 What's up to all my fellow philosophy lovers out there? My name is Ian and on this channel, we break down the greatest books of all time. But we also take the information from those great books and turn it into actionable steps to change the world because what's the point of having all this knowledge if we can't do anything with it? So subscribe to the channel, like this video if you are interested because today we are breaking, tier ranking the different branches of philosophy and I'm going to be providing everybody a basic book list for each of the branches that you can dive into if you haven't, you know, if you're a beginner into philosophy or if you haven't explored some of these fields. Some of the fields or branches we're talking about today, I've only read a couple of books within them because I'm just not that interested. So let's hop into it. So the first branch we're going to be talking about today is the philosophy of aesthetics and I love aesthetics as you're about to figure out. And so of course I'm going to throw aesthetics into the A category and the criteria for my judgments are based off of three things. One, my own personal opinion and feeling. Second, the historical tradition of the field. And third, where the current tradition stands and I'm going to talk about that. I feel like that's a pretty fair analysis because of course this isn't a biased opinion but I think it, yeah, I think it's, so let's talk about aesthetics and let's check out the book list first of all. First of all, the best, one of the best things you can do to learn about just aesthetics of philosophy and literature and the history of aesthetics in general is to check out the romantic, especially the romantic poets. They really transform aesthetics in general. They really adds, they heal Descartes' wound, the wound of Christianity and brought a different form of aesthetic and design of writing and art back to the world again. A great book on this is News of the Universe by Robert Bly, if you want to see that process mended in poetry and hear about Descartes' dream. Crazy book, crazy. Anyway, so that is the first book. A couple other people, these are, I mean, this is a huge list of recommendations as you can see, this is one of the bigger ones. So obviously to start off, Kant's third critique of judgment is one of the classics that you will read in any aesthetic class. If you're taking an intro to aesthetics or a philosophy of aesthetics, Kant's third critique of judgment is always on the list. A couple other main ones are Of the Standard Taste by Hume, The Sense of Beauty by George Santiana, Lectures on Fine Art by Hegel, On the Aesthetic Education of Man by Shiller, Art is Experienced by John Dewey, The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, Plato, Schopenhauer, and then some other classics, Schopenhauer, and so those are the old, those are some of the older authors, that, you know, more of the classic philosophers on aesthetics. And if you want to read, I probably should organize that a little bit better. If you want more of an historical introduction and pathway to modern aesthetics, that's where I would look. And I would say that this tradition is very rich. We have people like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Hume and basically, everyone was jumping in on this and writing about it. And they had really good ideas and good takes and because art is so nice. And one of the fetishes and fantasies of philosophers is becoming, is being artists, like real artists, not just writers, but, you know, a physical, like a real artist artist or a musician, or any really type of artist that isn't a writer or a poet. There's always this thing. And trust me, if you were a philosopher, go ask philosophers or philosophy majors, everyone seems to have this. I also have this because when you are rigid and have this standard, then the polarity of that is being loose and having that exposure, having that social status that really, a lot of the times philosophers don't get because the more into philosophy we get, the worse our dating chances get as philosophers. For a while, there's kind of this thing I call the intellectual dating parabola, that for a while you just, your chances tank because you don't know what to do with it. You haven't gone through the muck yet. You become a philosophy, bro. You become someone who can't handle all this knowledge and maybe become an elitist or maybe become too introvert or too in your head or don't and think that everyone who doesn't know what you know has something wrong with them. And then eventually though, if you can move through that and keep reading and keep growing, then suddenly you can become a very chill, well read person that can date anybody. And you realize it doesn't matter what other people think that you can connect with people and there's thousands of other ways to connect with people other than through books. And I know that's really crazy for a lot of people, but that's almost this part of the philosophy of aesthetics. It's like, what is the classic aesthetic question of what is beauty and what is real beauty in a relationship? So some of the other ones I really like from are, here's one that I've talked about on this channel before, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Mulvey. This is a Lacanian analysis of cinema and that's just a classic, once again, just a really fun critique of the aesthetics of narrative cinema. Another one I just read and every book on this list, I have read all of them. I'm not gonna recommend you guys anything I have not read and everything on this list also, I feel like is at an intermediate to basic level, might be a couple of advanced, but I'm not going to be dropping some of the, I'm not trying to drop any insane bombs on you guys, like, you know, this isn't the philosophy bro chat. So let's go through some of them. Once again, sorry, keep flapping back and forth. I'm gonna butcher every single name in the book, in this presentation, in this tier ranking, everyone's going down. I don't really care about the pronunciations, I should, but I don't. So we have Siany Nygai, our aesthetic categories. The two authors that I feel like are the best modern authors on aesthetics, who I would read if you just want to get right to the chase, right to