The attitude of a modern person to philosophy is twofold: he either, with arrogant bewilderment, cannot understand why it could be useful to anyone, or makes it a commodity for show - an accessory for throwing dust in the eyes, like a New Guinean aborigine who wears non-working Wrist Watch. This happens due to the fact that from an early age he is in captivity of one or another ideology (usually, hedonistic cynicism and consumption), which assures him that the main ethical issues have long been resolved and puzzled over what grounds to build his own existence is an empty and superfluous occupation. It is obvious, however, how poorly his proposed answers work, since they lead to a global epidemic of unhappiness and mental disorders raging before our eyes,robotization of personality and suppression of the highest mental and spiritual capabilities of a person.
These negative consequences are the result of erroneous premises on which our life is built, and the only way out is to move away from them, take a step aside and subject the beginning of human existence to a fresh and independent rethinking. This entails the need to admit philosophy into our life, which, if we really understand its essence, has only one supreme task - mastering the art of life. The experience of our great predecessors and the books they left behind, which can act as a powerful catalyst for our own judgment, will be invaluable on this path.
Even those of us who quite agree with this line of reasoning do not feel, however, willing to undertake such works. On the one hand, they often do not know where to start, or are accustomed to considering philosophical literature to be hard and certainly boring reading. On the other hand, many of those who dare to get a closer acquaintance with philosophy quickly grow cold, since they started it with the wrong books and did not learn some of the necessary rules for their perception.
Indeed, the main body of philosophical literature is not easy reading, and if we speak frankly, then tedious and unnecessary. And yet, in it you can find many brilliant fundamental works that combine the accessibility of language, the fascination of presentation, the depth of thought and the beauty of the syllable. It is with such books that you should begin your immersion, allowing them to enrich our worldview, awaken thought and ignite further interest.
With this in mind, I took the liberty of compiling a list of such books that would not only serve as a stimulus for thought, but also give as broad a preliminary idea as possible of what philosophy is. The company gathered in it is both glorified and unusually colorful, stretching through millennia and cultures. The Roman slave is located here next to the Roman emperor, the Chinese side by side with the Germans, French and English, and the ancient Greeks perched near our Russian contemporary. Immensely differing in fate, social status, era and origin, all these thinkers are united in their spiritual quest and striving for inner freedom. However, you should not rush - before trying to get real benefit from getting to know them, you must keep in mind a number of unspoken rules of the art of reading.
Rule one
One of the oldest methods of gold mining is the so-called washing, or washing. To do this, the gold digger, armed with a tray, goes to the river (preferably mountain), in the silt of which gold particles were noticed. The tray is filled with gravel scooped up from the bottom to two thirds and immersed in the river water again just below the water level. Then the miner makes light reciprocating and rotational movements, during which the water washes away the sand. Sometimes small nuggets are found at the bottom of the tray, but for the most part it is only silt, and it takes a long time to find even a piece of gold.
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The process of acquiring education and seeking knowledge is similar to gold mining - in order to get the precious grains we are looking for, we have to filter out and let through a lot of less noble materials. Even the most beautiful book should not be expected to evoke in us an equally lively response throughout its entire length. We never scoop up only gold nuggets with our tray, and we cannot always be interested in reading for the same reason that we cannot always be interesting in the daily course of life. The one who knows how to show patience and draw excitement in anticipation of future finds, however, will not be left empty-handed.
Second rule
Many people are rejected by books, ideas, worldviews that do not substantially correspond to their own - they cannot stand the discomfort of contradiction. But just this dissimilarity (if it is not excessive and not antagonistic) gives a unique opportunity to see reality with a new fresh look, from a different angle and from a different coordinate system, expanding our creative and intellectual boundaries. Moreover, it awakens and develops thought like nothing else - we always derive great benefit from thinking through points of view that are alien to us by reflecting on the reasons for our own disagreement with them.
Rule three
The disease of modern man, more and more aggravated by technology, is the degradation of the ability to concentrate, the shortest focus of attention. Constantly jumping from one to another, being in constant laxity, a person does not have time to either understand or taste what he is undertaking. While doing three things at the same time, he thinks about the other three, providing himself with a closed cycle of dissatisfaction that lasts his entire life, and undermining his opportunities for his own growth. Reading serious literature, like anything, requires deep immersion, a focused and compassionate presence. The latter is not only the fundamental principle of productivity, but also the most important key to happiness and harmony, which depend on our ability to stay in the present and take what it has generously to offer us.
