who are some of the hardest philosophers to read rather its their use of language, word structure, grammar, or complexity of ideas, or even the way its written
who are some of these people that you would put as being some of the hardest philosophers to read
Aristotle is tough, especially when compared to the other giant of Greek philosophy, Plato, whose dialogues are works of art. IIRC, what we have from Aristotle are not polished works written for general audiences, but lecture notes.
I found Kant readable, though a tough slog. Hegel was absolutely incomprehensible. I just gave up. A lot of the modern French guys are just word salad. At least Hegel was trying to say something meaningful, though I couldn’t be bothered to find out what it was.
How weird. One of my majors was in philosophy (and I’m employed, no less!), and a major thesis compared Kant’s Metaphysics with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Kant was by far the more difficult to work with, and contrary to Thudlow, I found Aristotle to be relatively accessible. Perhaps it’s the different translators?
Further, even though college was a couple decades ago, and even though I’ve long since pickled most academic memories from the time period, and even though I never was good at remembering quotations, two of Aristotle’s stood out then (I think my first signature here was one of them) and are still with me today:
When I’m feeling cynical:
*“The utter servility of mankind comes out in his preference for a bovine existence.” *
When I’m feeling sublime: “Happiness is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
Me too! As the faculty – the faculty! – put it, “philosophy is the best second major.”
(As for the question at hand, lemme relay what one professor said: “yeah, nobody here is going to teach Spinoza; I don’t think students are ready for him until grad school.”)
I remember when we went finally finished Heidegger I was relieved. Of course we immediately started into Husserl, and after about 15 pages I decided the chick across the hall really wasn’t that hot, and dropped the class.
You know how everyone wants to use their time machine to kill Hitler? Well, screw that. I’m going back to punch Hegel in the face. That would feel so sweet.
My Swiss friend says that when he took a philosophy course at the ETH they were advised to read Kant in French translation because that was easier.
Russell and Whitehead is not philosophy. It was supposedly the foundations of math. I don’t think anyone reads it for that (or anything else) these days. Certainly i never did.
I’m sure he’s not the hardest, but David Chalmers is a wild-haired Australian who plays music and looks like he surfs so I would’ve thought he’d be less dry.