Introductory study of philosphy, where to begin?

Do NOT start with specific philosophers. Begin with the Syntopicon, an anthology published by Britannica. You can only find this series of books in a library because it's $999. The series is called The Great Books of the Western World.

But of the 50-some books, you only need to look at volumes II and II. They are the anthology, the most widely read in the world. Instead of plodding through the philosophers, you will breeze through the 102 most written about topics, and each philosopher's ideas will be in synopsis form side by side. No need to get confused that way.

Angel; Animal; Aristocracy; Art; Astronomy; Beauty; Being; Cause; Chance; Change; Citizen; Constitution; Courage; Custom and Convention; Definition; Democracy; Desire; Dialectic; Duty; Education; Element; Emotion; Eternity; Evolution; Experience; Family; Fate; Form; God; Good and Evil; Government; Habit; Happiness; History; Honor; Hypothesis; Idea; Immortality; Induction; Infinity; Judgment; Justice; Knowledge; Labor; Language; Law; Liberty; Life and Death; Logic; Love; Man; Mathematics; Matter; Mechanics; Medicine; Memory and Imagination; Metaphysics; Mind; Monarchy; Nature; Necessity and Contingency; Oligarchy; One and Many; Opinion; Opposition; Philosophy; Physics; Pleasure and Pain; Poetry; Principle; Progress; Prophecy; Prudence; Punishment; Quality; Quantity; Reasoning; Relation; Religion; Revolution; Rhetoric; Same and Other; Science; Sense; Sign and Symbol; Sin; Slavery; Soul; Space; State; Temperance; Theology; Time; Truth; Tyranny; Universal and Particular; Virtue and Vice; War and Peace; Wealth; Will; Wisdom; World

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntopicon

(I've read it, several times.)

No. Those are not really good starting points for learning the ropes of philosophy and what its all about. Plato I guess is okay. But no Being and Nothingness. That will just confuse the hell out of you. And besides, if you're new to philosophy, you should be learning the basic branches and problems that it discusses. You know, something a textbook would outline. Not randomly reading Being and Nothingness by an existential philosopher.

I would recommend something really basic if you're trying to teach yourself, and get a feel for philosophy. Go to your bookstore, and look for a 'Philosophy for Dummies' book, or something along those lines. Just an introductory, textbook type book about philosophy that's written by actual scholars who can teach you about the various branches of philosophy and the major problems that philosophy faces. This is how you'll learn what philosophy studies. Then if a particular thing interests you, you can get more and more specific as time goes on. Perhaps you've narrowed it down to a certain branch. Say, metaphysics. Then a certain problem in metaphysics. Perhaps the philosophy of time or space. Then when you're a pro at all that arguments in that field, you will read upon a very very specific problem. Like the implications of Neo-Newtonian substantivalism's disposal of absolute velocity. etc. etc.

edit: the first answerer basically proves my point. Do not start with individual philosophers. First learn the very basics through a textbook. Then you can move on to a specific philosopher's view, and you will have an overall background already ready.

There are basically two ways you can go about studying philosophy, and each has its own merits.

One way is to start from the beginning and proceed chronologically. This has the benefit of letting you see threads of philosophical thought develop as they did historically. Many philosophers built on or refuted the ideas that came before, and this lets you follow along. But it will also mean that you spend time learning about things that don't interest you or which are now considered largely bunk.

The other way is to be more topical. To consider just one sub-section, topic, or even a single philosopher and just cozy up to that point of view. What you might lack in breadth from such a course will probably be made up in depth, particularly if you augment the literal works of your study with some history relevant to the persons in question, too. You might be surprised how many people read Plato without really knowing anything about the political climate of ancient Greece.

For a casual study, I would recommend the second course. It's probably much more important to find things you like that can keep you hooked than to have the kind of scholarly background that a university might try to give you. In that wise, I can't really tell you what you like... only what I like. But I would say that Plato's stuff is usually pretty accessible (they're all like plays), as are some of the works by Nietzsche (collections of short stories and aphorisms). Satre wrote some plays too.

Perhaps in either case you would be suited with the quickest kind of survey available. This can tell you either what kind of stuff interests you or give you a general framework to lead into the more specific survey of history. For these purposes, I usually suggest, "Sophie's World" by Gardener (a novelized history, sort of) and "This Is Not A Book" by Picard (short topical blurbs). Hope that helps!

Here's a list to get you started.

I would start with "History of Philosophy" by Frederick Copleston, S.J., and "History of Political Philosophy", edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. Also you check out this link to Free online courses from MIT: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/co...