the new analytics stuff, is our jock, sorry. Oh no, sorry, my keys are messing. Jock Rannysiery, and Gorgio Angabin, sorry everybody. And some other ones I like, Art as an Experience, by John Dewey, I have some problems with Dewey. And then another person that you can check out who I would say, Clive Bell, aesthetic hypothesis, that one's pretty good, but another big person in right now is Monro Beardsley. I would go check out Monro Beardsley at someone who I've come to like in the aesthetic, modern aesthetic tradition. All right, so next is epistemology, the study of knowledge. And as you get older and if you keep reading philosophy, right, if you keep pushing yourself, outside of the university just through self-education, you kind of go through a lot of these, right? Or go through certain phases. And epistemology had, I had a short epistemology phase. I took one of my professors at Utah State University. He was an epistemologist and, or you know, it was his main focus of studying. I took a bunch of classes with him. He was probably my favorite, favorite professor there in the philosophy department. So I'm gonna give some of the basic picks and once again, some of the more Ian picks. And of course, the first one is going to be an Ian pick. And that is Nasik's philosophical explanations because I think that Nasik is, you know, obviously an anarchist, I'm an anarchist. We're on the, let's prop up my boy here, a little bit of bias in the chat. And you know, just once again, the reason I put aesthetics up here at N.A. is because I feel like their tradition is very rich. I feel like it's a very good thing to look into and it can help improve your life and thinking in other parts. It doesn't kind of send you down a rabbit hole. And I think it's still well and alive today with a lot of those authors I'm talking about. I don't think it deserves a nest because it can get a little bit bogged down because of epistemology, but we'll get into that in a second. All right, so Nasik. So then the classics that I would read on epistemology are Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, An Essay on Human Understanding by John Locke, David Hume, An Inquiry, Concerning Human Understanding, and those are the, and obviously the Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, he's not maybe a classic. Those I would say will give you the basic introduction. If I was going to teach an epistemology 101 class, we'd read those and maybe with some modern stuff just to get a general overview going. And, okay, so some other ones I've enjoyed and I would recommend, I would say are eight, seven or eight out of tens or above are The Philosophy and Mirror of Nature by Rorty. Great, you know, I love nature. I love this kind of expands on, brings in some German idealism ideas, which I'm always a fan of. Fan of, excuse me. Logic, Language, Truth and Logic by Ayer, Empiricism and The Philosophy of Mind. I don't know how this one fell on here. I think this one's in the wrong section. Well, this can be in both. You know, I put this in here because I don't feel like it really comes into the Philosophy of the Mind section, but it could obviously wrestle the Problems of Philosophy. Couple more, you know, you guys, I'm not going to go over all these, but another one, I just read this one is Ultimate Questions by Maggie. And this was written right before this Philosopher's Death. I felt like a lot of the questions in here were really good about the Problems of Knowledge and just life, general philosophical problems in general and of knowing. I feel like that's a great book. If you're just going to go read one book, go check out Ultimate Questions. So, but let's go into my rating. I am going to give Epistemology a C, a low C. I am not really a fan of Epistemology. I feel like a lot of it gets bogged down. A lot of it gets bogged down by logic and other branches of philosophy. I feel like it's a bit redundant. I think it has a historical tradition of a B. I have an interest in it around a C. And I think the modern tradition kind of is around a C again. You know, I just don't feel like it. Epistemology to me, maybe if I'm wrong, let me know in the comments what you guys think about all this. My thoughts, your grades, give me your grades. There's, it's a pretty easy comment. Just leave a comment with what you think and maybe where I went wrong. Some of the surprising picks. I just don't feel like Epistemology. If I have to judge, if this is like a bell curve that some have to be at the top, some have to be at the bottom. I don't feel like Epistemology really floats like it needs. So next we have Ethics. And this is probably one of the most popular, obviously one of the most popular branches of philosophy because every computer science student and engineering student at a lot of universities have to read or take an ethics class. And obviously ethics are just a general conversation, philosophical conversation that people have at a bar or in general, it's always coming up, right? And I have a very interesting view on ethics because, you know, as an anarchist, as a person who believes in the human potential to change the world and the 50,000 hours we all have over the next 15 years if we work 40 hours a week and sleep eight hours a night, we have 50,000 hours of free time to change your lives to become nonviolent and educated human beings. I feel, you know, I have a very, and I'm very confused about ethics because one of the problems with ethics, and this is why I am going to give Ethics a E. Well, you know, what's called a D. I'm just obviously, I'm honestly just going to delete this E row. I'm going to give Ethics a D if not a low D. That may be surprising because Ethics really as a historical, as a philosophical tradition are at an S or an A, right? And in my interest in it is probably a B or a C, but I feel like Ethics has really fallen short to the point of an F because of moral relativism and trying to defend violence and government and all these different things in general. I feel like Marxism and don't worry you guys, like even though I am generally a political as an anarchist, I read, I read hundreds of Marxist and postmodern books. I feel like Marxism did a number on Ethics in a sense and helped elevate it and take it to the next level because moral relativism