turns out it's hard to map natural language
to the kinds of rigorous logical propositions that analytic philosophers
prefer. Continental philosophy is the tradition that rejected this critique
and burrowed even deeper down the path they were going, eventually inventing
postmodernism and poststructuralism and other new and exciting forms of what
analytic philosophers would consider mumbo-jumbo.

~~~
pmoriarty
You've basically described all of Continental philosophy as _" a mass of
meaningless, incoherent, poetic mumbo-jumbo"_.

First, that's really not a particularly charitable way of describing it.
Second, it bespeaks an Analytic approach to things they don't understand --
that is, to assume they're meaningless and not important (or at best some
trivial little puzzle to solve). Third, it really doesn't help to understand
what Continental philosophy is actually about.

Now, if you'd described Continental philosophy as difficult or incoherent _to
you_ , then that would be more reasonable. But it should be pointed out that
plenty of analytic philosophy that is also difficult and incomprehensible to
some (though I would grant that for the most part Analytics at least try to be
clear in their language -- something that can't be said of most Continentals).

~~~
kome
> "a mass of meaningless, incoherent, poetic mumbo-jumbo".

Also: are new developments of analytic philosophy really that "clear" in their
language? Usually, no. For example, is Saul Kripke really that "meaningful,
coherent and logical" or he is just developing his own jargon?

In my opinion, analytic philosophy often tries to be rigorous with concepts
that just are not rigorous to begin with. And they just end up by creating an
"ordinate mess".

~~~
philwelch
I haven’t read a ton of Kripke, but the fender and more jargon-filled analytic
philosophy is still in a different style.

I think the best oversimplification is that analytic philosophers are more
like mathematicians and continental philosophers are more like artists and
poets. (And, fittingly, many of the foundational analytic philosophers _were_
also mathematicians, and the continentals, poets and playwrights.)

------
mcguire
The original post: [http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-most-
impor...](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-most-important-
philosophical-books-since-1950.html)

~~~
baking
The comments there are fairly extensive with suggestions for additions. Quite
worthwhile if your made it this far in the HN comments.

------
aphextron
I'd argue that _every_ programmer interested in language design needs to read
Wittgenstein. His later work in ethics and epistemology (that the article
recommends, Philosophical Investigations) is hit or miss, but his _Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus_ , which deals with the nature of language as it relates
to our ability to think and formulate ideas, is undeniable. He essentially
builds a framework for breaking reality down into logically composable
components which can be reasoned over in their own right, regardless of
semantics.

See this article which was posted here a few years ago: Wittgenstien for
Programmers [http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-
hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html](http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-
hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html)

~~~
pmoriarty
Wittgenstein was more of a mystic than a logician, though he tried to dress up
his mysticism in what may at first glance appear to be logical garb in the
_Tractatus_.[1] This is something the early Logical Positivist analytics of
the Vienna Circle, perhaps willfully, did not understand. He was championing
the very thing that they abhorred: religious mysticism.

When Wittgenstein said _" Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be
silent."_ He meant it in a respectful way, as a defense of religious
mysticism. The Logical Positivists assumed that attitude in the exact opposite
direction: to attack religious mysticism and religion in general. They labeled
it as meaningless nonsense. No wonder Wittgenstein wanted nothing to do with
them, despite their (misplaced and misunderstood) hero-worship of him.

I'm really not sure what any programmer would get out of reading the
_Tractatus_... at least not for anything programming-related.

[1] - The full title being the _" Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"_, just in
case you missed that it was supposed to be logical and philosophical.
Wittgenstein starts by labeling some of his statements as "axioms" and
constructing what might appear as derivations.. which don't actually follow.
On superficial inspection it might look like some kind of logical treatise,
but that impression vanishes if you actually try to read and make sense of it.

~~~
wanda
My reply ended up being too long for HN.

