Reddit mentions: The best philosophy reference books

This might be heresy, but if you're getting started with philosophy it might be easier to open a philosophy textbook that touches on a wide variety of philosophical writings without actually getting deep into one. That's how most of my lower division classes were.

Robert C. Solomon's The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy convinced me to change majors from engineering to philosophy. (Note, if you click the link, that there are vastly different prices for different formats, some are out of stock).

Alternatively, you could start on Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy and start with some basic topics like causation or logic or ethics or something that you're interested in, and then just go from there, looking to see who the big names are in the topics you're most interested in.

Good luck.

EDIT: fixed link.

I read There are two errors in the the tittle of this book when I was in last year of high school and it totally rocked my world... it might not be that grand but I loved it... btw, I'm a sociology major now but still, I loved that book! I also really loved original Descartes texts.

I read Medidations by Descartes, and I agree it was much more accessable than Kant. I'm not reading a work by Kant but on Kant (https://www.amazon.de/Immanuel-Kant-Otfried-H%C3%B6ffe/dp/3406547621). I think this book is very well structured, the only thing like I said is the language which is hard for me.
Currently I don't have a solid way to access books as I am in a non-english speaking country. There are of course many english books here but my mother tongue is german, and there are quite less german books here. I had bought The Republic by Plato, but unfortunately not the edition that is very practical imo, because the dialogue is written without illustrating who is speaking which is always a hassle when you start to read, trying to figure out where you left off and who was speaking. I have one book which deals with the ancient (this one https://www.amazon.de/Lesebuch-Antike-einflussreichsten-Dichter-bedeutendsten/dp/3730600753). Perhaps it is better if I keep my daily routine of reading Kant, but also start with something easier like this one. I also have https://www.amazon.de/Kleine-Weltgeschichte-Philosophie-Joachim-St%C3%B6rig/dp/3596144329/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468322445&sr=1-8&keywords=philosophie+geschichte however this book seems way too broad, so when I read a chapter on a philosopher it doesn't really show me anything of their thought in detail. I also read something on Schopenhauer, but it was not very well written either - it was a like an unorginized mixture of his life and thought.

I'll have a look on Hume's work you mentioned - I think I saw that in my book store.

No. It's just one of those trollish questions people love to post to rile users up.

Self reference is a great way to show paradoxes. I recommend reading the book

There Are Two Errors in the the Title of This Book

It's a fun and slightly quirky book. Short, too, so you can easily knock it out in a day or two. Though if you want to put thought into the puzzles, you may want to spend longer on it.

Philosophy: The Essential Study Guide by Nigel Warburton, Guidelines on Reading Philosophy by Jim Pryor, and this little handout from Connie Rosati were helpful at the beginning of my undergrad.

This is an interesting suggestion concerning writing from Warburton that is found in his Philosophy: The Basics:

"On the topic of writing clearly, and why it is important, George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, which is in The Penguin Essays of George Orwell(London: Penguin, 1990), is well worth reading."

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking is my first step into philosophy. I'm not finished with it yet, but the thought experiments I've read so far have been very interesting. Dennett brings together various fields of study that he uses to push forward philosophical thinking -there's even a whole section devoted to teaching the fundamentals of how computers operate- and it all dovetails together very well.

The important thing is to learn philosophy. If you don't know how to form thoughts, you don't know how to understand anything. Since you are a libertarian, I assume that you at least have good instincts about logic, if not, you have already been taught some level of philosophy by yourself or somebody else.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Questions-Introduction-Philosophy/dp/0495595152/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332136524&sr=1-2

Great primer for a young person.

The good news is that the grammar has not changed. There are, of course, plenty of words, expressions or syntactical constructions no longer (or never been) in everyday use.

There are specialized philosophical German-English dictionaries, e.g. https://www.amazon.de/Dictionary-Philosophical-W%C3%B6rterbuch-philosophischer-Fachbegriffe/dp/3825284409

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There are index lists and encyclopedias in both languages, e.g.

English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_philosophy | https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html

German: https://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/philosophie/

Maybe reading articles in those is a good preparatory exercise?

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There are also philosophy textbooks for teaching in German schools that usually only contain extracts of philosophical works with a lot of commentary, e.g. https://www.westermann.de/reihe/WEITDENK/Weiterdenken-Ethik-Philosophie

... or other literature that provides an overview and is written for a wider public, e.g. https://www.amazon.de/Grundkurs-Philosophie-Logik-Reclams-Universal-Bibliothek/dp/3150184681

Have you considered reading "Sophies Welt" by Jostein Gaarder in German? You could use it to build up some vocabulary before you go back to the authentic classics?

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For poetry, the only thing that comes to mind is a very good monolingual dictionary in combination with a poetry reading group with natives. If it it is a classic, there would also be commentaries and interpretations, e.g. as a part of the infamous "Königs Erläuterungen und Materialien" series.

Don't panic! I have the Routeledge Dictionary of Philosophy, and it has proved absolutely invaluable. It is concise and to the point, but also goes into deeper explanation where necessary. Not once have I had a query that has not been expertly answered by this wonderful red book. The link that I used is most definitely not the cheapest source, so you may need to look around.

I'm reading this right now. It's amazing.

• Plato (Arguments of the Philosophers) by J. c. b. Gosling.
  
  
• A Dictionary of Philosophy by Antony Flew.
  
  
• Everyday Life in Early America by David Freeman Hawke.
  
  
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson. (Currently Reading)
  
  
• Historical Introduction to Philosophy by Albert B. Hakim
  
  
  Guess my major.

http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Dictionary-Philosophy-Quick-Reference/dp/0199541434/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457487586&sr=8-2&keywords=dictionary+philosophy

http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Dictionary-Philosophy-Robert-Audi/dp/1107643791/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457487586&sr=8-1&keywords=dictionary+philosophy

I own both. They're both good.

I've always liked and used Flew's:

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Philosophy-Revised-Second/dp/0312209231/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457536606&sr=8-1&keywords=dictionary+philosophy+flew

https://www.amazon.com/There-Errors-Title-Revised-Expanded/dp/1551114933

Ricouer's book on Ideas is old but standard

https://www.amazon.com/Husserls-Ideas-Marquette-Studies-Philosophy/dp/0874626099

I have a copy of the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, which is kind of an encyclopedic dictionary; it explains concepts, defines terms, and includes numerous short biographies. There's also some handy 'maps of philosophy' in the appendix which show the relationships between different philosophical concepts and systems.

This is more of an AcademicPhilosophy-style response, I suspect, but I would suggest checking out:

Metaphysics: An Anthology (Sosa and Kim)

Epistemology: An Anthology (Sosa and Kim)

Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Chalmers)

Philosophy of Language (Martinich)

Actually, a good primer might be Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy