> 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.
This type of view is extremely common amongst students of analytic philosophy. The "problem" approach to philosophy.
IMO Reading Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, etc. and other thinkers deemed outdated and unworthy is absolutely a good use of time for anyone interested in Philosophy. This post is actually the first time I've ever heard anybody suggest not reading Hume.
Well, yeah, it was an analytic department. I also happen to think that's the "right" view.
To clarify, I don't think reading the original texts is a bad use of time if you're already in deep, just that it's not good for a first introduction (for the reasons I mentioned). Plato was simply confused about a ton of things and makes egregious errors while reasoning through ideas. We don't read him because he was right, we read him for other reasons.
I can't possibly see reading Hegel being a good idea for a beginner. It'll just lead to thinking philosophy is intentionally obtuse. He's basically impossible to parse without taking a philosophy course. http://existentialcomics.com/comic/281
Yes, as a philosophy major, I also agree that anything that is not 20th century philosophy is not really that helpful. It can be interesting academically, to trace the evolution of philosophy, but it won't really scratch that itch of engaging in the big questions.
The biggest value I got out of being a philosophy major was building reading concentration skills - being able to read dense passages takes a lot of commitment and practice, and that can build thinking skills. The internet teaches us to skim and do fast/shallow reading, which doesn't lead to deep thinking. Reading older philosophy is a great way of building those deep reading skills, even if the actual content of those texts is not applicable to modern life.
To the OP, if you see this, I would suggest looking into Experimental Philosophy. It's a branch of philosophy that focuses on using neuroscience to understand how we think about the world. Books like Thinking Fast and Slow may be much more interesting to you.
This type of view is extremely common amongst students of analytic philosophy. The "problem" approach to philosophy.
IMO Reading Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, etc. and other thinkers deemed outdated and unworthy is absolutely a good use of time for anyone interested in Philosophy. This post is actually the first time I've ever heard anybody suggest not reading Hume.