After that try the main texts below:

Plato -- The Republic (get Allan Bloom's translation & read his essay), The Laws (get Thomas L. Pangle's translation)

Aristotle -- Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics

Thucydides -- The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians

St.Augustine -- The City of God

Dante -- The Divine Comedy

Maimonides -- the guide of the Perplexed

St. Aquinas -- Summa Theologica

Machiavelli -- The Prince, The Discourses on the First ten books of Titus Livius

Bacon -- New Atlantis, Advancement of Learning

Descartes -- Discourse on Method, Meditations

Hobbes -- Leviathan

Locke -- Two Treatises of government, An essay concerning Human Understanding

Milton -- Paradise Lost

Shakespeare -- Hamlet, King Lear,

Spinoza -- Theologico-Political Treatise

Hume -- Treatise of Human Understanding, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Rousseau -- Social Contract, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts

Smith -- The Wealth of Nations

Burke -- Reflections on the Revolution in France

Kant -- Critique of pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason

Hegel -- Phenomenolgy of the Mind

Marx -- Capital

Nietzsche -- Beyond Good and evil, Thus spoke Zarathustra

Husserl -- Logical Investigations

Heidegger -- Being and Time

Wittgenstein -- Philosophical Investigations

Popper -- The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The open Society and its Enemies

I would suggest starting with philosophical analysis, "An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis" By John Hospurs. Plato's Republic, Thomas Nagel-"Mortal Questions", Rene Descartes, Hume's Enquiries,Carl Popper-Conjectures and Refutations,Bernard Williams' book:Morality, McIntyre's A short history of ethics.Brian Hebblethwaite The Adequacy of Christian Ethics.Voltaire's novels Candid and Zadig et les autres contes- in translation if you do not read French. To go from Plato to Camus is a hell of a jump! Greek classics to Existentialism!- Get yourself a good reference work, such as The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy for navigation purposes. That should be more than enough to be getting on with!!! Lest I forget, for the Victorian point of view, find any synopsis on John Stuart Mill and his restatement of Utilitarianism, based on the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham in the C18th -much of our modern society is based on it. Also, Thomas Huxley's philosophy is important in Metaphysics, the Epiphenomenalist point of view , Richard Taylor's book "Metaphysics" is a good starter.

The best place to start, as the proverbial saying goes, is at the beginning. This would probably be the best way to start philosophy (meaning the most detailed and informative way), but to a great extent, would probably also bore the hell out of you. There are just so many important books in this field that it really becomes difficult to read them all.

It really depends on what you're looking for in your reading. Is this for recreation, semi-recreation and semi-self-improvement, deep and thorough academic study, or what?

I first read philosophy through Voltaire's philosophical novel Candide, which was very entertaining in my sophomore year of high school, and gradually, more or less, went on to reading more esoteric and dry works, which I wouldn't have been enjoyed reading back then.

I would recommend the works of G. E. Moore. More pioneered analytic philosophy by applying common sense to escape the foolish dilemmas and pointless abstractions that bog down philosophy. This enables real progress in clearing away sophism and getting to the real issues.

Here is a sample of Moore's thinking. In his 1925 essay "A Defence of Common Sense" he argued against idealism and skepticism toward the external world on the grounds that they could not give reasons to accept their metaphysical premises that were more plausible than the reasons we have to accept the common sense claims about our knowledge of the world that skeptics and idealists must deny. He famously put the point into dramatic relief with his 1939 essay "Proof of an External World", in which he gave a common sense argument against skepticism by raising his right hand and saying "Here is one hand," and then raising his left and saying "And here is another," then concluding that there are at least two external objects in the world, and therefore that he knows (by this argument) that an external world exists.

What we want to do in philosophy is to solve philosophical problems and build clear thinking. Most of the history of philosophy makes little progress because men like Plato, Camus, and Sartre simply pile new speculation over old, never disposing of philosophical issues. G. E. Moore is the exception, and other ordinary language philosophers (e.g., J. L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle) built on Moore's foundation.

Cheers,

Bruce (philosophy major in college, graduated with high honors)

Try getting "Introduction To Phenomenology" by Robert Sokolowski. It guides you through the basic terminology that Husserl uses and this is required to make anything at all of Sartre. Plato is essential one way or the other if interested in philosophy but translations of the dialogs are easy to get hold of. Sokolowski's book will get you started on 20th century philosophy.

I don't know...but this book by Satre, "Being and Nothingness" sounds really interesting and I'm going to read it probably...and I suggest that you follow your inspiration...what ever brought you to want to study philosophy in the first place, if it's this book that interests you, go for it, you can always change if your mind feels the need to... (:

Philosophy, from the Greeks onward, was and is best learned via a mentor. My mentor met me on a weekly basis, interviewed me on what I learned from the past week's reading assignments, posed questions and dropped another huge pile of books and articles on me.