If you have some time to kill, you can read what I wanted to say here:

[https://pastebin.com/raw/YukL4uc5](https://pastebin.com/raw/YukL4uc5)

(apologies for any obvious/stupid mistakes, been a long day)

~~~
paganel
Not the OP, but I've gone through your (very well written and well thought)
answer and it reminded me of what it was that turned me away from Wittgenstein
(even though at some point I was a big fan of his, in some regards I still
am): I'm talking about the tautology that you also remarked about. I couldn't
get over it once I realized it was there. At least Hegel (which I'm not a fan
of, that's for sure) had the "courage" to surpass said "tautology" by
inventing a conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) that at least looked like
it was carrying the conversation, that was carrying us, closer to the truth,
with Wittgenstein you feel like nothing like that happens, you're just left
sitting there. I'm not criticizing him or anything of the sorts, just stating
what I felt.

It is also true that with age (I've now approached my late 30s) I've started
to become less and less interested in inquiring about the "truth", or what
"truth" means, or what "words" mean, i.e. the topics mostly related to
philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger (haven't read anything by Derrida
yet), and instead I've started becoming more and more interested (and even
obsessed) by what us, humans, really are and what we think. As such, I've
started reading more and more political philosophy, and as such I can say that
(at least for people like me) philosophers like Hobbes and Rousseau are a lot
more interesting and thought-provoking compared to the subjects approached by
the likes of Wittgenstein or Heidegger.

Later edit: Because I just remembered later after writing most of the above
comment: what also drove me away from modern/contemporary philosophers like
Wittgenstein was reading a collection of the Heraclitus fragments. After
reading them I realized that "truth" was, well, multi-faceted, polyvalent,
taken at the limit truth was everything and nothing at all (which you could
say that approaches some of Wittgenstein's views as well). More important of
all, according to Heraclitus (or to my understanding of his sayings) "truth"
and other philosophical-important concepts were on the same "level" as other,
less important (from a philosophical point of view) concepts, i.e. that
(again, taken to the limit) truth was falseness and falseness was truth. Once
I realized that I was no longer interested in pursuing what "truth" is.

~~~
mercer
Has 'Eastern' philosophy affected your point of view in any way?

~~~
paganel
Not really, at least not until now (I’m in my late 30s). Technically the most
“Eastern” philosopher that has had an influence on me was Lucian of Samosata
(afaik Samosata was close to the present border between Syria and Turkey), but
other than that I didn’t have the “inner drive”, so to speak, to immerse
myself into Eastern philosophy. At least not until now. From a distance I do
find some parts of it pretty interesting, but, again, that’s just a “guess”.

Come to think of it, I was pretty impressed by Plotinus and the Neoplatonists,
who I think are the closest “Western philosophy” got to “Eastern philosophy”,
even though I found that they’re not that much discussed in the Anglosphere.

------
spodek
Can we estimate in any way about how happy these people were?

I doubt there's an objective measure, but I feel like how to be happy and to
live a good life are among of the main goals of philosophy. Are they? Did many
of them succeed?

~~~
ctchocula
This is an interesting perspective, because in his book, "The History of
Western Philosophy" recommended elsewhere in this thread, Bertrand Russell
makes this one of the metrics by which he rates historical philosophers. For
example, he rates Schopenhauer:

> He habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many trivial love-
> affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was exceedingly
> quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. ... It is hard to find in his life
> evidences of an virtue except kindness to animals ... In all other respects
> he was completely selfish. It is difficult to believe that a man who was
> profoundly convinced of the virtue of asceticism and resignation would never
> have made any attempt to embody his convictions in his practice.

------
hoshigakii
Does anyone have recommendations for a layman interested in philosophy?

~~~
harwoodjp
Bertrand Russell - The Problems of Philosophy

~~~
Analemma_
Also by Russell: A History of Western Philosophy. It has various critics, for
good reasons, but it's as good a walkthrough of philosophical developments in
the West as anything you'll find.

~~~
dmreedy
I want to second this one, if for nothing else than the fact that in addition
to being a wealth of information about the philosophies themselves, it's also
a fascinating (granted, biased) perspective about how philosophical
developments might map to political and cultural developments, and vice versa.
Again, with a nod to its critics.

Also, Russell is, as always, a charmingly witty writer.

