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Help Reading Philosophy
Mim
I prefer my lovers…dead.Registered User regular
I prefer my lovers…dead.Registered User regular
Hello H/A!
I'm taking a History of Criticism course that has me reading several different philosophers (Marx, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud) and the way they write has me confused or missing important explanations and so forth. I felt this way when reading feminist texts as I'm pretty sure I understand the words on their own, but in a sentence it sounds like gibberish. I'm an English major and not a Philosophy major so I'm not really used to running into these kind of sentences (though my other classmates seem to understand the texts, making me feel incompetent).
Any tips to better understand what exactly they're writing amidst the confusing sentences?
I'm taking a History of Criticism course that has me reading several different philosophers (Marx, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud) and the way they write has me confused or missing important explanations and so forth. I felt this way when reading feminist texts as I'm pretty sure I understand the words on their own, but in a sentence it sounds like gibberish. I'm an English major and not a Philosophy major so I'm not really used to running into these kind of sentences (though my other classmates seem to understand the texts, making me feel incompetent).
Any tips to better understand what exactly they're writing amidst the confusing sentences?
Mim on
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Posts
So just keep re-reading the text till I understand it?
Yep. Read it reallllly slowly and chew up each sentence in your head until it makes sense.
Barring that, email your prof with questions or find a tutor.
So, if you read this:
You would simplify the concepts when explaining it to your roommate/fish/toddler/cat, think of examples to illustrate it, and say something like this:
Is it a little ridiculous? Well, sure. But I guarantee you that you'll remember Mrs. Fluffykins' process of gaining knowledge of mice far long than you'll remember Kant's wall o' text.
Also, you may want to look into secondary sources. There can be some pretty decent introductions (at least at the undergraduate level) for just about everyone you listed. Ask your instructor and/or TA for recommendations.
We read and get homework and then have the lecture, which is why I definitely want to better understand the text. Our lectures are kind of subpar. He goes really fast and often interjects personal stories into the lecture without skipping a beat. He kept calling Freud, Kant yesterday, and he often says "I hope you don't ask me a question about 'x' because I really don't know." He also keeps wondering why we're not laughing at his jokes...
As for secondary sources, I wanted to use the Stanford philosophy dictionary but I had another teacher tell me that there was a section that was incorrect, so it's not very good. I've been using wikipedia but they often don't have enough information.
I kind of just wish there was a "'X Philosopher' for Dummies" or something.
Most of the time when we read, we take the actual words for granted. We just glide by the words, and a general sense of their meaning is all we need to be clear on what story or information is being given to us by the text. (After all, do you need to fully understand the biology of horses to know what it means when you're reading a story about a horse? No - a vague sense of what a horse is, what it does, and what it is used for is all you need - no actual experience or in-depth knowledge of what object we mean by "horse" is reqired.) You can't realy do this when reading a philosophical work you are unfamiliar with, because the key terms all have very specific meanings that you must understand in order to follow the logical movement of the text. You need a precise understanding of these words in order to understand what is the text has to say - but spelling out the precise meaning of a word is a hard undertaking, because you have to see how it related to everything else - you need a FULL understanding of the meaning of the word. Hence the need to build up evidence for each term to show how they relate to each other. Once you have the definitions of key terms, you have the key to the philosophy (of course, you still need a logically rigorous mind to understand how these terms organize and link together to lead to the conclusions - but that's the fun part).
You might want to take a look at the "Introducing..." series. As (very) basic introductory guides go, they're some of the best I've seen, and there's one dedicated to every thinker you mention in your original post.
In general, Wikipedia articles on philosophy are very bad. There are a few good ones, but the bulk are either confused, confusing, or false.
In general, articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are quite good. They're at least peer-reviewed and written by knowledgeable members of the field. There are a few bad ones, but the bulk are quite helpful. I've taken more than one graduate philosophy course that began by assigning a handful of SEP articles to ensure that everyone was up to speed with the basic positions on some topic.
As for how to read the actual text, some of the advice here is quite good; stopping and rehearsing to yourself -- or even writing down in your own words -- the point of the last paragraph is usually a good way to proceed. The biggest thing to learn is to slow down. Philosophical ideas, even when presented by a relatively clear writer (which few of the greats are), take time to digest. I know a number of professional philosophers who rarely read more than 8-10 pages in an hour; any faster and you'll miss the subtleties in the argument.
Kate's advice is really good. The only thing i'd add to it is that sometimes they really are just wrong or full of B.S. Students of philosophers sometimes like to talk about philosophers as if they could all be correct and they understand them all equally. Philisopher's worldviews colide on any number of stated or implied ways and sometimes they're internally gibberish too - certainly with critical theory this is the case. The sokol hoax being a prime example of contentless syntax hoodwinking critical theorists. I would try to engage them on their own terms. Knowing when you don't understand something, though, is the surest sign you're thinking about something.
This. I own "Introducing Chaos" and it was a fantastic read. Furthermore it was so jam packed with information I could hardly call it "basic" because it touched on so many facets of chaos theory...but it was all written in a relatively easy to explain manner.
And I've been there, OP: I took a philosophy course in Knowledge and Reality and it was great stuff to talk about but by god I couldn't be a philosophy academic.
Also, is there a reason philosophers write in this manner? Is "common" writing frowned upon? I know Wordsworth hailed the usage of common language that men use, but he didn't write that way for the piece I read. (This is a sincere questions, I don't mean to sound like an asshole if I come off that way)
I don't know, I aced the last class I took that dealt with philosophy but that teacher gave notes and knew how hard it was for us and definitely tried to explain what we were talking about so that we understood it completely. This teacher, not so much. I think I'd be bugged less if he gave us the homework after we did the lecture and I'd feel less incompetent.
Now picture it written in German, translated, and instead of being silly stories about an English family, it's about intricate philosophical concepts relating to perception, logic, and the nature of reality. At that point, that shit is thick enough to walk on.
Philosophers don't go out of their way to be dicks to their readers, or anything: the difficulty level is a byproduct of the age of the writing, the awkwardness of any translation, and sometimes just the complexity of the concepts being conveyed.
There are plenty of philosophers that write extremely clearly, at least insofar as they're able to, because like Kate has also pointed out, philosophy usually deals with fairly complex issues.
It also depends on what you find easy to read or not: I find John Stuart Mill pretty simple, for instance, but he writes sentences that would be better off as their own books. I've heard people say that Rousseau writes very clearly and distinctly (even when translated into English) and that he is therefore fun to read, but I don't really see that.
Modern philosophy, or at least modern philosophy that isn't shitty, aims to be clear, and although not all philosophers are good writers, there are plenty of them who are, and they manage to be quite straightforward (IMHO).
There's a line that I quite enjoy: analytic philosophers express very complex ideas in the simplest possible language, while continental philosophers express very simple ideas in the most complex possible language.
It's not all that true, but seriously compare Quine's writing to something like Gaytari Spivak. Both notable thinkers from the 20th Century, both fairly well respected in their fields, and both influential in their areas of interest. Their styles, however, couldn't be more different. When you read Quine, your palate is truly cleansed.
I just don't want the book store to turn me away when I try to return the books at the end of the semester :P
I am serious. Aside from being hilarious, it gives a pretty accurate and succinct summary of the major ideas of each philosopher it covers. I've given it to friends of mine before when they were unwillingly stuck in philosophy classes.