Good philosophy reads

[alltrees]

I'm currently reading Russell's History of Western Phil but would like to branch out and read other stuff. Particularly, more modern philosophy and non-European stuff. I'm wondering if anyone could suggest books about these topics, or any other resources relevant to philosophy that they have found enjoyable.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Brian Magee is still great for people without academic training in the subject. I neglected to add in my past post that that book has a lot of interesting sidebars about how philosophical ideas connected up to art, literature, and religion developments at the time, including many full-color prints of QB-relevant paintings.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

Not sure if it counts, but the Tao Te Ching is very readable.

[Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage]

As someone who has tried to get through some philosophical texts with very little experience ( to be fair, I tried to read wittgenstein's tractacus and leviathan, neither of which are that easy ), I found myself just skimming and then having 0 retention of what I'd read or any real understanding. At the end of the day, I'd suggest relying mostly on overview texts (I'm reading Russell's at the minute as well) and plato.edu / Wikipedia. If you find yourself interested in any specific author or movement, though, I'd say go for it and read the actual texts. I have a huge pile of books to get through, but I plan on reading some Kierkegaard purely because I find it interesting.

It also might be worth it to read some shorter texts that come up less frequently - I read on certainty earlier and it's gotten me a few tossups, and some philosophers are even most well known for their short works. At the end of the day, though, a lot of primary texts in philo are just not worth your time.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

As someone who has tried to get through some philosophical texts with very little experience ( to be fair, I tried to read wittgenstein's tractacus and leviathan, neither of which are that easy ), I found myself just skimming and then having 0 retention of what I'd read or any real understanding. At the end of the day, I'd suggest relying mostly on overview texts (I'm reading Russell's at the minute as well) and plato.edu / Wikipedia. If you find yourself interested in any specific author or movement, though, I'd say go for it and read the actual texts. I have a huge pile of books to get through, but I plan on reading some Kierkegaard purely because I find it interesting.

It also might be worth it to read some shorter texts that come up less frequently - I read on certainty earlier and it's gotten me a few tossups, and some philosophers are even most well known for their short works. At the end of the day, though, a lot of primary texts in philo are just not worth your time.

If you want an influential, short work, there's always the Communist Manifesto

[alltrees]

Brian Magee is still great for people without academic training in the subject. I neglected to add in my past post that that book has a lot of interesting sidebars about how philosophical ideas connected up to art, literature, and religion developments at the time, including many full-color prints of QB-relevant paintings.

I will definitely look into that, thank you! The thread you linked is also very informative.

Not sure if it counts, but the Tao Te Ching is very readable.

Thanks. I'm definitely trying to find non-European stuff.

As someone who has tried to get through some philosophical texts with very little experience ( to be fair, I tried to read wittgenstein's tractacus and leviathan, neither of which are that easy ), I found myself just skimming and then having 0 retention of what I'd read or any real understanding. At the end of the day, I'd suggest relying mostly on overview texts (I'm reading Russell's at the minute as well) and plato.edu / Wikipedia. If you find yourself interested in any specific author or movement, though, I'd say go for it and read the actual texts. I have a huge pile of books to get through, but I plan on reading some Kierkegaard purely because I find it interesting.

It also might be worth it to read some shorter texts that come up less frequently - I read on certainty earlier and it's gotten me a few tossups, and some philosophers are even most well known for their short works. At the end of the day, though, a lot of primary texts in philo are just not worth your time.

I've never read Wittgenstein, but Leviathan can definitely be somewhat dense. If you want short reads that are easy to get into, I'd recommend looking at the Platonic dialogues, as well as some of the shorter Stoic works. You should definitely definitely also read some of Borges' short stories, which are great as an introduction to metaphysics. Pretty short and extremely interesting.
I'm wondering though - how do you personally navigate plato.stanford.edu (I'm assuming you use it directly) ? It is very useful but I am never sure of where to start, outside of the philosophers I'm already familiar with (which are almost all European/American).

[Muriel Axon]

This is not a "read," nor is it likely to help you in quiz bowl, but Peter Adamson's podcast History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is great: http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/

It doesn't quite deliver on the promise of the name (where's India? China? Africa?) but it's great for geeking out about obscure Islamic philosophers or Aristotle deep cuts that you won't learn about by looking up the clues from a tossup on Metaphysics.

I've never read Russell's history but I've heard it's quite biased.

As for modern philosophy, some short, relatively easy-to-read papers/excerpts include "Modern Moral Philosophy" (Anscombe), "A Defense of Abortion" (Thomson), "A Plea for Excuses" (Austin), "What is it like to be a bat?" (Nagel), and "The New Riddle of Induction" (Goodman). Also anything by G. E. Moore.

[Sam]

This is not a "read," nor is it likely to help you in quiz bowl, but Peter Adamson's podcast History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is great: http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/

It doesn't quite deliver on the promise of the name (where's India? China? Africa?) but it's great for geeking out about obscure Islamic philosophers or Aristotle deep cuts that you won't learn about by looking up the clues from a tossup on Metaphysics.

The podcast is great, and it's closer to a "read" than it once was as Adamson has started a book series based on his transcripts.The main weakness is he goes in roughly chronological order and so if you're hoping for episodes looking at people after around 1250, they don't exist yet.
For more history of philosophy type books, I enjoyed Anthony Kenny's four volume set (ancient, medieval, early modern and modern).

[schen]

For more history of philosophy type books, I enjoyed Anthony Kenny's four volume set (ancient, medieval, early modern and modern).

I second this. I'm reading this right now, and I find it a lot less dry than Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The author has collated all four volumes into a single book (A New History of Western Philosophy) that you can find online.

[alltrees]

This is not a "read," nor is it likely to help you in quiz bowl, but Peter Adamson's podcast History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is great: http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/

It doesn't quite deliver on the promise of the name (where's India? China? Africa?) but it's great for geeking out about obscure Islamic philosophers or Aristotle deep cuts that you won't learn about by looking up the clues from a tossup on Metaphysics.

I've never read Russell's history but I've heard it's quite biased.

As for modern philosophy, some short, relatively easy-to-read papers/excerpts include "Modern Moral Philosophy" (Anscombe), "A Defense of Abortion" (Thomson), "A Plea for Excuses" (Austin), "What is it like to be a bat?" (Nagel), and "The New Riddle of Induction" (Goodman). Also anything by G. E. Moore.

This podcast is great - I just listened to the one on Seneca and it gives create historical context and has some cute/funny anecdotes. There are also a lot of podcasts on Islamic philosophers I've never heard of, so that's great.

I will definitely look into those papers. Thanks so much!

For more history of philosophy type books, I enjoyed Anthony Kenny's four volume set (ancient, medieval, early modern and modern).

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll keep an eye out for it.