is very important. I'm not one of those people. And you know, maybe that's, maybe we should throw this up at a C. No, I can give it a C. I don't dislike moral relativism. I think it's actually as a yogi and a meditator, I think moral relativism is very, very important and is actually a pretty damn good argument. But when you give it to the masses, this is one of these things, when you give that key, when you give that info, when you give that idea, when you spread that neoconti and seed to the masses, it can create problems. A lot of people live as moral relativists throughout their life and it's not the best framing of reality and a lot of other things, a lot of other branches of ethics in a sense get ignored. So let's look at some of my ethics picks. So I, you know, and this is just kind of a bone. So obviously some of the ones that I would, these are the, so first thing, you know, if you're a beginner, the Nikomaki and Ethics by Aristotle, the classic book, Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, an inquiry concerning the principles of morals by Hume and the groundwork for the metaphysics of morals by Emmanuel Kant. Those are, once again, the baseline that if I wanted to give you, if I was going to teach a class and give the historical overview, those are the main ones I've, that was I think are the ones that I read in my first ethics class. But, you know, obviously we have to go deeper. Though, you know, it's in the utility and you know, all the basic arguments that you know and I've heard before, we want to go deeper. Our society is much more complex now and we have to, you know, is it virtuous? What is your intent? You know, obviously those are the core fundamental arguments and if you can't understand that, that's why they're important to read and kind of move through. But, I have a little bit of resentment because I'm sure you guys have been there and maybe you guys haven't been there, but if, when you take like a entry level philosophical, excuse me, philosophy class and you read stuff like this, they're kind of basic and most people can think through and it turns into a bunch of arguments. There's always, and when my experience at a more liberal college, University of Nevada, Las Vegas was a lot better in terms of philosophy classes, but at Utah State University, there was a ton of Mormons, a ton of conservatives and there were just the most insane logical arguments in class and it never seemed like it ended. I took two ethics classes there and it was night and day between there and another school. So anyway, it was just, it was a lot. So a couple of other ones I think are cool, are cool are the genealogy of morals by Nietzsche, the doubt, thus spoke Zarathustra and the Dowdy Ching. I think the Dowdy Ching is a really good analysis of morals for the Western mind because we don't, if you look at this list, we look at most classes, you don't really get Eastern ethics very often and it's a totally kind of, kind of a totally different ethical philosophy and kind of the famous line by Derrida that East has no philosophy. I get it because it does have a lot of weak arguments and one of my other professors, Christian Hasket at Central College and I think he's at Central College in Kentucky now. He was a language and religious studies professor. He has a great paper and idea or from research out in the field. He spent a ton of time in India that Buddhists and most of the people in the East don't have the ethics that we give to them, that there is this romanticization of the East and this is talked about in another book called The Collapse or The Demise of Shangri-La by someone that I cannot remember right now but and it talks about how we romanticize the East. For instance, the environmentalism of the East. Oh, the sacred cow and they meditate so they must be nice animals. Absolutely not. The environmentalism of the East really has no historical context and ideas. It does a little bit but they exploit, they hurt and they are violent. They did not rise above that and if you look at India in general with the caste system in China, if you're not treating humans right, you're obviously not gonna treat animals or the environment right. They just didn't have, they didn't need to go to the level of destruction. The West did because we were expanding and going crazy and we had a little bit of a worse mind. So the Dali Ching's a nice take on it though. So and then obviously Nietzsche is a great choice for any ideas of morals, or excuse me, of ethics because he really broke an ethical tradition. Nietzsche, I would consider him very famous for taking down a lot of traditional ethical ideas which, thank you Nietzsche for that but also, no, no, shame on you Nietzsche because look what happened and that's what kinda needs to happen now and today that if you are going to philosophize, if you're gonna come on here and say something, you can't give people the key without context and that's what happens. That's why the Hermetic occult traditions never gave out knowledge. They hid, it was always a secret and that's why the people in the East you had to go through years of initiation to get the actual information because they believed that people who just get the information turn in to wild people and the 20th century with over 200 something million innocent people dead through democide, death by government is an example of that. What happens when we give the masses choices and information without context, without the growth and the stability and the axiomatic foundations you need to grow in knowledge. We see that all the time with the philosophy bros. They have no context, no life experience to tether to any of this knowledge and they become narcissists. They become, for lack of a very word, sadanists. And my sadanists, I mean just mean someone who self-preserves in Christ for Christianity, but a sadanist as in someone who just believes in absolute self-preservation and moral relativism. That's the other thing about moral relativism that if you look at all the worst groups in history with the worst ideas, a lot of them have had moral relativism as one of their main keynotes. And just talking about ethics in general, like I said, it just kind of rubs me in the wrong way and it almost seems like a lot of people are trying to set that in stone