The following is a list of select works, organized by category, that have conditioned my (mis)understanding.
[Know of a book I should read? E-mail me!]
Category: Erudition
Influential reading
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo FreireI read this in translation. To this day I am uncertain what I got out of it. What I have understood of ‘Critical pedagogy’ does not strike me as profound.
Color for Philosophers
C.L. Hardin (1988)
The ultimate book on colour!
On Certainty
Ludwig Wittgenstein“Why, would it be unthinkable that I should stay in the saddle however much the facts bucked?” Brother L.W. speaks my language.
The Many Faces of Realism
Hilary PutnamConstrained conceptual relativism. I like it.
On Aggression
Konrad Lorenz (1966)
Searching for the roots of human aggression in other animals.
“What experience and history teach us is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” – Georg Wilhelm Hegel
Civilization and Its Discontents
Sigmund Schlomo FreudAn amusing psychoanalytical approach to civiliization.
The Territorial Imperative
Robert ArdreyA classic, original and fairly radical thesis on the important link forged between individuals and the territory they inhabit.
A Sand Country Almanac
Aldo Leopold
The finest naturalist writing I have ever encountered in the English language. Although descriptive rather than formally philosophical, the Almanac represents the first Western call for the incorporation of our non-human environment into an overarching ethical framework that I know of.