Library of Philosophy - Which first?

[P-Dunn]

I recently got a job from my aunt...I drive my 7th-grade cousin home from school every day and hang out with him for a little while and get paid $40 bucks a week. For a 17 year old, that isn't bad. :wink:

I was sitting at the piano noodling and glancing up at her bookshelf. Lo and behold, I find a massive series of historic works by philosophers and historians. She has the entire "Great Books of the Western World" series! I was thinking about borrowing one from her, but I don't know where to start.

The ones I may have interest in:

Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae
Augustine - The City of God
Pascal - The Provincial Letters, Pensées
Tacitus - The Annals, The Histories
Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy

So where do I start?

[Barry Desborough]

I recently got a job from my aunt...I drive my 7th-grade cousin home from school every day and hang out with him for a little while and get paid $40 bucks a week. For a 17 year old, that isn't bad. :wink:

I was sitting at the piano noodling and glancing up at her bookshelf. Lo and behold, I find a massive series of historic works by philosophers and historians. She has the entire "Great Books of the Western World" series! I was thinking about borrowing one from her, but I don't know where to start.

The ones I may have interest in:

Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae
Augustine - The City of God
Pascal - The Provincial Letters, Pensées
Tacitus - The Annals, The Histories
Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy

So where do I start?

Spinoza

[P-Dunn]

Spinoza
As in, Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics?

I don't think I've heard of him before.

[Barry Desborough]

As in, Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics?

I don't think I've heard of him before.

Yes. See his Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza). I confess, all I know of him is from reading The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World (http://www.amazon.com/Courtier-Heretic-Leibniz-Spinoza-Modern/dp/0393329178/sr=8-2/qid=1157599461/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-1467278-8279022?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Matthew Stewart, but his ideas sound interesting in the context of the origins of modernism.

[Philosophickle]

I recently got a job from my aunt...I drive my 7th-grade cousin home from school every day and hang out with him for a little while and get paid $40 bucks a week. For a 17 year old, that isn't bad. :wink:

I was sitting at the piano noodling and glancing up at her bookshelf. Lo and behold, I find a massive series of historic works by philosophers and historians. She has the entire "Great Books of the Western World" series! I was thinking about borrowing one from her, but I don't know where to start.

The ones I may have interest in:

Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae
Augustine - The City of God
Pascal - The Provincial Letters, Pensées
Tacitus - The Annals, The Histories
Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy

So where do I start?

Start at the beginning. Adler was no dope in arranging them. If I remember right, it begins with the pre-Socratics and goes until the end of the Classical Greek age. Too many people nowadays think that they can jump in modern philosophy without understanding its roots- don't make the same mistake.