My Essential Intro to Philosophy Reading List
I’ve received countless requests for the reading list for my Intro to Philosophy classes, of which I am rather proud. So I figured I would put together a philosophy reading list blog post to make it easy to share my Intro to Philosophy reading list without having to dig up my old syllabi.
As you will see, my intro to philosophy classes generally take an historical approach, with some special topics sprinkled in. I find that an historical approach gives students a better sense of the drama of philosophy and a much richer picture of the evolution of many philosophical concepts and ideas that are sometimes taken for granted.
Sometimes I have used a textbook, and other times I have relied entirely on primary sources. I will provide the full list, both textbook and primary source books, for anyone who wishes to do a deep dive into my approach to learning or teaching philosophy at the introductory level. I am likewise proud of the fact that I treat my intro to philosophy classes, regardless of the number of students, more like graduate seminars than intro-level lectures, not because of the difficulty but because of my expectations for class participation and a high bar for the quantity, thoroughness, and breadth of the reading I ask them to do.
Textbook
When using a textbook, I generally use Archetypes of Wisdom by Douglas J. Soccio. Although I wish Archetypes of Wisdom was a bit broader in scope, incorporating some philosophers in the history of philosophy that I feel deserve a fuller treatment, particularly 19th-century thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau and 20th-century philosophers such as Michel Foucault, generally this textbook’s mode of presenting various philosophers as archetypes is effective at drawing out the dramatic contrast between various philosophers in the history of philosophy. And, of course, I developed the Aplia content in the MindTap digital course materials that accompany this textbook, and I am particularly proud of the various interactive animations I developed to demystify philosophical concepts.
The Presocratics and the Sophists
I generally rely on the Soccio Archetypes of Wisdom textbook readings to cover the Presocratics and the Sophists, but here are a couple of resources on these topics as well. I didn’t used to teach the Presocratics, but I find their introduction to key philosophical problems that persist to this day, such as the problem of the One and the Many, to be worthwhile.
Socrates and Plato
In my Intro to Philosophy class, I tend to cover the following dialogues from Plato, in the order shown:
Aristotle
For Aristotle, I usually cover his views on scientific induction in Posterior Analytics and his views on character and virtue in Nicomachean Ethics:
Stoicism
For the Stoics and stoicism I usually include the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic:
Medieval Philosophy
After ancient philosophy as resporecsented by the Presocratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, I cover a bit of medieval philosophy and theology as represented by Thomas Aquinas, particularly his Five Ways, or five arguments for the existence of a God as a necessarily existing, perfect being, and as the first cause of the cosmos as a whole:
The Origin of Modern Philosophy and Continental Rationalism
Although I thoroughly enjoy teaching the Modern period and would love to spend more time on other Rationalists like Spinoza and Leibniz, I generally include only Descartes’s Meditations in my intro to philosophy class. I will cover the full gamut of topics in Descartes’s Meditations such as foundationalism, his skeptical method, the Wax Argument, his Evil Deceiver thought experiment, his version of the ontological argument for God’s existence and why God cannot be an Evil Deceiver, and, of course, mind-body dualism. I will sometimes include sections of The Problem of God in Modern Thought by my former professor and mentor Philip Clayton who argues that Descartes’s Meditations does not represent as radical a break with he medieval period as he is commonly represented.
Modern Philosophy: British Empiricism
Like with the Rationalists, I wish I had time to cover a wider selection of the Empiricists from the Modern period, such as George Berkeley’s idealism. But I generally include David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with a greater emphasis on David Hume and his skeptical analysis of causation and causal necessity:
Kant’s Epistemology and Transcendental Idealism
Immanuel Kant is one of the key turning points in the history pf philosophy with his transcendental ideal as a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism as the culmination of the Modern period, and with his view that the world we experience is a constructed world created (albeit objectively, or intersubjectively) as the first step toward the turn toward subjectivity in post-Kantian philosophy. At this stage in the course I will cover Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, and I will return to Kant later in the course to cover Kantian Ethics.
Nietzsche and Post-Kantian Philosophy
After Kant’s epistemology, I move right into Nietzsche with his emphasis on individuality and personal authenticity, truth as metaphor, and his critique of objectivity and scientific knowledge as result of our weaker herd-like instincts. Nietzsche’s emphasis on subjectivity represents a radical break with the quest for objectivity typified by the Modern period, and is thus an excellent segue into post-Kantian and postmodern philosophy. I typically cover Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (found in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s) and selected passages from The Gay Science:
Foucault: Nietzsche’s Heir
Foucault is arguably Nietzsche’s conceptual heir, both because of his emphasis on the archaeology of knowledge, as he calls it, and because of Foucault’s concept of Power/Knowledge as related to Nietzsche’s concept of Will to Power. In typically cover Foucault’s concept of Power/Knowledge in the chapter “Two Lectures” from the following text:
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Language Games
In my intro to philosophy class, I typically include the first 20 or so (English) pages from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Not only is the concept of a “Language” game an excellent segue into late-20th-century postmodern thinkers such as Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, but the examples Wittgenstein uses to make his case that the meaning of language has to do with how language is used in specific contexts (as opposed to meaning as reference) are fun, relatable, and intuitive even for introductory level philosophy students. I will sometimes also include selections from On Certainty.
