The web site Demasiado Aire recently asked “some of the world’s most important philosophers which three books influenced them the most while undergraduate students.” And, from what we can tell, they got a good response. 28 influential philosophers dutifully jotted their lists, and, for at least the past day, Demasiado Aire has been offline, seemingly overwhelmed by traffic. Thanks to Google’s web caching technology, we can recover these lists and provide you with a few highlights. We have added links to the texts cited by the philosophers. The free texts have an asterisk (*) next to them.
Charles Taylor (McGill University):
–Phénoménologie de la Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
–The Brothers Karamazov*, Fyodor Dostoevsky
–Jalons pour une théologie du Laïcat, Yves Congar
Daniel Dennett (Tufts University):
“That’s easy:
–Word and Object, Quine.
–The concept of mind*, Gilbert Ryle
–Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
“I got to study with Quine and Ryle, but Wittgenstein had died before I encountered his workâ€.
Alexander Nehamas (Princeton University):
–Apology of Socrates*, Plato
–Nicomachean Ethics*, Aristotle
–Ethics*, Spinoza
“Also, I should point out that Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality* had a huge effect on me when I was a graduate student and had a formative influence on my philosophical developmentâ€.
David Chalmers (Australian National University):
“I was an undergraduate student in mathematics rather than philosophy, but the answer isâ€:
–Gödel, Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
–The Mind’s I, Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett
–Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit
You can view lists by other philosophers, including Alain de Botton, Wendy Brown, Peter Millican, and more here. The image above comes via by MjYj.
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Important Philosophers List the Books That Influenced Them Most During Their College Days
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