10 Philosophical Works I'd Bring To A Desert Island

I have a lot of viewers ask me at one time or another to provide them with some sort of list of philosophical texts or philosophical thinkers sometimes the very general ideas sometimes they're more specific like it would be the top 10 existentialist texts that you would you would suggest me to read and recently my friend and former classmate from Lakeland College Daniel Callahan asked me about a similar kind of list a top 10 list he wanted one down to even you know addition and translation and I'm not going to try to provide any of those sort of details here I think I will do that in a different video but it got me thinking quite a bit I put off creating any sort of listing like that in part because it's very difficult to do I've given a lot of thought to to the one that I'm about to give you here and I'm going to give it to you in the short form and the long form the top five and the top 10 and these are the top five or 10 philosophical works that I would bring with me to a desert island if I could only read these 10 works or these five works for the rest of my life what would they be and this is very different than asking about if you could only read 10 philosophers anything that you like from their works for the rest of your life what would they be because in that case some of the people who didn't make it in here would probably make in it like say Nietzsche or or Kierkegaard but there are certain works that are great not only because they're great in themselves but because they encapsulate a whole bunch of other viewpoints so when you read them you are not only engaging with that thinker you're engaging with that thinkers take on this thing or this thing or this thing or this thinker and I also steer towards the ones that are more systematic that have a lot more meat you could say that are that are elaborating a huge master argument of some type so top five I'm going to give you those first and then I'll expand it to the top ten so number one Plato's Republic number two Augustine City of God number three Thomas Aquinas is so mateal ogi number four de cartes meditations and number five Hegel's phenomenology of spirit so those are the five that I would take with me if I could only pick five to read for the rest of my life to take to the desert island or under the sea or in to the cave or the bomb shelter or what have you if I was allowed to expand it to ten what would I bring with me this is going to seem kind of an eclectic list Aristotle's metaphysics that was a very tough choice and I'll tell you why in a bit Pascal's Ponce's and then it's three what I consider to be really great classics of 20th century European thought one of them is probably not a big surprise to too many people Tigers being in time and the next two are probably a little less well known but I consider them to be equal in quality to Plato's Republic or Hegel's phenomenology of spirit or Martin Heidegger is being in time one of them is mock sailors formalism and ethics and non-formal ethics of values and then the last one would be the guy who I wrote my dissertation on who I still am very fond of Maurice blown Dells first masterwork his own dissertation accion 1883 so let me tell you why I would these particular works Plato's Republic that's that's almost a no-brainer I think if you put together important works lists of philosophy this one almost always makes it in there may be a few people who want to show how you know independent thinkers they are when it comes to Plato they'll put the Phaedrus or the symposium or the gorgeous or who knows the protagonist or something like that in there but most people acknowledge that that the Republic is really his his masterwork if there is any that you want to call Plato's masterwork and the reason why I would bring it along is really any platonic dialogue that I taught and I've talked quite a few of them in my classes every time I go back to them I find more and more interesting stuff that I want to think about more as a matter of fact my old great professor who I read the symposium with over the course of a semester Rick Williams he had been reading the symposium for thirty years and he and say I can't put it down because every time I come back I've got new questions and Plato is good for that because of the way in which he wrote because of the profundity of the thought because of his understanding of not just human nature in general but of types of thinkers and you you get all of that here in this work in the Republic I had a friend who actually taught an intro to philosophy class just using the Republic because you've got metaphysics ethics political philosophy aesthetics epistemology philosophy in nature you've got a whole bunch of different things rolled into it so I don't really care whether you know using the Blum translation or not but I I would definitely include the Republic so that's that's number one number two Augustine City of God now you might say why the City of God and not say the confessions if it's going to be Augustine well the city of God okay it doesn't have the narrative that the confessions does and I really do enjoy that that narrative but it's you know it's got a ton of stuff in here and Augustine engages with other philosophers in the course of the discussions the entire work the city of God is really a defense of Christianity as a a system of life a system of thought as opposed to other ways of looking at things in response to accusations that Christianity was weakening the Roman Empire so August thing has a huge design in writing this he covers all sorts of amazing you know things in here some of it I would say admittedly is not really philosophy some of it you know it is clearly straying you know into into theology but it's it's really worth reading and