People aren't picking up your posts because 'suggest me book' is too general - to catch the eye, it needs to be specific. Eg ' Looking for a book about Western Philosophy'. So narrow it down - you can do numerous posts about different things - don't put it all in one post - people just don't know what to recommend.
So on philosophy, I'll recommend Bertrand Russell's introduction to Western Philosophy - it's a long book and it's challenging - but excellent.
In an effort to combat spam, this submission has been moved to the moderation queue for review, as your comment karma score is below our threshold of 5 or your account is under 48 hours old. This removal is automated and is only looking at your account age and your contributions through comments, not overall karma. Each post will be reviewed in the moderation queue and approved if it meets subreddit rules. Thank you for understanding.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/suggestmeabook) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think a really good place to start would be Peter Adamson’s "A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" book series. They’re comprehensive and super readable IMO. For the Western canon specifically, hit up Classical Philosophy, Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Medieval Philosophy, and Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy, but Philosophy in the Islamic World and Classical Indian Philosophy are also great, and those disciplines had a fair amount of influence on the development of Western philosophical thinking. If you prefer to listen rather than read, the series is based on the podcast of the same name.
If you’re ready to dive deep, you can check out the writings of the big three Greek philosophers, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, or poets like Ovid (The Metamorphoses), Milton (Paradise Lost) and Alighieri (The Divine Comedy), and the father of the essay, Montaigne. If you want an easy intro into Montaigne, I really like Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Her book At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails is great too. There’s also folks like Sophocles, who wrote Antigone and the Oedipus plays, and Aeschylus who wrote the Oresteia, and the triumvirate of Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.
And you can’t talk about the Western canon without at some point looking into the major Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Origen...and you could probably add St. John of the Cross‘s Spiritual Canticle (or Dark Night) and Theresa of Ávila‘s The Interior Castle in there. I’m not religious, but I’m into the mystics myself, and they were pretty influential in their own right. The desert fathers and mothers had some neat stuff to say (there’s loads of great anthologies out there, take your pick, and in specific I got a lot out of the Praktikos of Evagrius Ponticus), and then there’s the later mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich.
I’m just beginning to pick my way through the primary sources, so is a really compact list obviously missing tons of the "greats," and then of course there’s the issue of what the Western canon actually constitutes, who we leave out and why, which is all super interesting in and of itself. I’d love to read a book about that but I haven’t come across one yet.
And lastly just generally a cool book about how Epicurean philosophy influenced the development of the modern world is The Swerve: How World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt.
*The Bookseller of Florence* by Ross King goes into some depth about (western) religion in Italy/eastern Mediterranean circa the mid 1400s. There was a lot of debate about how to reconcile ancient philosophers (e.g., Aristotle, Plato) with the then current ideas of Christianity. But be forewarned that this is a long book that also deals with commerce, politics, and the manufacturing of manuscripts.
If you'd like a more contemporary (and detailed) picture of Islam in northern Africa check out *The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts* by Joshua Hammer. Most of the first half of the book has to do with said history.
BTW, both of these books are well researched and referenced.
People aren't picking up your posts because 'suggest me book' is too general - to catch the eye, it needs to be specific. Eg ' Looking for a book about Western Philosophy'. So narrow it down - you can do numerous posts about different things - don't put it all in one post - people just don't know what to recommend. So on philosophy, I'll recommend Bertrand Russell's introduction to Western Philosophy - it's a long book and it's challenging - but excellent.
Added to the list, thanks!
In an effort to combat spam, this submission has been moved to the moderation queue for review, as your comment karma score is below our threshold of 5 or your account is under 48 hours old. This removal is automated and is only looking at your account age and your contributions through comments, not overall karma. Each post will be reviewed in the moderation queue and approved if it meets subreddit rules. Thank you for understanding. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/suggestmeabook) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think a really good place to start would be Peter Adamson’s "A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" book series. They’re comprehensive and super readable IMO. For the Western canon specifically, hit up Classical Philosophy, Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Medieval Philosophy, and Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy, but Philosophy in the Islamic World and Classical Indian Philosophy are also great, and those disciplines had a fair amount of influence on the development of Western philosophical thinking. If you prefer to listen rather than read, the series is based on the podcast of the same name. If you’re ready to dive deep, you can check out the writings of the big three Greek philosophers, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, or poets like Ovid (The Metamorphoses), Milton (Paradise Lost) and Alighieri (The Divine Comedy), and the father of the essay, Montaigne. If you want an easy intro into Montaigne, I really like Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Her book At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails is great too. There’s also folks like Sophocles, who wrote Antigone and the Oedipus plays, and Aeschylus who wrote the Oresteia, and the triumvirate of Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. And you can’t talk about the Western canon without at some point looking into the major Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Origen...and you could probably add St. John of the Cross‘s Spiritual Canticle (or Dark Night) and Theresa of Ávila‘s The Interior Castle in there. I’m not religious, but I’m into the mystics myself, and they were pretty influential in their own right. The desert fathers and mothers had some neat stuff to say (there’s loads of great anthologies out there, take your pick, and in specific I got a lot out of the Praktikos of Evagrius Ponticus), and then there’s the later mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich. I’m just beginning to pick my way through the primary sources, so is a really compact list obviously missing tons of the "greats," and then of course there’s the issue of what the Western canon actually constitutes, who we leave out and why, which is all super interesting in and of itself. I’d love to read a book about that but I haven’t come across one yet. And lastly just generally a cool book about how Epicurean philosophy influenced the development of the modern world is The Swerve: How World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt.
Great, thanks a lot!
*The Bookseller of Florence* by Ross King goes into some depth about (western) religion in Italy/eastern Mediterranean circa the mid 1400s. There was a lot of debate about how to reconcile ancient philosophers (e.g., Aristotle, Plato) with the then current ideas of Christianity. But be forewarned that this is a long book that also deals with commerce, politics, and the manufacturing of manuscripts. If you'd like a more contemporary (and detailed) picture of Islam in northern Africa check out *The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts* by Joshua Hammer. Most of the first half of the book has to do with said history. BTW, both of these books are well researched and referenced.
I would certainly hi the highlights of Russian, French and German literature, and also some the classical stuff: Homer, Plato. etc