now. And obviously with the Hegelian dialectic, mommy and daddy divide in American politics with the mommy Democrats and the daddy Republicans, we can't, we're stuck with the absolute moralists and the Republicans and the moral relativists and the Democrats like, you guys know what I'm saying. It's okay to protest now and here. You can't, you know, lockdowns, but we can protest for Black Lives Matter and the coronavirus doesn't exist anymore. You know, there was a lot of illogical moral, and you know, a lot of the ideas and policies have a lot of problems, and also a lot of the ideas on the right have a crap ton of problems because of their absolute moralism and crazy ideas of ethics from Christianity. It's an absolute disaster, probably even maybe even a bigger disaster than the left. Both absolutely suck. Both have killed, both of those systems have killed hundreds of millions of people. And you know, a book on here I'll talk about in a second, but it might as well mention it now. There's a book out there by Murray Rothbard and it's called The Ethics of Liberty and it's kind of a libertarian manifesto and it's a very interesting book. I don't subscribe to even half of what is laid out in the book, but it's really an anarchist manifesto on ethics. And Rothbard, you know, I'm into Rothbard. He's kind of demonized now because he's a strict anarchist. He's like, you do what you want and he brought the idea to me if we're talking about ethics and law and rights that we have no, you know, people talk about laws, right? We have the First Amendment right, right? We actually, when you give someone a right, when we have the First Amendment right, what that means is that we actually don't have a right anymore. We don't have the right to freedom of speech anymore. We have the right to freedom of speech in context of the subjective court's opinion. Rights, human axiomatic rights like to right to speak and express yourself and, you know, to live, you know, to love those things don't need, when they are given and made subjective in a court, we actually don't have those. And we've seen that time and time again even in America, in our country. And he's a very, and he kind of takes things to that level that, you know, he's a very extreme ethical person. He thinks that, you know, homeless people, like there should be really no help for people, like homeless people or even for children. And it's like a very, I don't agree, it's a very extreme ethical view, but I think we need extreme ethics to break out of this binary that we are caught in now, this weird binary, like I said, that it's not really working and is just kind of playing, you know, I feel like we're just getting played into this game by both sides. Because if you're smart enough to know that the Republicans and Democrats are in cahoots behind closed doors at some level, not global conspiracy level, but just at some basic level, and it's kind of just a push and a pull, and you know, with all the lobbying and stuff then, you understand that our ethics are kind of screwed up, our leaders, our politicians are screwed up. Donald Trump is not a nice ethical person. Joe Biden was on a cash grab campaign in Ukraine, and now we're involved in a conflict, or you know, giving a bunch of weapons and money to a, you know, all the ethics of all this are kind of wonky, and you look at Obama with the drones and Bush invading two countries that actually didn't need to invade, and Clinton's destroying of bringing the private sector into politics. There's, you know, Reagan's war on drugs. You know, I could just keep going back and back and back of all the ethical violations that we've had from our leaders in our country, and I would think that just by reading some of these books right here, and you know, people talk about like, you know, Great Book is Practical Ethics by Pete Singer. I think this is a really great introduction. Why can't we, I don't really feel like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or even Barack Obama read this stuff. Barack Obama said that he only read the post-modernists and thinkers like this because, to get girls. We need, I don't want to bring back the idea of the philosopher kings because we'll probably just get a neuro, neuro in here again, but I really feel like we need to break, like I said, does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understand ethics? Does she read ethics at night? Does Dan Crenshaw, the Republican, or Rand Paul, I don't know. The main figure's on the left and the right. I don't understand how people can buy into, really buy into any of this when, or our leaders aren't even educated. Like if at some point you become educating, you realize that everyone is less intelligent than you and is functioning for lobbying, then like, how do you even look at them ethically and even care? Why do we even care? Anyway, I guess I care because I'm talking about. So some of the other books, oh sorry, John Rawls, Theory of Justice, that should be in the classics. The really book I just read a couple of weeks is by Scanlan is what do we owe to each other? And this was a nice analysis. I feel like this really bridged the gap between the left and the right and kind of went off on this idea. And another one is by Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism. Let me know if you guys once again have any other recommendations that you think that are non-advanced ethics books should bring into this discussion. So ethics get a C because of all the questions I'm talking about now. I really judge our society and what we are doing based upon the results that we are getting and our leaders and our philosophers. Our philosophers are cooped up in the university system. They don't care. Our thinkers, our writers, they don't care. They're not trying to make real change. I'm trying to give practical ideas and make things for people and not get stuck in the university system for money or get censored or stop making videos or writing or doing whatever. And that's what it seems like everyone does. It's like, remember I used to, I do jiu-jitsu, Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I've done it for a decade now. And one of my old gyms kind of went downhill. At one point was when the best jiu-jitsu gyms in the country, UFC champions were coming out