# The hardest philosophers to read
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 15, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729 "2015-10-15T15:45:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/1 "2015-10-15T15:45:25Z")
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
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### Author:  [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/2 "2015-10-15T16:14:58Z")
Given the OP, Heidegger should be a breeze.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/3 "2015-10-15T16:22:40Z")
Damn near anyone who originally wrote in German. Bonus points for during the 1800s.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/4 "2015-10-15T16:47:58Z")
Kant.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/5 "2015-10-15T16:51:06Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/6 "2015-10-15T16:58:08Z")
I think something like Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica would not be easy to understand.
Note there are free downloads if you do a Google Search:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=whitehead+russell+principia+mathematica+download](https://www.google.com/search?q=whitehead+russell+principia+mathematica+download)
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/7 "2015-10-15T17:05:07Z")
> [@PastTense](#):
>
> I think something like Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica would not be easy to understand.
Yeah, but Russell in general (and maybe Whitehead too) was a pretty clear and readable writer when he tried to be.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/8 "2015-10-15T17:19:19Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> Kant.
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.
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/9 "2015-10-15T17:20:57Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> Kant.
Neither kan I.
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### Author:  [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/10 "2015-10-15T18:36:34Z")
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.”_
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### Author:  [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/11 "2015-10-15T21:48:39Z")
what makes Hegel hard…is it his use of obscure vocabulary or is it something else?
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/12 "2015-10-15T22:56:50Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#):
>
> How weird. One of my majors was in philosophy (and I’m employed, no less!)
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.”_)
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### Author:  [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2015, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/13 "2015-10-15T23:51:11Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#):
>
> . Hegel was absolutely incomprehensible. I just gave up.
No joke. I know I didn’t get 10 pages in when I tried.
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### Author:  [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/14 "2015-10-16T00:13:09Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/15 "2015-10-16T03:16:17Z")
> [@thanatic](#):
>
> what makes Hegel hard…is it his use of obscure vocabulary or is it something else?
Oh, dear God. It’s just… Hegel.
I mean, just [look at it](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm):
> [@Hegel](#):
>
> The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development. Should it appear contradictory to say that the Absolute has to be conceived essentially as a result, a little consideration will set this appearance of contradiction in its true light. The beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as at first or immediately expressed, is merely the universal. If we say “all animals”, that does not pass for zoology; for the same reason we see at once that the words absolute, divine, eternal, and so on do not express what is implied in them; and only mere words like these, in point of fact, express intuition as the immediate. Whatever is more than a word like that, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a form of mediation, contains a process towards another state from which we must return once more. It is this process of mediation, however, that is rejected with horror, as if absolute knowledge were being surrendered when more is made of mediation than merely the assertion that it is nothing absolute, and does not exist in the Absolute.
That’s how he talks. Now imagine that in German.
I still have nightmares after trying to read that stuff in college. I literally didn’t understand a word of it.
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### Author:  [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/16 "2015-10-16T03:23:52Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/17 "2015-10-16T05:23:04Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#):
>
> 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.
This. Philosophy was also one of my college majors, and it was during our study of Hegel that I began having migraines.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/18 "2015-10-16T08:14:38Z")
Hardest to read? Every Philosophy grad student, ever.
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/19 "2015-10-16T16:15:01Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/20 "2015-10-16T21:34:56Z")
I agree that it’s probably someone German.
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.
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