sandbox philosophy thread

Cordoza = Cardozo?

Kind of want to read this NYRB novel about Wittgenstein.

I've set myself the goal of going through the early classical philosophers — starting with Plato's Socratic dialogues. Should I go in any particular order or should I just dive in wherever?

What about the pre-Socratics?

Fcuk Plato

xp For some reason I had assumed that none of their writings had survived — is there a good collection of pre-Socratic texts?

There's a book by Nietzsche about them that is good, but I don't know which collection of whatever survives is the one to get.

Heraclitus!

This looks good:

http://www.amazon.com/First-Philosophers-Presocratics-Sophists-Classics/dp/0192824546

Also, Democritus's life always appealed to me.

Kind of want to read this NYRB novel about Wittgenstein.

― P-Moose (Wants To Get Moosed Up) (James Redd), Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:21 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

the reissue of 'the world as i found it'? it's interesting but for most purposes i'd read the monk bio (or even the bartley one) instead maybe

xp - yes

Robin Waterfield's The First Philosophers is a good anthology.

Yes, thomp. Actually I used to own a copy of the Monk bio, which went missing in a move. I liked what I read of it, maybe I should go back to that.

Cordoza = Cardozo?

yes typo

For a while I thought you meant Cordoba and I was wondering whether it was the one in Spain or Argentina :)

Re Wittgenstein: what about that Alexander Waugh book?

Only read it if you intend to think of his name as being pronounced 'waff'.

I haven't read the Waterfield book but Jonathan Barnes' Early Greek Philosophy has been helpful to me. They seem to have the same basic layout of having all of the fragments tied together with context and exposition, so as introductions go I wouldn't imagine there'd be much to separate them. Beyond that kind of dry format Heidegger's obv v good on the pre-Socratics, and while offering ~unconventional~ readings he doesn't really do that major-thinker-writing-on-major-thinkers thing of completely assimilating them into his own thought.

Really? I haven't read Heidegger on the Vorsokrater. I really enjoyed the pre-Socratics as much as anyone in Philosophy.

iirc his essay 'The Anaximander Fragment' is particularly good. But looking at it again now I may have been lying terribly about the not-assimilating part...

:( Is his prose as turgid as usual?

ha, I dunno, scanning through and reading bits here and there it looks alright, but then I've spent the last three months reading The Phenomenology of Spirit so I'm sure I've lost all sense of what constitutes readable philosophical writing.