I'm planning to start a philosophy reading group at my school next year and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for short philosophical books (fiction or nonfiction)? I needed about 12 books - 1 per month - and could only think of 6.

They should be texts intelligent 13-16 year olds shouldn't have too much trouble with and ideally can be read in under 6 hours.

Texts that came to mind:

- The Outsider (Camus)

- a few of Montaigne's essays

- White Nights (Dostoyevsky)

- Meditations (Descartes)

- The Symposium/The 5 Dialogues (Plato)

- Existentialism is Humanism (Sartre)

Recommendations for sections of texts we could read - e.g. books 1-3 of the Nicomachean Ethics - are also welcome!

Out of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, aesthetics, and logic. What do you enjoy and learn about the most?

-Thanks

The Voltaire foundation compiled it into 205 volumes all the way from 1968 to 2022. https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/oeuvres-completes-de-voltaire/ but has anyone here actually read through all of them? If yes, how long did it take you? Do you learn anything interesting from the experience? Is there a specific work that you recommend above all the others?

I am about to read this book! I want to know what your thoughts are on this book. What are other philosophy books or philosophers that you enjoy reading?

-Thanks

So, recently, I started posting philosophical questions here, thinking people probably wouldn't engage with them in the way I expected. But damn, I was wrong. Some of the people here are basically modern day Nietzsches, and I was genuinely speechless at the depth and quality of their responses.

A few replies were so well thought out that I actually had to take help from both Gemini and ChatGPT to understand and analyse them properly. I've decided to read a couple of books before engaging with these people again, so I can develop a better understanding and have some reasonable arguments to counter their points.

Please suggest a few books with deep philosophical ideas, preferably ones that aren't too difficult to read or written in overly complicated English.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1850271

BOOK "Novel Philosophy " / PREFACE: Science and Metaphysics reveal aspects of what “is”. Logic and Epistemology help us interpret these aspects and understand how much of them we can truly know. Finally, Ethics teaches us how to embrace this knowledge and how to focus on the things that foster endurance and contentment in the long run, while avoiding those that keep our hearts buried in the ground. How to live well and decently, and how to help society function properly. This book is by no means a rejection of the centuries of wisdom bestowed upon us by great thinkers such as Socrates, Aristotle, Tagore, Laozi, Seneca, Hypatia, Epicurus, Einstein, Darwin, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Popper, and many others. Rather, it is an attempt to take a small step forward. "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order." — Alfred North Whitehead

BOOK "A Philosophical Kaleidoscope" / PREFACE: A kaleidoscope of philosophical thoughts, novel contemplations, and sharp aphorisms – in praise of what is and not merely what ought to be! Offering answers – or at least insight into questions such as: Is there intrinsic meaning in human life? Can we ever truly know something with absolute certainty? Is Free Will an illusion? Can the suppression of desires bring happiness? Has self-deception in humans been favored by natural selection? Why are hypocrisy and insincerity so widespread in human societies? Is Morality objective, and can it be preserved without religion? Should philosophy aim primarily to attain approximate truths, or is its main purpose to offer peace of mind and a good mental life? Is the pandemic of self-admiration and self-deification in the West a product of the decline of religion – or of disinterest in philosophy? Is Selfhood an illusion? Can there be any freedom in a deterministic world? Is it true that the unexamined life is not worth living?

I wanted to start with Kierkegaard's "The Sickness unto Death" and Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". Is there anyone that would like to discuss these books and engage in dialetical conversation?

I like philosophy, but I noticed there is no free application that teaches it in an interactive way, like how Duolingo teaches language. So I built this; I would love to see what you think.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.philosophize.app

Hey everyone,

I’m 22 and from India, and I’m completely new to philosophy. I’m genuinely a layman here, so please keep that in mind.

I didn’t study very well in college and eventually dropped out. I also struggled to find a job, and during that period I started becoming curious about mathematics, science, and how we understand the world. Later, my brother introduced me to philosophy through Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche.

What initially attracted me was the idea that philosophy seems to question the foundations of things we normally take for granted—what exists, what we can know, how we should live, what truth means, what mathematics is based on, how society should work, etc.

But I’m struggling to understand how to actually do philosophy.

When I started reading about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I found myself fascinated but also completely lost. There is a language barrier for me, and many of the arguments seem extremely deep. Sometimes I spend a long time trying to understand what seems like just two or three sentences.

Then I encountered people like Bertrand Russell, who were asking extremely fundamental questions about mathematics and logic, and I honestly thought: How does someone even begin thinking at that level?

I’m not asking anyone to teach me philosophy in a Reddit comment. I’m more interested in the personal side of it:

For those of you who study philosophy seriously—when did philosophy “click” for you? Was there a particular philosopher, argument, book, or question that gave you that spark?

And if you were in my position—22, completely inexperienced, curious but with almost no formal background—how would you recommend approaching philosophy?

Should I start chronologically with the Greeks? Should I focus on one area first, like metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mathematics, or political philosophy? Or is it better to follow particular questions rather than trying to “learn all of philosophy”?

One thing I’m particularly interested in is the relationship between philosophy and mathematics/science. I find myself wanting to understand philosophy almost mathematically—following definitions, assumptions, arguments, and conclusions as rigorously as possible.

I know I have a huge amount to learn, and I’m not expecting to understand Nietzsche, Plato, Russell, etc. immediately. I’m just looking for a direction.