~~~
pmoriarty
I like Russell. He's a witty and entertaining writer. But anyone reading his
work should be aware that he's heavily biased towards an Analytic perspective.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any summary from the Continental perspective
that's remotely as well written as Russell's. Maybe you could start with
reading through some of those comic-book style "Introduction to..." books
about various philosophers. They seem to do a decent enough job for a taste of
what the philosopher in question is about.

But, really, there's no substitute for taking an intro to philosophy course.
Philosophy isn't just meant to be read and pondered. It's critically important
to discuss it and the ideas and questions it provokes in you with others who
are also encountering this material along with you. A philosophy course is
ideal for that. Though, once again, the Analytics dominate such courses in the
English-speaking world (and increasingly in the rest of the world as well). So
it's pretty hard to find philosophy courses where you can get an Continental
perspective.

------
hestefisk
This being HN, I can’t believe anyone hasn’t mentioned Searle (on the list) or
Hofstaedter yet as prominent thinkers on computing, philosophy of maths, and
the limits of the ongoing AI summer. In ‘Goedel, Escher, Bach’ Hofstaedter has
entire chapters dedicated to LISP and its philosophical implications /
foundations, ie homoiconicity, metacircularity.

~~~
ahussain
Which chapter is that? I'm looking through the table of contents but none of
these terms are mentioned there explicitly. Does he talk about LISP directly
or only in passing?

------
kitten-fine
David Armstrong and David lewis for metaphysics! Quine word and object is
great, but some of his short essays are more accessible. For a good logic book
graham priest an intro to non classical logic. Russell is pleasant intro, but
you'll probably want to go deeper.

------
mcguire
" _As an addendum, Ho adds that “most of the works on the list are analytic
philosophy,” therefore Prof. Chen asked Habermas to recommend some additional
European thinkers, and received the following: “Axel Honneth, Kampf um
Anerkennung (1992), Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Cerechtigkeit (1994) and
Herbert Schnadelbach, Kommentor zu Hegels Rechtephilosophie (2001).”_ "

Note also that this list was collected "at the behest of a Chinese publisher
seeking important philosophical works for translation", so the fact that A.C.
Graham is missing doesn't disturb me much.

------
zamazingo
> two professors emailed sixteen philosophers in the U.S., England, Australia,
> Germany, Finland, and Brazil, asking specifically for "ten of the most
> important and influential philosophical books after 1950." "They received
> recommendations,” writes Ho, "from twelve philosophers, including: Susan
> Haack, Donald M. Borchert (Ohio U.), Donald Davidson, Jurgen Habermas, Ruth
> Barcan Marcus, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Peter F. Strawson, Hilary Putnam,
> and G.H. von Wright." (Ho was unable to identify two other names, typed in
> Chinese.)

------
nwhitehead
I would recommend all the works by Robert Nozick, listed at #14 on the list
for "Anarchy, State and Utopia". While that might be his most influential
book, I found his other books more fun to read.

------
tim333
It's nice and all that but I think there has been far more influence on what
would be called philosophical questions like why are we here, how should we
live, why is there evil, what is consciousness and the like from scientific
discovery than from any of the books in the list. Things like the discovery of
DNA, the big bang, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience have had a big
impact on how we see the world. Those books I'm not so sure.

------
webwanderings
*Western.

There's a whole wide world out there.