rereading you know like with Plato the more times you go through it the more you get out of it so that would take us to you know the cusp between ancient and medieval and then you know if I'm allowed to bring entire books Thomas Aquinas he did write a book which is available in multiple volumes called the summit a low GI and in a way it sort of like cheating isn't it to say well I'm going to bring the summit along but it was supposed to be one unified work maybe you could say well you can only bring you know one part of the Samoa law and then I would have to think about which part what I actually pick would it be the first part would it be the first part of the second would it be the second part of the second those are the ones I'd probably you know steer towards the most but I mean the swimmer is is magnificent in that it is engaging with practically everybody who Tom this had ever read in one point or another it's a systematic attempt to try to treat not only Christian doctrine but everything you could think about that's relevant about human nature society metaphysics epistemology and even you know the philosophy of the emotions Aquinas is is sort of taking the best of whatever it is that he comes across from the Christian world from Jewish thinkers from Muslim thinkers from from pagan thinkers and bringing them all together and trying to think them out in some sort of unity so it's really a phenomenal work and you could spend the rest of your life just just you know studying the soma and that would be a worthwhile application of one's time number four this one's a little bit different I have the this French version which I particularly like because it's got not only the meditations and the objections the replies but it also has the Latin below the the French because originally Descartes wrote it in Latin that it was translated into French so if I had to pick a version it would be something like this I have another version which which actually has the Latin and the French facing each other which is kind of nice why would I pick two carts meditations the cart is not doing what I just said that Plato or Augustine or Aquinas are doing which is you know sort of engaging everybody else he's he's trying to sweep everything away and then rebuild what he's doing is is still indebted to medieval scholasticism as Jill song showed in his early work and there's some continuities between Augustine and Descartes that are kind of interesting to look at as well and I just love Descartes for the force of his thought I don't actually buy into his metaphysics but I think it's very interesting to think about if I had to pick you know a viewpoint that I don't espouse to be the viewpoint that I do his spouse perhaps it would be that of Descartes so I know I could certainly read his his meditations profitably the rest of my life and when you add in the the objections and his replies to them then you get like an extra bonus so then we come to number five Hegel's phenomenology of spirit and I've always you know I've always loved Hegel since I started reading in every time that I do the work of working my way through this massive complex difficult tome I get more out of it I can't say that I fully understand Hegel at this point even though I'm you know teaching this this online series on Hegel frankly I don't even know if Hegel completely got Hegel okay when you come down to it there's so much here and again you have something kind of similar to you know it Hegel is the Thomas Aquinas of the modern age trying to synthesize all these different perspectives into one systematic unity that can actually be comprehended in and make sense and he does it in terms of a metaphysics of mind or spirit which develops dialectically and I really like that so I I find even though I don't agree with Hegel you know where he ends up and I don't agree with his his you know some of the twists and turns of dialectic I I would love to be able to read this the rest of my life so those are the top five now let's talk about the the top 10 so we're adding in the next the next ones and I do have some Aristotle and this was a very very tough choice this is the Loeb edition which has you know the Greek on the facing page in English which is which is good because sometimes Aristotle's Greek is reps care and you need to actually see what somebody else had to say about it why the metaphysics this was this is very difficult to decide you know why not the politics or the nikah mccain ethics or if we have to pick another one possibly on the soul well you could make a good argument for any one of those and you know i actually do more work on the politics and the ethics and i teach them more often than i do the metaphysics but i think that if you only had the chance to read one work of Aristotle for a long time this would probably be the best one to do and it would it would be a real head cracker because he's you know dealing with a lot of concepts that are that are difficult to make sense out of it does help to have the other texts I have to say when you're when you're reading ourselves but I think this one could could stand on its own and it will introduce you to things like actuality and potency or the four causes or what privation as opposed to you know the fullness of something is and those are really worthwhile to think about even if you can't find immediate application for them and even if Aristotle's wrong in his metaphysics it's something worth grappling with when you tie it in with some of the other works you know like Aquinas is somewhat a low GI and Hegel's phenomenology of spirit and Plato's Republic I think it assumes an even greater strength to that that makes it more worth engaging with we jump all the way it back into the modern period and I pick des cartes great nemesis the one who called