of there. Jiu-jitsu, you know, the guys placing a jiu-jitsu world championship, you know, getting out of there. And at some point though, everyone got a little bit older and I kind of came at the tail end of that kind of peak saga. And a couple of years in, I had switched schools, moved away, moved away from Vegas. And that school kind of, I came back and the school had kind of taken a plummet. And one of my friends who had left said, yeah, everyone just, you know, had kids, got jobs and stopped caring about jiu-jitsu. And that was kind of the vibe. Like everyone would be sitting on the, you know, not drilling, not training hard. Like it wasn't as intense anymore. And I feel like that's what's happened with a lot of the philosophers of today. They've lost the energy. They've lost the passion. It's, they have this idea that, oh, I just need to get published. Oh, there's no more jobs. There's YouTube, there's guys on YouTube. The living philosophy, simple philosophy. Guys who in a year are making at least $1,000 a month, if not more, from talking about philosophy on YouTube. There is a huge audience out there who loves to hear about big ideas. We all love deep conversations under the stars or when we get drunk or high with our buddies. That's a billion person market out there to talk about. You know, to, you know, get into. But instead we think we have, we are so dumb that we follow these paths. And the university system is charging kids tens of thousands of dollars to get degrees, to get the, just to put them into the system isn't worth it anymore. When there's free online content, when you, there's free online university courses or really crazy, you could just make friends or talk to those philosophy professors and not be a student. Every single professor in the world has friends that don't pay them money. It's like college is like a big fraternity. You know, you're paying for your friends. And that's fine. Like I said, at a level that's fine, but it's almost like we're not producing the philosophers that we need it anymore. We're not producing the Nietzsche's. We're not producing these revolutionaries that we need that can actually change the world. So next is the philosophy of language. And this is one of the, this is one of them that, that I, the philosophy of language, I was really into this when I was 19, 20, 21. I was really into grammar. I thought about getting a linguistics degree or double majoring with linguistics. But I got a little bit burned down. I moved on. I kind of moved on for a while from creative writing to, or excuse me, philosophy to creative writing. And then when I came back to philosophy, I was interested in different things, but I really enjoyed the philosophy of language. I think it's a really cool thing to study. And when the class, the classic authors, and I'll just give it a rating. I think the philosophy of language deserves a B. I think the great historical tradition, I think today it has become a little bit nuanced, but I think it's a pretty mind blowing field. If you actually, if you read kind of a read through it and have, I mean, I think the philosophy of language is maybe the most mind blowing field out there. And I'm maybe, I'm gonna give it an A too. I really think that if you take the time and understand and have the patience with the philosophy of language, your mind will just get, can get blown with things like ethics and epistemology and even aesthetics at times. My mind doesn't just go boom. I don't really get that, oh my God, what the hell is going on? Like everything I thought is wrong. I'm switching camps now. Like with the philosophy of language, I have switched camps from descriptivist to prescriptivist and that's talking about the grammar wars, but I've switched so many sides in the camps and is there a universal grammar? I have, especially back then, like I remember I had this one professor and I had all these different professors from all these different sides of the aisle and I would just be bouncing between them and it's really fun. I really think it's a really, for a lot of people, if you are still listening to me right now, 30 minutes in, you probably will enjoy the philosophy of language. If you are a reader, if you are a writer, if you're on this channel right here, this is probably one for you. So of course, the classics of John Stuart Mill of names, another classic, this is, if you don't understand Frej, Frej, I can't remember how to say his name anymore, he is one of the pinnacle thinkers. So on songs, so two books I like on songs, on sense and reference and then the thought, the logical inquiry and then on concept and object. I would recommend those absolutely and once again, these are things, these are some of the parameters, if you don't understand Fektenstein or Sassur, or the classic Sassur versus Derrida, post-modern collapse that happens with the transcendental signifier, one of the classic things that people get their mind blown about in university. That's kind of at some level, the philosophy of language. So I liked Putnam, the meaning of meaning, Sperber and Wilson, their book Relevance and Solving Frejji's Puzzle by Heck. So these are, yeah, the philosophy of language, I have a soft spot for it. I think, like I said, a lot of people who are here right now, like me, will like the philosophy of language and that's why it's getting a name. I think it's, yeah, it kind of has an A across the board. Next, we have Logic and, ah, I know this might make some of you guys mad, but we are going to put Logic right down here at F where it belongs. Yeah, Logic, Logic, Logic deserves an F. I don't really see, gonna sound bad, the point of Logic in 2022. This is where the philosophy bros come out. This is where a lot, so much potential is wasted. I understand there's a rich history, it's a rich part of philosophical, but where it's gone today, my opinion on it, and throw it down are both 0%. I have taken, you know, when you study philosophy at university, take the logic classes, work your way through them. There's always the kids in there that love it. And those kids, though, I still know them, always seem to do nothing, always seem to have a comment, always seem to think they know what's going on, always seem to have no connection to nature or the above or to selves and individuation. It