8 Philosophy Books You Need to Read

Want to start reading philosophy? Here are eight books we recommend.

Some of these are difficult for beginners, but they are well worth the effort. Spending time reading a difficult work of philosophy will make you a better reader and a better thinker.

Enjoy!

Intro 00:00

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[loloverlord]

I teach philosophy in a french highschool, and while you're presenting classics and strong authors only, I think you are mixing up difficulties level to a point where it could really be confusing for a beginer.

Plato's dialogues are nice and beautiful. It's not always easy to understand, but it's always compelling to read. You have strong and well defined characters, clashes of ideas, intellectual dramas (can Socrates be saved from his unfair trial ? Euthyphro's ending is more soul crushing than most tragic plays). You have homo-erotic stuff that Oscar Wilde would die for, secret love affairs to read between the lines, a lot of hilarious situations and jokes, great analogies to explain complex ideas, geometry lessons (it's more exciting than it sounds), and myths so creative they changed our culture (Gyges invisibility ring from the Republic inspired other myths with northmen or hobbits, everyone heard about the androgynous beings split in two and condemned to search for their lost soulmate, and some people still believe in the lost Atlantis described in Crito). So yes, you should begin with Plato, everyone should try to read some Plato, even if you think it's not for you, I can assure you there is a dialogue you will find interesting and compelling.
You should try and begin with Euthyphro (the nature of religious devotion), the Apology (Socrates on trial), Gorgias (the nature of rhetorics and the problem with democracy), Meno (the nature of ideas), the Symposium (about love and drunkness) and even the Republic (is there something behind death, and how should we live?).
You should avoid some difficult dialogues at first : do not read the Philebe, the Sophist, Theethetes, or the Laws as your first Plato. It would be a strange reading experience, unless you're a mathematician, a logician, a software designer or some kind of reader who already derives pleasure from classical logic.

Meanwhile, Aristotle's works are much dryer to read, especially for a beginer. Nichomachean ethics is the easy part, sure, but the easy part of Aristotle's works is still pretty complicated compared to Plato's.
If Plato and Aristotle were alive today, both teaching classical athenian philosophy : Plato wrote the intro class, highschool and college undergrad courses, teaching more difficult stuff in his class and by oral tradiction only, no notes allowed. While Aristotle published every research paper, on the most difficult philosophical problems understandable only for college to PhD level, and a lot of stuff on subsequent reasearch fields like astronomy, physics and zoology.

David Hume is a very good read, but instead of getting your head insides that treaty first, I strongly recommand to begin with the easy version : "An enquiry concerning human understanding". It's shorter, pursue the same line of reasonning and it was litterally written for beginers.

Reading Descartes's letters is a very unusual tip, but I think you're right : it's a good way to see how philosophy is supposed to be a dialogue in essence (...much like Plato's works). If you really want to read Descartes and don't find any edition of his correspondance to a reasonnable price, you can begin with the "Discours de la méthode" (Discourse on the method), which was designed for beginers : it's really short and summerise most of his thoughts about skepticism and science. If you're at an intermediate level and already know some philosphy, I recommand skipping that Discours and get right into the more thorough (but not too complicated) "Meditations of First philosophy". Descartes is a never-ending spiral of complexity, the more you read it, the more you understand how subtle and complicated it really is.

And it's the exact opposite of what you should feel reading Kant. While this systematic philosopher becomes easier and clearer while you read it and note the most significant words and expressions, I strongly recommand you not to begin with his longest, most complex and subtle work : Critique of Pure Reason. It's not a challenge, it's a suicide, it's like day one at a bakery school and the chef tells you « today, we're gonna do a two meters high wedding cake, and each stage is a different recipe ». I politely suggest you to try and bake some croissants first, at least. If you really do want to begin with that colossal book, I suggest you to read Kant's intro to the second edition before you even buy the Critique of Pure Reason. It's short, yet thorough, understandable and gives you a good feeling of the ambitions at play and the task lying ahead.
If you want to read Kant, I strongly recommand "What is Enlightenment ?", which is very short and was specifically written for beginers, or the longer but still quite easy to read "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch".

I simply don't know Ayer's book, so I'm trusting you on that one. About analytical philosophy, I think the best first read to recommand would be "Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy” Do not feel intimidated by this long title, it's a conference quite easy to follow, while presenting most different aspects of philosophy. I used a part of it with my seventeen years old pupils, and it kinda works as a general intro to philosophy.

I strongly disagree with you for the next two books. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are simply not for beginers at all, you need a warning not to read those books if you're not already familiar with some philosophical ideas and works.
You should already know some concepts about analytical philosophy before reading Wittgenstein, it's a poor introduction to the field (or the best intro to philosophy if you're a very lonesome genius, but there is no in-between).
Worst of all, for a beginer, “Time and Being” is simply a long and obscure rant made of gibberish, you need to read at least some Kant and a thing or two from Husserl (which is pretty difficult on itself) to start reading Heidegger and understand it. I haven't read Heidegger in english, though, maybe the translation is dumbing it down, but in German or French my warning is heavily justified.

