Hypatia's Girl Angrily Reads the Apology of Socrates

"Apology" in Five Dialogues 2e, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. John M. Cooper (Hackett, 2002)

I'm preparing for the Grand Move, and realized that this book is packed away, oops! So, you know, it might be a little short.

The trial of Socrates is one of my favorite stories in philosophy.  Which says something as I got into philosophy for the stories.  There is something enormously compelling about the image of this pug-nosed old geezer daring Athens to put him to death.

What we have in this dialogue is the "transcript" of Socrates' defense at his trial.  Before a 500 man jury, Socrates is expected to defend himself against the fairly serious charges of corrupting the youth and atheism/worshiping false gods.  It is also in this dialogue that we see the formulation of the idea that Socrates is the wisest man because he knows that he knows nothing.

Hypatia's Girl Angrily Reads the Presocratics

A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia, ed. Patricia Curd, Trans. Richard D. McKirahan (Hackett, 1996)

This one's a little difficult to blog, because it covers a good 300 years and 19 disparate thinkers.  All in, you know, 106 pages.

It's been longer than I like to admit since I've really done any work with the old ancient philosophers, at least 2 years since that Aristotle class, and heavens knows when before that class that I would have done much work on the ancients.  Which is not to say that I don't think the history of philosophy is important, it's mostly that I kind of always thought that I found the ancients kind of boring. Well, except for Heraclitus, who is clearly the most bad-ass of bad-asses.  (And also, in the interest of scrupulous honesty, "kind of boring" can be wielded against a lot of philosophy, particularly if you're not used to reading it, or its A.J. Ayer.  Just saying.)

As I was pleasantly surprised to discover, a good ten years of philosophy education and general growing up can make reading the pre-Socratics much more fun.

Hypatia's Girl Angrily Reads the History of Philosophy

Given that I'm starting to prepare to depart for some fancy-pants philosophy learning (hooray for escaping the surly death of retail!) in the south (good-bye midwestern winters!) I sort of figure I should read the recommended reading list, so that I might pass for a philosopher who knows a thing or two.

To make it fun and keep me honest, I'll blog the books I read, then you all can learn the history of philosophy with me.  The plan, as it stands now, is to read straight through, for those of you who want to follow along at home.  This plan, however, is subject to change upon my whims and attention span.  (She says, eying the medieval section with a sigh)

The list - or so they tell me:

I.  Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

1.  The Presocratics (Curd and McKirahan; Hackett)
2.  Plato, Apology
3.  Plato, Republic
4.  Plato, Theaetetus
5.  Aristotle, De Anima
6.  Aristotle, Metaphysics
7.  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
8.  Aristotle, Politics
9.  Epicurus, The Epicurus Reader (Inwood & Gerson; Hackett)
10.  Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
11.  Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Skepticism
12.  Plotinus, The Enneads

II.  Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy

1.  Augustine, Confessions
2.  Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will
3.  Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
4.  Avicenna, The Metaphysics of "The Healing" (Marmura; Brigham Young Univ. Press)
5.  Anselm, Proslogion
6.  Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy
7.  Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (abridged, Guttmann and Rabin; Hackett)
8.  Aquinas, Selected Philosophical Writings (McDermott; Oxford)
9.  Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings (Wolter; Hackett)
10.  Ockham, Philosophical Writings (Boehner and Brown; Hackett)
11.  Cusanus, Of Learned Ignorance
12.  Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man

III.  Modern Philosophy

1.  Machiavelli, The Prince
2.  Hobbes, Leviathan
3.  Descartes, Selected Philosophical Writings (Cottingham, et al; Cambridge)
4.  Spinoza, Ethics
5.  Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics
6.  Locke, Second Treatise of Government
7.  Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
8.  Vico, The New Science (Bergin and Fisch; Cornell)
9.  Rousseau, The Social Contract
10.  Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
11.  Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
12.  Kant, Critique of Judgment

IV.  19th Century Philosophy

1.  Fichte, Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre
2.  Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom
3.  Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
4.  Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (trans. Payne), vol. 1
5.  Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy (Hackett)
6.  Emerson, Nature
7.  Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
8.  Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
9.  Mill, Utilitarianism
10.  Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
11.  Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
12.  Peirce, Philosophical Writings (Buchler; Dover)

V.  20th Century Philosophy

1.  Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
2.  James, Pragmatism
3.  Dewey, Experience and Nature
4.  Husserl, Cartesian Meditations
5.  Heidegger, Being and Time
6.  Sartre, Being and Nothingness
7.  de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity
8.  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
9.  Arendt, The Human Condition
10.  Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
11.  Martinich and Sosa, eds., Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology***
12.  Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
13.  Foucault, The Order of Things
14.  Butler, Gender Trouble
15.  Derrida, The Gift of Death