seems, like I said, that this branch of philosophy creates people that aren't probably who we need to create utopia with a capital U, everybody. I said it, the word that all the philosophy people, all the logicians hate, utopia. They hate it. Look, my head's a big U right now. I'm just a walking utopia. Logic, no way, Jose. All right, so next is metaphysics. And I'm going to give metaphysics a B, because metaphysics could honestly get a D, too, depending on how you look at it. But I really feel like the arguments throughout history with Plato and Aquinas and Spinoza and Nietzsche and everyone else between and after, I think deserve, are one of the classic philosophical traditions. And I think that gets an A. My interest in it is probably a B and where I think it's gone today is pretty insane, but I think it kind of ranks up there, too, probably around as a B or a C. So I think it's a good tradition and I think for historical context and diving into philosophy, it's one of those places that you probably want to go if you want to, because that's where a lot of people went. It's kind of a zone of a lot of people, of a lot of the best thinkers ever, really focused in on metaphysics or spent some years of their life doing it. So metaphysics, Leibniz's, sorry, I'm saying his now, Leibniz's discourse on metaphysics, monodology, Kant's, Plagmomania to any future method, an introduction to metaphysics by Burke, meditation by Aristotle, meditation on first philosophy by Descartes, ethics by Spinoza, and then, yes, those are who I would consider, those are the texts that I would consider the introductory texts. See, I'm gonna give you guys a Google Doc for that. These are the books that I would consider the good ones that I would say are part of that tradition. Maybe you can throw in a little bit of Aquinas in there or Augustine if you wanted to. You have to, you can throw in some existentialists and I really enjoy metaphysics. I don't really know where to put this one, but because it could be, it's really ontology, but where do you put it? I really enjoy being in time by Heidegger. I think that is one of the pinnacle works of our time. I think it maybe doesn't hold up as well perfectly today, but is one must inspire, you know, inspirational foundational books for postmodernism and where we have gone in thought since then, since being in time was written. I think to understand being in time, you need to have read a lot of those books I just talked about. You'll need to know Plato and Aristotle and Kant at a pretty good level, really good level in Spinoza and the German idealist and Hegel and to understand Hegel, you need, you know, you're gonna have to understand a lot of these thinkers and read at least a lot of their major works to really, you know, you can understand being in time, but to really get what an accomplishment it was, in my opinion, is you have to have dived into prerequisites without, and it will make it easier. It won't make it as big of a slog. Even though there was a new translation I read last summer, so about a year ago now, there's a new translation. I don't remember who it's by and they have a reading guide with it. I had such a good time. I took a class on being in time and I got through it. I learned about it, did the prerequisitory, but this new translation with the reading guide was so much better. I had such a good time reading it. Almost not seamless, way easier. The traditional translation has been known to be kind of hard and just got lightened up a little bit. They have a nice glossary of the, it's not as campy. The fourth category, ontology is a great book. The Possibility of Metaphysics by E.J. Lowes and then the universe as we find it for metaphysics. So metaphysics receives A, B, I think once again, it's a very rich tradition and there's a lot in there that I still haven't explored because I kind of gave up on metaphysics because my own personal experience with yoga, meditation, nature, psychedelics, I really feel like a lot of these guys in the Western tradition doesn't know what's going on, that they're playing these logical games. They're playing chess when I'm astrally projecting for lack of a better word, you know? I feel like that's what they're doing and I don't really, like I said, it's a rich tradition but what people are doing now and what people are getting into aren't helping people get into spirituality. As philosophers, we need to get people into non-hierarchical spirituality. Atheism really isn't an answer. Atheism is a religion and it leaves nihilism and it's fine, you know, as long as everyone's nonviolent but it's overall a pessimistic and negative hue on someone's life and I don't think, like I said, if you spend a lot of time in nature and you've learned meditation and study yourself and your body and individuate and explore with some psychedelics and your soul and connect with others at a deep level and escape a lot of traditional dialects and trauma that where you come from I don't feel like atheism really exists. Really is that great of an argument, even though they have great arguments, even though atheists have the best arguments ever, man. I love it. I don't think it's the best way to live a life. I think that a non-hierarchical spirituality that's been exploration, synchronicity and optimism, so much more fun, so much better, you get so much more out of life, your mind blown constantly and that's why I've kind of, you know, especially since I've left university, steered away from metaphors. So next we have the philosophy of the mind. And I'm going to give this a, you know, I don't really have a category for it. I'm going to give this a C when I've read. This is where I would say I'm least read, baby, other than the philosophy of science, but out of the ones I consider myself, you know, at least somewhat versed in and like, the philosophy of mind is one I'm not really into, but there is a great, so these are the only two books I can really give. There's a great introduction. I took a course on this, but we read a lot of papers, you know, we read a lot of papers, not books, but I recently read to get back into this. Mind, a brief introduction by John R. Cyril. And I really enjoyed this book. I feel like it brought some really good energy to one of these books, like I'm saying that