The Philosophy Textbook Every Man Should Own

Brett & Kate McKay

6 months ago

The Philosophy Textbook Every Man Should Own

<&excl;-- BEGIN THEIA POST SLIDER -->&NewLine; &NewLine;&NewLine;<div>&NewLine;If you’ve been following AoM long enough, you know I like philosophy&period; I’ve written about philosophy on the site and talked to lots of philosophers on the podcast&period; &NewLine;Philosophy isn’t some esoteric practice for me&period; It’s practical&period; I turn to philosophy to figure out how to live a good and meaningful life&period; &NewLine;But it’s also just fun&period; For me, at least&period; I enjoy seeing how humans from thousands of years ago tried to get their bearings in the world compared to humans living today&period; When you read, study, and talk about philosophy, you’re taking part in a conversation that’s been going on for millennia&period; And conversation is fun&period; I love a good conversation&period; &NewLine;To take part in any conversation, especially the millennia-long great conversation that’s been going on between philosophers, you need to have a basic understanding of what’s been talked about prior to you joining the chat&period; It’s no fun to be in a conversation where people make inside jokes or drop references that go over your head&period; The latter (and, actually, sometimes the former&excl;) happens a lot in philosophy&period; Philosophers are always referencing other philosophers who came before them&period;&NewLine;While you can and should read the primary texts of great philosophical works, many of these primary texts can be confusing and overwhelming&period; Sometimes it helps to have a guide to break things down for you a bit and help you get a handle on an idea&period; &NewLine;I ran into this issue a few years ago&period; I was reading Aristotle’s <a href="https&colon;//amzn&period;to/39lYIgk">Metaphysics</a> and was having trouble wrapping my head around forms and substance and actualities and whatnot&period; I read some supplementary books by professors on the topic but didn’t find them particularly clarifying&period; They were pretty muddled and dense&period; I was talking to a college professor friend of mine about my wrestle with Aristotle, and he told me he had a book that might help&period; &NewLine;The next time I saw him, he lent me his copy of a textbook called <a href="https&colon;//amzn&period;to/37E651W">The Great Conversation&colon; A Historical Introduction to Philosophy </a>by Norman Melchert&period; He bookmarked the section about Aristotle’s Metaphysics&period; &NewLine;I read it and immediately saw the light&period; No joke&period; &NewLine;The way Professor Melchert laid things out allowed me to finally get a better grasp of the relation between forms and substance&period; I was able to turn back to Metaphysics and read the text with greater understanding&period; Even those secondary source books I had originally turned to for guidance started to make more sense&period; &NewLine;I gave my friend his book back and immediately bought a copy for myself&period;&NewLine;It’s a textbook, so it’s expensive&period; I paid &dollar;80 on Amazon for a used edition&period; &NewLine;But man, totally worth the investment&period; &NewLine;The Great Conversation is the most approachable yet comprehensive book on philosophy I’ve come across&period; Melchert does a fantastic job summarizing the big ideas in history’s different schools of thinking, but does so without dumbing things down&period; He also covers pretty much everything, ranging from the pre-Socratics and going all the way up to the postmodernists&period; And he effectively shows how all of these schools of philosophy built on the previous ones&period; You’re able to get a birds-eye view of the great conversation of humanity&period;&NewLine;I’ve found myself cracking open The Great Conversation again and again over the past few years&period; For example, I’ve been on a Kierkegaard kick this past year&period; The Danish philosopher is notoriously difficult to understand sometimes&period; When I’ve gotten stuck on some parts in <a href="https&colon;//amzn&period;to/3PklEg8">The Sickness Unto Death</a>, I go to the section on Kierkegaard in The Great Conversation and get some much-needed clarification&period; &NewLine;Several months ago, a book group I belong to was reading some Heidegger — another notoriously hard-to-understand philosopher&period; &NewLine;&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Being is always the Being of an entity&period;” &NewLine;What in the heck does that mean&quest;&excl;&NewLine;Well, in his chapter about Heidegger, Professor Melchert offers a rough idea that will get you going in the right direction, so you can better grapple with that statement&period; &NewLine;Heck, when I’m bored, I’ll open the book and read a random section&period; I’ve even taken it to the bathroom to read during my daily constitutional&period; Pooping and philosophizing&period; I think Galen would approve&period;&NewLine;Having a copy of this book is like having access to a really smart, friendly, non-condescending philosophy professor in your home&period;&NewLine;If you enjoy philosophy or would like to know more about it, I can’t recommend <a href="https&colon;//amzn&period;to/37E651W">The Great Conversation</a> enough&period; One of the best book investments I’ve made&period; &NewLine;<hr/>&NewLine;With our archives 4,000 articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past&period; This article was originally published in March 2022&period;&NewLine;</div>&NewLine; &NewLine; <a href="https&colon;//www&period;artofmanliness&period;com/living/reading/the-great-conversation-philosophy-textbook/">Source link </a>&NewLine;<&excl;-- END THEIA POST SLIDER -->&NewLine;