How to Read Philosophical Works

How to Read Philosophical Works

When philosophy is mentioned, most people tend to keep their distance, as if it were something mysterious and unfamiliar, something they neither dare nor wish to approach too easily. Therefore, when reading philosophical classics, it is best to begin with some groundwork and basic introductions, such as Feng Youlan’s A Short History of Western Philosophy, or accessible introductory books like Sophie’s World. Only after gaining a conceptual understanding of philosophy is it really appropriate to begin genuine philosophical reading.

Curiosity is the origin of philosophy.

Philosophers raise one set of classic questions in order to explore the nature and domain of being. Because they are questions, they are not especially hard to state or understand, but answering them is extraordinarily difficult.

Another set of questions philosophers ask is concerned not with being itself, but with change and becoming. Based on our experience, we readily say that certain things exist, but we also say that all of these things change. They existed, and then they disappeared. While they exist, most of them move from one place to another, and many undergo changes in quality and quantity. By raising such questions, philosophers shift their attention from the existence of things to their change, and try to establish the relationship between being and change.

These two kinds of questions distinguish two major domains of philosophy. The first set, concerning being and change, has to do with what exists and what happens in the world. In philosophy, such questions belong to the theoretical or speculative part of the field. The second set, concerning good and evil, right and wrong, has to do with what we ought to do or pursue. We may call this the practical part of philosophy, or more precisely, normative philosophy.

1. Philosophical dialogue: The first form of philosophical exposition is dialogic, even conversational in style. It first appeared in Plato’s Dialogues. In Eastern philosophy, the representative classic The Analects also adopts this mode of dialogue and recorded sayings.

2. Philosophical essays or treatises: Plato’s student Aristotle also experimented with the dialogue form, though none of those works survive. By contrast, most of the works passed down under his name are extremely difficult prose treatises or essays.

3. Addressing objections: This philosophical style developed in the Middle Ages, reaching its height in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, which combines features of the previous two forms.

4. Systematizing philosophy: This was developed by two famous philosophers, Descartes and Spinoza. They were fascinated by the way mathematics organizes human knowledge of nature, and so they sought to arrange philosophy itself in a similarly mathematical manner.

5. The aphoristic form: This was used by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra, and some modern French philosophers have also adopted this approach.

A question closely tied to philosophy, and impossible to avoid when discussing it, is theology. Theology has two branches: natural theology and dogmatic theology.

Natural theology is a branch of philosophy and the final part of metaphysics. For example, you might ask whether causality extends infinitely: does every event have a cause? If your answer is yes, you may fall into an endless regress. Therefore, you may need to posit another name for an original cause that is not itself caused by anything else. Aristotle called this uncaused cause the “Unmoved Mover.”

Dogmatic theology, however, differs from philosophy, because its first principles are the scriptures upheld by the adherents of a particular religion. Dogmatic theology always depends on doctrine and on religious authorities who proclaim that doctrine. If you do not possess such faith and do not belong to a certain religious tradition, then to read works of dogmatic theology well, you must approach them with the same rigor you would bring to mathematics. But you must always remember that in writings about faith, faith is not a hypothesis. For believers, it is a form of certain knowledge, not an experimental viewpoint.