Those are my two cents and my personnal opinion. Have fun reading, and if you really want to try difficult books, then feel free to completely ignore my advice: while I have a good experience about teaching and explaining those authors, I mostly teach to teenagers, your adult mind is something else entirely.

[scottnance]

One point about Hume is that he wrote in English, and fairly modern English at that, so there aren't any issues with translation. In addition, Hume was a superb stylist, so he's actually enjoyable to read from both a substantive and an esthetic perspective.

[sophiaisabelle]

Philosophy as an academic discipline may be difficult to understand in all its aspects, however, I do think that more people should learn about philosophical values as they are helpful in our lives. The way you speak about those books made me think that you have a vast knowledge about certain things that are deemed timely and relevant.

[huugosorsselsson]

Two great books for absolute beginners:

-Gilles Deleuze: Difference and Repetition
-Alfred North Whitehead: Process and Reality

[dcmsr]

This is why I love this channel, just the back and forth engagement in comments is very enlightening as a beginner myself!!!

[uniomystica]

I just stumbled upon on this channel and its seems like this channel was the channel i have been seeking sense i joined youtube. I look forward oo seeing this channel blossom.
Much love!

[chicago]

An old college philosophy professor of mine told us that Kant’s German was so difficult to read that even the German students would learn English in order to read him in English translation.

I don’t know if it’s true but it sounds believable.

[sarast.]

As a philosophy major I actually feel like it is hard to make a distinction between "beginner level" and like a more "advanced level" of philosophy... Sure, there are certain philosophers that are more complicated to understand because you might need some understanding of their use of certain words and expressions, but in the end if you want to read it and understand their thoughts, you will have to start somewhere. I see here comments by people saying that e.g. reading Kant as a "beginner" is a stupid idea but I just feel like philosophy is something that you just have to to jump right into it and then figure out where to go from there, trying to understand the key concepts and ideas. To people who are not used to read philosophy, I would just recommend starting somewhere with some of the big names and then just read something and if you are not really interested in it, skip it and go on to the next thing until you reach a philosopher or a topic that you find soo interesting that putting all the work to like slowly understand it is fun to you and not a difficult task...

[matthewnguyen]

As a philosopher for Theological studies, this video is really well done. I agree with you on all your recommendations and reasoning. Just found your channel and it has solid content

[apmontes]

I think it's good to start with Plato. I'm not a philosophy student (heck, not even something related), yet I found his Dialogues quite easy to digest –and also quite interesting.

[Garland]

For a lecture series on Kant. There is Robert Paul Wolff avaliable on YouTube.

[creativewritingcorner]

Love your breakdown! It's a great list.
One comment: 'Critique of Pure Reason' and 'Being and Time' are two of the most important and influential philosophy texts of all time; they're also two of the most difficult (add in Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' and you have the whole trifecta). I wouldn't push beginning philosophy readers into that deep end just yet; they'll catch their death of German. More concise introductions to those philosophers' thoughts are Kant's 'Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics' and Heidegger's essay "What is Metaphysics?".
In addition, regarding the order of presentation, I'd read Descartes before Hume and Wittgenstein before Ayer (order of who influenced who).
To this list I'd add Nietzsche's 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' (particularly if your tastes are more toward literature than straightforward philosophy). Solid runners-up include Spinoza's 'Ethics', Kierkegaard's 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript', and Bertrand Russell's 'The Problems of Philosophy'.
Anyone interested in more contemporary, life-relevant philosophical thought could benefit from Robert Nozick's 'The Examined Life'.
Enjoy!

[AgustinStark]

Im from Spain and i am watching your videos to acquire more vocabulary in English. Thank you!

[Jan]

The Symposium is a must read. You cannot leave that out. It is Plato's love-song to Socrates. I first read it years ago as a philosophy major. It made me thoroughly ashamed of the emphasis I was putting on grades. Also, the ring of gyges from The Republic. Both of these can be life-changing works to read.

[commieRob]

Thank you so much for including Hume! I don't know why he is so overlooked.

[Dreaminginceladon]

Thank you for the recommendations! One way to stretch the life of those affordable editions is clear contact paper. I started doing that in high school and can attest that it helped a lot. In fact, I still have one of the books and it looks good considering that it's from the 90s.

[hamzaalikhoso]

Thank you. Subscribed and waiting for new videos! 😄

[JingleJangleJam]

Thank you for your work in philosophy.

[sheldonscott]

Funny how you present a way to read/study Heidegger in the exac t way I've been lately doing; hats off.

[ba-ggjo]

Excellent video, so refreshing from the normal stuff on here talking about "nice" covers, Vampires, Dragons and comics, sorry graphic novels. Keep up the good work.