people should be writing more, can actually bring people into the picture and to understand things. Not that big, it's easy and it gives you 80% of the information you'll ever need on the philosophy of the mind. Another book I really enjoyed and I recommend this one, actually, this one's one the best on the list, The Embodied Mind, Cognitive Science and Human Experience by Francisco Barilo. And this book uses meditation and Buddhism and they study people and the cognitive science of a lot of Eastern things. And, because if you know about the phenomenological connection to the yeast, that phenomenology at some level, which is at some level the study of consciousness and not really connected, it's a little bit connected to the philosophy of the mind at some level, is really just a rip-off of the yeast. They figured it out and put it in the, and made it a heavyweight argument and contender in the Western philosophical tradition but they weren't bringing Husserl and Heidegger and that whole tradition and Ponti, weren't bringing, sorry, Ponti, weren't bringing anything to the table that had really not been brought there by the yeast already, 3,000 years before in terms of like revelation. But they brought it there, like I said, within their tradition and progression. And the embodied mind really, like I said, really gives a very logical, more left brain view of the yeast. And I think it does a great job without romanticizing it or over-logicking, logical insanity in it. I think it's a great book. So the embodied mind. So like I said, I never really understood the philosophy of the mind stuff. I took the class. I just never really got into it. And it doesn't really, from what I know, have the greatest historical tradition or even the best tradition now, it's kind of mixed up with neuroscience now. And I don't have the absolute interest or respect of that. So the philosophy of religion, I'm going to give another B. The philosophy of religion, I think, really good. There's a lot of great books that we can talk about. Obviously the whole, once again, the whole tradition that we've talked about before, the whole metaphysics type tradition. But the philosophy of religion in general is really cool because a lot of people are into their own religion and they're really into it. So they study it and they study other religions and they talk about it and they put it into a philosophical context. I think a lot of more heart-oriented books come out of the philosophy of religion sector. For instance, someone who I really like is Alvin Plantinga. And he, I wish I, where is this other book? He has another book. I can't remember what it's called right now. So I have God and the other minds and the nature of necessity. But he has another book. That's actually a really good beginner book on the nature, the philosophy of science. Excuse me, of religion. So I would check out really most books and I think Alvin Plantinga sent out on a very big project in the philosophy of religion and did a lot of great things and I, you know, I meant him on that. Some other ones, of course, classics are The Will to Believe by William James, Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard, Love Kierkegaard and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by Hume. And then another more modern one, Can God Be Free by William Rowe? Really great stuff. I know this could deserve a C, but I think that this has a lot of potential, a lot of place to go, a lot has more room than some of the other branches of philosophy to wiggle out and to not get as trapped in itself into a circle jerk. So the philosophy of religion gets a B. It could be a C, honestly, but I'm giving it nice. So the philosophy of science, I would say it gets eight. That philosophy of science in general glorifies scientism and scientism, much like atheism, is a religion, much like the belief in government. It has become scientism. And I don't dishate that. I don't dislike that necessarily, but having taken, once again, multiple courses in the philosophy of science and trying to read through the book list, I feel like it is a glorification without context, without ethics, without the progress that we need for where we're going. That if we are trying to create utopia, I don't feel like the philosophy of science and what it has done and what it's doing is promoting that because scientism isn't going to help us there. It's going to help us to singularity and having doing that, the abundance end of it, but it's not going to solve a lot of the human problem end. And I feel like that's what philosophy is, really at the base level. And I just wanna say, for whoever's listening, man, thank you guys for being, thank you, we're going deep on this one here. I think that the philosophy in general, man, I don't know. So if you think about like, I really love Will Durant. I read, he wrote the story of philosophy, pleasures of philosophy, the whole story of civilization, series, I've read all of them, really love him, really love his beautiful take. I feel like he was one of these people who really, I mean, he's changed, he's helped millions, if not tens of millions of people get into philosophy and love it in a fun and cool way. It's more than a lot of people on this list, a lot of the greatest philosophers ever have done. But I feel like would Durant be more horrified at what philosophy has become? And all the bros, all the bro philosophy and all the crazy elitism, nuanced publishing of the papers and philosophy getting taken over by the left wing to be more disappointed in that or shocked or would be more disappointed that he was writing in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, that in 2022 with all this technology, with all this power to look at information that we've done nothing that philosophy is maybe less popular than ever, less people can actually read it and work through it than ever. What do you guys think? What would he be more disappointed? I think, I don't know. I don't know what he would be more shocked about, that the lack of people who are into it or how the people who are in it are acting. And that's what I'm trying to do on this channel. Subscribe if you aren't, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to bring some more positive and a different energy philosophy scene. So