Heidegger
Although Heidegger’s Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) can be a bit daunting for introductory level philosophy students because of it’s length and because of Heidegger’s often-cryptic German terminology, I find that students easily grasp the fundamentals of Heidegger as long as I provide them with a handy cheat sheet of Heideggerian terms:
Existentialism: Kierkegaard, Camus, and Sartre
I include representatives of both Christian existentialism and atheistic existentialism in my Intro to Philosophy classes. Although I almost always use the chapter on Kierkegaard in Soccio’s Archetypes of Wisdom as an introduction to Kierkegaard, I hav included his Concluding Unscientific Postscript here for reference, as I typically cover only his Stages on Life’s Way contained in that text. In contrast, I also include Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus on absurdity, suicide, and the meaning of life. And I include Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism Is a Humanism as the seminal text of existentialism in the 20th century:
Ethics and Moral Philosophy
After existentialism, I typically cover the three main areas of ethics and moral philosophy: virtue ethics, consequentialist ethics / utilitarianism, and deontological / Kantian ethics. Although I chiefly use the relevant textbook chapters from Soccio’s Archetypes of Wisdom to cover Aristotle on virtue ethics, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill on utilitarianism and consequentialist ethics, and Kant’s moral philosophy, I have included some primary source readings here for completion’s sake. I sometimes also include Animal Liberation by Peter Singer as an example of applied ethics and of a contemporary moral philosopher, activist, and utilitarian:
Postmodernism
Even though the term “postmodern” is something of a junk philosophical term that can refer to any number of different views in philosophy, not to mention its corresponding term in other disciplines such as literature and art history, I still find the term “postmodern” to be a useful way to capture the contrast between the Modern period’s emphasis on objectivity and certainty and post-Kantian and late-20th century skepticism about objectivity. The two texts I commonly include in my Intro to Philosophy class as representative of postmodernism are The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Simulations by Jean Baudrillard:
Theories of Truth and Philosophy of Science
Ever since I was an undergraduate student at Sonoma State University I have been fascinated by different theories of truth, specifically the coherence theory of truth. I commonly relate the coherence theory of truth to Thomas Kuhn’s account of paradigm shifts in the history and nature of science. For a simple introduction to the various theories of truth themselves, I assign the chapter on “Truth” from The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy by Robert Solomon. And, of course, for Thomas Kuhn on paradigm shifts in science I sometimes include The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Political Philosophy and the State of Nature
Even though political philosophers of the Modern period such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes come long before postmodernism in the history of philosophy, I typically teach political philosophy and the State of Nature in the Modern period after I teach postmodernism. From a postmodern standpoint, the various Modern political philosophers’ accounts of the State of Nature look more like a postmodern narrative, or rather a metanarrative, than on objectively true or historical account of man’s natural state. So, for me, it makes sense to draw attention to the narrative features of political philosophy in the Modern time period after students first encounter Wittgenstein and Lyotard on Language Games and metanarratives, respectively.
When I do finally get around to covering political philosophy and the State of Nature in my Introduction to Philosophy class, I typically include John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes for opposing views on the State of Nature and of the nature of rights and the social contract:
Thoreau and American Transcendentalism
I didn’t used to teach Thoreau or American Transcendentalism, but I find that it resonates with me more in recent years. Perhaps it’s because I myself have had many experiences that I would consider transcendent. Perhaps it’s because I find Thoreau’s breadth of topics refreshing, from his reeflections on nature to his reflections on American literacy. Perhaps I find Thoreau’s conceptual and philosophical rebelliousness inspiring, in the same way that I find Nietzsche’s rebelliousness refreshing and inspiring. Whatever the reason, I find Thoreau’s Walden to be a veritable fountain of wisdom and inspiration, both philosophical and practical. I commonly also include Thoreau’s short text Walking as a companion reading in my Intro to Philosophy class:
The Mind and Consciousness
I have always had a strong philosophical interest in philosophy of mind and the nature of consciousness. My (incomplete) dissertation topic was mental causation in philosophy of mind, including the stubbornly persistent Problem of Causal Exclusion raised by Jaegwon Kim. In my Intro to Philosophy classes, I usually include a three-class-session unit on the mind and consciousness, with day one focusing on dualism (both Cartesian substance dualism and property dualism), day two on materialist theories of mind (identity theory, behaviorism, and functionalism), and day three on emergence and non-reductive physicalism.
I typically assign only online readings for this unit, but I have also included several primary sources below for reference and for completion’s sake, for anyone interested in a deeper philosophical dive into the mind and consciousness.
Online Readings:
Text Readings:
Free Will and Determinism
For a discussion of free will, determinism, and compatibilism (the view that free will and determinism don’t contradict each other—that both can be true simultaneously), I have students read the textbook chapter “Freedom” from The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy by Robert Solomon. I typically cover free will and determinism after my three-class-session unit on the mind and consciousness so I can relate the topic of free will to the topic of mental causation in philosophy of mind.
Science and Religion
I typically include a unit on the science/religion debate in my Intro to Philosophy class, focusing not on the typical creation/evolution debate but instead on the constructive dialog between science and religion. I typically include readings from one or more of the following:
Conclusion
There you have it! This is an ambitious reading list for an undergraduate Introduction to Philosophy course, but I find that my students rise to the occasion with some guidance from me. And this list is the culmination of nearly 20 years of experience as a community college and university-level philosophy instructor. I am thankful to each and every one of my former philosophy professors and mentors, without whom my high vision of what an Introduction to Philosophy class wouldn’t be nearly so high.