Rule four
The fundamental law of cognition in general and work with texts in particular is the so-called hermeneutic circle. The whole is cognized from the particular, but we can understand the particular only in view of the knowledge of the whole into which it is inscribed. Therefore, in order to know every particular, we must first know the whole, but the whole will not be available to us if we do not know the particular. The situation may seem hopeless, but it is not so: from imperfect knowledge of the particular, we come to the imperfect knowledge of the whole, then we again cognize the particular in the light of the newly discovered, from it again we go to the whole - and so on, expanding circle by circle the spiral of our vision. With regard to the interpretation of texts, this means that if you are not clear about some fragment, thought, idea, then you need not fight over them excessively, but move on and return to them again later. The next one sheds light on one thought of the author, one book becomes understandable on the basis of another, often - only after reading a book by a completely different author.
I am well aware of this process on the example of my own acquaintance with Nietzsche. Armed at the age of 14 with the volume Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the worst possible choice to begin with), I, of course, understood very little - and yet I liked it. After reading another work, I saw the content of the first book I read differently and better. Taking hold of it again, I examined the second from a new angle. Having mastered all Nietzsche's books over the next few years, I understood each individual one better in the light of the whole and then read them again with new eyes, which allowed me to see the whole again more clearly, after which the process was repeated again after a short break.
In a word, misunderstanding of the text is an inevitable phenomenon, moreover, capable of giving specific pleasure and filling with the excitement of persecution. There is no need to be afraid and embarrassed of him, but to take from the text what you can at this stage. The more you thoughtfully continue to unwind the hermeneutic spiral of your knowledge, the further the darkness recedes.
1. Arthur Schopenhauer - "Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom"
Schopenhauer is known today to the general public as one of the founders of the philosophy of pessimism, and - it must be admitted - his vision of the sublunary world and the human lot is indeed very gloomy. Nevertheless, this gloominess is cheerful, lively, seeking, so reading Schopenhauer is anything but depressing - it is no coincidence that you can come across books with titles like "Schopenhauer as Medicine." Presenting his views in a beautiful and plastic language, with irony and even a sense of humor (an unprecedented thing for German philosophy of that time!), In a small book "Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom" he explores the eternal question of how a person can be in this world.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche - "Human, Too Human"
Nietzsche plays a unique role in the history of philosophy. Being one of the most revolutionary, profound and insightful thinkers, he is at the same time something much more - a true school of the spirit, judgment ability and an inimitable literary style, filled with equal fire and mountain freshness. A brilliant psychologist, the subtlest critic of the very foundations of human culture and the creator of an alternative worldview paradigm, he does not just teach to think like no one else in the history of philosophy. He teaches to do it beautifully - in an impeccable artistic form, elevating the reader's aesthetic consciousness to heights at which it has never been. “Human, too human” is a work that is both not too difficult in the context of Nietzsche's legacy and, at the same time, is distinguished by a wide coverage of the topics discussed,and therefore it will be a good starting point, after mastering which you can move in the following way: "Merry Science", "Beyond Good and Evil", "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
3. Seneca - "Moral Letters to Lucilius"
Seneca's Moral Letters to Lucilius is one of the most famous and readable sources on Stoic philosophy. Written in a beautiful syllable in the form of letters to a student and friend, the procurator of Sicily, the book is a call for finding oneself and liberation from the fear of death, empty pursuits, false opinions and desires.
4. Diogenes Laertius - "On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers"
The presented work offers a vast panorama of ancient Greek intellectual life, giving the biography of thinkers from Thales to Epicurus and setting out their main ideas. Being a key primary source (much that we know is gleaned from it) and written almost two thousand years ago, it allows you to immerse yourself in the indescribable atmosphere of ancient thought and get a good initial idea of it.