him useless and uncertain 90 the answer that the guy who said that Descartes brought it in God just to get his system going and then left them all over to the side and that's Paschal sponsees and the Ponce's are fairly systematic but they're also somewhat anti-systemic by their very nature by what they're trying to grapple with it is a work of apologetics that that Pascal was never fully able to finish so it's sort of like you know Nietzsche's will wilt a power or some other people's works where it's it's they're there they're not lost the works that were left behind that somebody else had to compile but what's there is just brilliant and I would love to read Pascal for the rest of my life as well so this is this is a work that I've derived a lot of enjoyment and benefit from over the course of my philosophical career now we jump into the 20th century Martin Heidegger is being in time not a book that I if you asked me ten years ago I would have put in there but it's really grown on me over time I really enjoy some of Heidegger's analyses after you get your way past his weird language that he comes up with but you know if you can get through Hegel you can get through Heidegger in that respect he's got a lot he's got a lot of really great insights to communicate he's wrong about some things I think you know definitely wrong about about certain things but I think he's also got some things very right and this is one of those works where you're going to get discussions of other thinkers you know liked it card or like Conte or like Aristotle and so that makes it you know very enjoyable as well my sailors formalism and ethics and non-formal ethics of values let's see how thick this book is it's got a lot of really great material Schuyler was a phenomenologist who was a contemporary of who Cyril and Heidegger and you know from Chris role and Heidegger you get one genealogy of phenomenology from Schaller you get you get another one and Schuyler was very interested in in value and in ethics and so he discusses just all sorts of things you know the subtitle a new attempt towards the foundation of an ethical personalism Schaller thought that person's are what are fundamentally most real you know it's a personalist metaphysics and he just discusses you know topic after topic at the topic in a very innovative way and if you could only pick one book by Schaller because he wrote a lot of other great books for me this would be the one and what's great about this is he's also going to discuss as many of the other ideas about ethics and value and in the process about metaphysics and epistemology and how we understand things as he possibly can on the way so he's going to gauge Aristotle he's going to engage Augustine he's going to engage Conte he's going to engage even you know people like Hegel to a certain extent um the last one somebody by the way who Schaller invited to collaborate with him on construed Ian when Schaller was in charge of it and who turned him down for a variety of reasons there's there's a lot to be said there maurice blown dealt and blown dell wrote a lot of works as well blown dell was called the french Hegel or the Catholic Hegel by by many people because what he's doing in this and what he's doing it other works is very similar to what's going on in the phenomenology of spirit he's tracing out this entire dialectical development you know working from the bottom level all the way up to the highest forms of society culture religion philosophy and trying to you know do a rigorous analysis from a essentially phenomenological perspective he calls it the method of imminence but it's really a type of phenomenology anti dating whose role by the way and it's it's great it's um it's very systematic but it's not you know it doesn't have the sort of stultifying problems that philosophical systems do because Blondell was very attuned I mean the books called action and he thinks of thinking itself as a type of action and he's interested in seeing how not our just thoughts about being you know cause things to be the way they are he's interested in seeing when we're acting as persons what comes out of that and so you know just brilliant work the this is actually the translation I would recommend the the Blanchette translation so those are my top ten if I was stuck on a desert island and could not ever get my hands on any other philosophical works books that I would bring along in the the raft the the canoe what would have you and like I said I had to give a lot of thought to these you notice that most of them have a couple qualities in common they're by top-notch thinkers who you know just bring brilliance to whatever it is that there's they're studying they're systematic they are working out a rigorous unified conception of things trying not to leave anything out in the process they for the most part engage other thinkers other people other developments within the the history of ideas so by reading them you are getting their take on things but you are at least getting a take on on the books that you weren't able to bring to the island with you and those three aspects really go into making them in my view some of the most desirable works to to have along

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

Views: 61,276

Rating: 4.9114585 out of 5

Keywords: Lecture, Lesson, Talk, Education, Student, College, University, Sadler, Philosophy (Professional Field), Plato (Author), Aristotle (Author), Augustine Of Hippo (Saint), Thomas Aquinas (Saint), René Descartes (Author), Blaise Pascal (Author), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Author), Martin Heidegger (Author), Max Scheler, Maurice Blondel, Systematic, Dialogue, History, Desert Island, Top 10, Top 5, Books

Id: ceqXTtcDwNI

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 09 2014