last but not least is social and political philosophy. And I will, I'll give this one a B. So that is the end, but I mean, we're gonna look at some texts right now, but oh, I didn't, sorry, I didn't, oh God. So we talked about the ethics of liberty. I didn't format this, my bad. So we have Locke, John Locke, The Prince, The Republic, Hobbes, Rawls again. And so I'm just gonna delete you guys. Well, okay. So a couple of that I want to talk about though, I think are really good are, of course, if you want to understand what's happening in life, you have to read Capital Blood. Once again, not the biggest fan of Marxism, but to really understand social and political philosophy, you gotta understand Marx. To understand the other side of that, I would read Human Action or Man, Economy and the State by Murray Rothbard, who I talked about earlier. His kind of magnum opus, Man, Economy and the State, I feel like is the literally up the polarity to capital by Karl Marx and maybe even more well-ridden. The libertarian or anarchist really manifesto, much like capital is. So the dialect of enlightenment, I really liked that book by Ardeno and Orchimer really enjoyed that book. It was kind of long, it's kind of hard, but that one's really good. Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick. I feel like that one's pretty good. It's not my favorite Anarchy book, but once again, for an introduction to the ideas and to more of a left-leaning anarchism, which to anyway, but there's a context on that. Then another book that I would like to talk about is this one right here. And this is one I think everyone should read. It's called The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Aren't. I really recommend this book for anybody. If you're going to read one book on this list, go check out that one. The Origins of Totalitarianism because it really shows you fascism and communism and totalitarianism and the ideas and where it comes from. And this can kind of send you down a rabbit hole into Wilhelm Reich's, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. And that leads into a ton of crazy rabbit holes. I have this other book called Male Fantasies that really connects it to the libido and repressed sexuality. Or there's a great book called The Occult Roots of Nazism. And once you start understanding totalitarianism, you can see that there's similar themes in all regimes. And then you look at our government now and you can identify where they are or what's going wrong or where it could come up with other world government. And I really feel like that is where social and political philosophy needs to go. And it's towards reducing totalitarianism. What else are we doing here? Why else would we study social and political philosophy other than to less in control? But that's the problem. A lot of people study this or think about this and their whole concepts of politics and ideas are based in control. So, you know, honestly, I'm going to give this one. Honestly, I was wrong. I'm giving this an F. I really feel like social and political philosophy is the reason that we have and the people who think they know what they're talking about and when they're reading this has led to over 200 million deaths in the century from democide once innocent people dying from government. In 1900, if all governments in the world disbanded and we said, you know what? We're going to live in a non-hierarchical way. Maybe we'll keep small armies to create clans and factions from warring with each other, but we're going to try and figure this out. We're going to spend all this money on education. We're going to try to eliminate violence and we're not going to play these games anymore. We're going to free peasants. We're going to end any segregation or prejudice written into law. We're going to end all that. Do you think? So, there would be chaos. I understand there'd be chaos. I'm not saying there wouldn't be chaos. Tens of millions of people would probably die because what, hundreds of millions? Would it have gone worse than it did with all the social and political philosophy that we were ramming down our throats and all these ideas? How's it going? How's it going right now? The Ukraine? How's our social and political philosophy going? How's the control going? How's it creating an educated group of people that can sustain on their own going? Doesn't seem like it's going very good. This one is really the only practical, one of the only practical branches of philosophy and it's gone absolutely terrible. Oh, we're free. We got what we have now. Look at us. We've always been, you're free and I'm free, but we get constrained in our own mind by insane jerks and uniforms to think that we're not, but we are. And I think, like I said, everything that we do, no matter if we have to move through the left or the right, whatever policies we have to do and obviously we can't just abandon everything at once. We could, but whatever path we're going on, it should be toward that, but no one is talking about that and I really feel like that's a travesty. A lot of people like to control because they are controllers in their own life. Their politics are just a reflection of their own personal life, how they treat themselves, how they treat their others, how they treat animals, how they treat society, how they treat the environment, how they treat people lesser than them in terms of, you know, status. That's just my opinion, but I really feel like the social and political philosophy as a branch of philosophy has failed us. 200 million people dead. Let me hear your response. All the people that don't believe that, all the people who believe in what, in, you know, in all the social and political philosophy in government, what would we have been gone by now in 1900 if we would have said we're done. Hundreds of millions dead or a little bit less because that's my counter of how good we've done and how many people have not unnecessarily been killed. That seems like a good marker to start with, to try and lessen or to make ideas about, like, how do we not do this as much? And communism and democratic governments at some level don't seem to be working. So I will catch you guys later. And if you guys want to go check out another video on me tier ranking classical novels, go check that out right here.