So, for those who have been doing this for years:

What gave you the spark to go deeper, and what would you tell someone like me who is just beginning?

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit can be read as an extraordinary answer to a deceptively simple question: What happens when consciousness tries to understand itself?
The book does not begin with an already-established metaphysical system. Instead, Hegel follows consciousness through a sequence of forms—sense-certainty, perception, understanding, self-consciousness, reason, spirit, religion, and finally Absolute Knowing. Each form initially presents itself as the truth, only to reveal an internal contradiction that forces consciousness into a new form. (JSTOR⁠)
What makes this fascinating is that Hegel’s dialectic isn’t simply a method for thinking about reality. The movement of thought becomes part of what reality itself is.
The famous struggle for recognition makes this especially clear. Consciousness discovers that it cannot achieve a fully developed self-understanding in isolation. To know oneself as a self-conscious being requires a relationship with another self-consciousness. Recognition therefore becomes reciprocal: I become intelligible to myself through another consciousness that can recognize me as a consciousness in its own right. (OUP Academic⁠)
This suggests a radical conception of identity. The self is not simply an isolated interior substance sitting behind experience. It is something that develops through relations, negations, conflicts, and recognition.
And this is where I think Hegel becomes especially relevant to contemporary philosophy.
We often imagine consciousness as something contained within individual minds. Hegel gives us another possibility: consciousness is fundamentally developmental and relational. What we call an individual self may be one moment within a much larger historical and social process of self-understanding.
This also changes how we should understand “Spirit.” Geist need not be interpreted as a supernatural entity floating above humanity. It can be understood as self-conscious life expressed through shared forms of meaning—culture, institutions, language, ethical practices, religion, and history. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy⁠)
The endpoint, Absolute Knowing, is therefore particularly interesting. It is not simply possessing an encyclopedia of ultimate facts. Rather, consciousness comes to understand the development through which it arrived at its own standpoint. The subject begins to recognize itself within what it previously regarded as an external object. (Routledge Research Ethics Portal⁠)
In that sense, Hegel’s deepest claim may be something like this:
Reality is not merely something consciousness observes. It is something consciousness participates in making intelligible.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the external world is imaginary. Instead, it means that the distinction between “mind here” and “world over there” becomes philosophically unstable once consciousness recognizes that its categories, meanings, relationships, and forms of understanding are themselves historical developments.
This is why I think Phenomenology of Spirit remains so difficult—and so compelling. Hegel isn’t merely asking, “What is consciousness?”
He’s asking something much stranger:
What if the history of consciousness is also the history of reality becoming intelligible to itself?
And if that is even partly right, perhaps Absolute Knowing isn’t the moment when consciousness finally possesses reality.
Perhaps it is the moment when consciousness realizes that it was never standing completely outside reality in the first place.

I really enjoyed the art of living - Epictetus, are there any more like it?

On the Origin of God(s) By Means of Supernatural Selection argues yes, and the lack of divine inspiration is evidenced by major problems experienced in the modern world today, nuclear weapons being one of them.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GNUnuqECqhzoE0yn_nMfyWRtsU_I6KKw/view?usp=sharing

I’m pretty new to Stoicism.

I’ve been reading The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday every day for the past 4 months, and honestly, I’ve developed a genuine interest in the philosophy.

But I don’t just want to read about Stoicism and feel like I understand it. I actually want to start living by it.

For someone who’s new to Stoicism, how would you recommend someone study more on this subject?

Out of everything you’ve read so far, what takes the cake for you?

Ayn Rand is known for being a critic of altruism. She argues that a collective system harms individual freedom, the soul. I believe that this contrast between the individual and the collective was drawn so radically because of the nature of the time: the Cold War, “communist” Russia, and American “freedom”. In her book, Ayn Rand depicts an altruistic society, one where no one has an individual name, trait, or thought (at least not out loud).

This is reflected in the protagonist, Equality 7-2521. On the back cover of the book, it is written: “He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice.” A while after reading the book, I was confused, mainly because of this. “So a collectivist society oppresses individual freedom, got it. But we live in a modern age where everything is built upon the individual, not the collective. Why do I still feel oppressed by the capitalistic system, the lack of communication between humans, and my isolation?” So which one is it: is the collective oppressing us, or is individualism tearing us apart? I think I have an answer now, thinking about the book.

In Anthem, Equality 7-2521 is isolated too. He wants to share his thoughts, his invention of the light bulb, and his love. Love is portrayed as an individual desire in the book. However, loving one another in itself is a rebellion against capitalism.

The clash between capitalism and love is narrated in Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving (I highly recommend that book). It brings individuals together without a logical explanation as to why. Whether it is the love one shares with friends, family, or a lover, it strips us of our isolation; it feeds the soul. This love is lacking in both our capitalist society and the book. Today, we are isolated too. What is different? We use social media, wear the same clothes, consume the same content, think the same, and know about the same things. It is almost like we have this collective knowledge and dataset in our brains, but we are so far apart from each other, without communication, without love.

This brings me to my conclusion: the book is built on the premise that collectivism destroys the individual, contextually, however, the very acts of the protagonist that are meant to rebel against this system are acts of sharing and love. This is exactly where the book clashes with itself. So maybe it is not about the collectivist system; it is just an oppressive government enforcing its control under the name of the collective.