5. Plato - "Dialogues"
Alfred Whitehead, in his famous words, emphasized that "the whole history of philosophy is notes in the margins of Plato's works." No matter how we relate to the teachings of Plato, we cannot ignore him, since in his doctrine a huge array of further concepts and philosophical searches originates. Plato's dialogues are a lively questioning about the primary issues that occurred at the very dawn of Western civilization, and they are not only the most important philosophical, but also a historical and literary monument, without which education is simply impossible.
6. Erich Fromm - "Escape from Freedom"
Escape from Freedom is a very small book, but at the same time it is one of the most informative. As the name suggests, the work is devoted to the strategies of man's escape from the torment of becoming himself and gaining independence, which leads not only to his personal misfortune and inferiority, but also generates social cataclysms, one of which was World War II.
7. Aldous Huxley - "Counterpoint"
Very few authors have managed to organically combine in a work of art and philosophical components so dissimilar in their tasks. Aldous Huxley's novel Counterpoint is one of these precious exceptions, discussing a wide range of psychological and philosophical issues in an entertaining narrative setting.
8. Epictetus - "What is our good?": In 4 books
Born a slave, Epictetus lived a long life, putting into practice the principles of asceticism, self-sufficiency and freedom from external anxieties, proclaimed by him. His legacy, as recorded by one of his disciples, is in many ways similar to the texts of Seneca, and is distinguished by a moral pathos that anticipates early Christianity.
9. Hong Zicheng - "Taste of the Roots"
It will not be easy to find an author who would express the essence of Eastern philosophy with such laconicism and simplicity as this Chinese of the 17th century. The text of the book "Taste of the Roots" breathes monastic peace and light, and ideas are at the intersection of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, giving not so much an idea of the differing letter of these teachings, as a sense of their spirit and color.
10. Fyodor Dostoevsky - "Notes from the Underground"
Nietzsche once wrote that Dostoevsky is the only psychologist from whom he has something to learn. Indeed, the depth of the insights of his work is amazing. "Notes from the Underground" is not as noticeable and large-scale work as "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Demons", but they represent one of his most concentrated books in terms of intellectual and psychological content.
11. Victor Pelevin - "The Recluse and the Six-Fingered"
The deep conceptual content of Pelevin's books is underestimated both by people with a weak philosophical education and by those who, possessing it, nevertheless have a very distant relationship to philosophy itself. Both the first and the second cannot break through the daring satirical form of his prose, and yet it contains a rethinking of the latest results of world philosophy. Like Dostoevsky, Pelevin works on the border of fiction and philosophical literature and raises key questions of human existence and the historical situation in which we find ourselves. Pelevin must be read in its entirety, for he represents the same school of thought and skepticism as Nietzsche, but the story named here will serve as a good starting point.
12. François de La Rochefoucauld - "Maxims and Moral Reflections"
Written in the 17th century by a French duke and writer, this book is a constellation of aphorisms that discuss issues of human psychology and ethics with wit and tremendous insight. Having become a classic and a must-read for all subsequent connoisseurs of the human soul, it provides the mind with first-class food.
13. Antoine de Saint-Exupery - "Citadel"
Although it is unusual to see Exupery among the authors-thinkers, his still unfinished work "Citadel" is filled with philosophical content to the very brim and offers the reader an integral worldview system, set out in language with a bright, imaginative and searing Nietzschean flame.
14. Marcus Aurelius - "To himself"
A stoic philosopher and part-time Roman emperor, who spent almost most of his life in military campaigns against the barbarians, Marcus Aurelius kept something like a diary - so to speak, in his free time from work. The most important monument of world philosophy, this book captivates with the power of thought, nobility of spirit, intensity of spiritual searches and striving for moral perfection.
15. Bertrand Russell - "History of Western Philosophy"
Among review works on the history of philosophy, the book offered here stands out for a number of advantages. As a famous philosopher himself, Russell combined the simplicity and fascination of presentation with the efficiency of explication of the topic. The latter, however, does not apply to the chapters on Hegel and Nietzsche, which demonstrate an absolute lack of understanding of the named thinkers. Finally, it is important for the unprepared reader that Russell fit his review into one, albeit weighty, volume. For those who are ready for a really serious and very long reading, we can recommend four volumes by D. Antiseri and G. Reale - "Western philosophy from the beginnings to the present day."
© Oleg Tsendrovsky