~~~
qntty
Much of the thinking that we call philosophy was created to make sense of the
apparent conflict between particular western institution, like (western)
science and religion. There are thinkers in other parts of the world who are
interested in similar issues, but it might not be right to categorize it as
philosophy because they don't have the same sort of clash in their culture to
make sense of. That is, western philosophy was consciously created to oppose
religious dogma and scientific reductionism, but the same can't be said about
(say) Buddhist philosophy, even though they ask similar questions. In other
words, part of what makes philosophy "philosophy" is that it insists that it's
something different than religious or scientific theory.

~~~
tathougies
What utter rubbish. Every culture has their own philosophical issues that they
grapple with. This does not mean these thoughts cannot be labeled
"philosophy". "Philosophy", means love of knowledge... the seeking of
knowledge is not limited to the West, and there have been philosophers from
all around the world.

> That is, western philosophy was consciously created to oppose religious
> dogma and scientific reductionism,

Where are you pulling this stuff from? Western philosophy traces its roots to
mainly Catholic (and some Islamic) philosophers, many of whom were very
religious. These philosophers often drew upon earlier philosophers (the
Catholic Church is probably the reason why Aristotelian philosophy survives to
the present day). These earlier philosophers were also religious.

The separation between philosophy and religion (And between philosophy and
science for that matter) is something that has only arisen in the present day,
and -- in my opinion at least -- is unlikely to last very long, if history is
any indication.

> In other words, part of what makes philosophy "philosophy" is that it
> insists that it's something different than religious or scientific theory.

These are your own thoughts and opinions on the subject. You are unnecessarily
antagonizing science, philosophy, and religion, and I think this perhaps stems
from the very western desire to segregate and classify everything.

~~~
qntty
I don't mean to antagonize, I'm just offering another perspective. There are
no doubt many different kinds of rich intellectual traditions around the
world. Should we call them philosophy? Philosophy is a category of
intellectual discourse invented in the west. The history of the term is bound
to the history of the west. Why should we apply a western category to try to
understand non-western thought? Isn't this imposing our own way of thinking
about intellectual disciplines onto a culture that doesn't understand itself
in the same way? It would be better to categorize these disciplines in the way
they people from other countries understand them. Islamic thinkers don't draw
a line between what we call "philosophical issues" and what we call
"theological issues". Why should we draw that line when we read them?

~~~
tathougies
Philosophy is a word used to describe things. The word has meaning in and of
itself. It is not a proper noun. You are attempting to make a word that means
something already, mean something specific, and it's not working.

Would you not classify al-jabr as mathematics simply because 'mathematics'
describes western manipulations and not Arabic ones? Of course not.
Mathematics means a certain thing in the English language, and al-jabr (which
we call algebra) falls under that category.

I'm sure other cultures have a word that denotes things like Western
philosophy, and they apply that word to people like Aristotle.

However, HN is a mainly english website, and so philosophy refers to any field
that concerns itself with knowledge.

~~~
qntty
A word with just one meaning would be a boring word ;)

------
sunstone
E.O Wilson's (the Nobel prize winner) book "Consilience" should be on a list
like this but probably isn't. He's a biologist after all, not a philosopher.
But a lot of thoughtful people would likely find a lot more to ponder than in
it than most of the 'real' philosophy texts.

------
btcindivist
Weird, no Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, one of the best applications of
utilitarianism.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
And no _A Thousand Plateaus_ by Deleuze & Guattari, in spite of having an
impact on the anti-globalization movement over the last two decades-plus that
is hard to overestimate. Plus, that work isn’t just relevant for contemporary
political disputes or the perennial question of how to organize human
societies; Deleuze and Guattari’s epistemology is a major contribution to
human thought in general.

------
baking
Richard Rorty "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"

Need a little Pragmatism on this list.

~~~
woodandsteel
>Need a little Pragmatism on this list.

Quite so. Except Rorty later admitted that he was not really a Pragmatist. I
would say he was more of a liberally-oriented Existentialist.

------
hknust
Have your book list posted on HN with Amazon (affiliate) links => Profit :)

------
namlem
Glad to see Parfit on the list. Reasons and Persons could honestly be the
foundational text of a civilization.

------
galeforcewinds
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, What Color is Your Parachute are
both absent. Also, science fiction.

------
8bitsrule
No Paul Feyerabend, I see.

