Download Recommended Reading List for First-Year Philosophy Students at Royal Holloway and more Lecture notes Philosophy in PDF only on Docsity! Royal Holloway, University of London Department of Philosophy Philosophy first year: recommended reading Introduction The majority of students who study Philosophy at university do not have the subject at A- level, although some will have taken Religious Studies or another qualification that includes the study of ethics. The following reading list presupposes that you wonât have read much philosophy before; if you find that youâre familiar with the majority of the texts named below, or require more detailed information about what you might read in preparation for your arrival at the College, contact the Programme Director for Philosophy. Original texts One way to get âintoâ Philosophy if youâve not read any before is to jump in at the deep end and start reading texts by its most famous practitioners. Of course, people have been writing works of philosophy for 2500 years or so, and a great deal of what they produced is difficult to understand if youâre unfamiliar with what came before (and even if you are!). However, the following are generally regarded as amongst the âclassicsâ of the subject, and although some are more demanding than others they will all reward close scrutiny. The point to remember is that the effort to understand is part of what it is to do Philosophy: if you find what youâre reading either self-evident or silly youâre probably not challenging yourself enough! Plato, Republic Aristotle, Ethics Descartes, R., Meditations on First Philosophy Berkeley, G., Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous Hume, D., Enquiry concerning Human Understanding Kant, I., Prolegomenon; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Mill, J.S., Utilitarianism; On Liberty Nietzsche, F., On the Genealogy of Morality Sartre, J.S., Existentialism and Humanism John Cottinghamâs edited collection Western Philosophy: An Anthology contains extracts from the above texts and many more (of which some are contemporary). Itâs similarly worth remarking that more or less all the classic Philosophical texts are available free on the Internet through sources like Project Guttenberg.
