# The hardest philosophers to read **URL:** \ **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:** 2
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/21 "2015-10-16T22:47:37Z")
IIRC, a fair amount of Hegel’s published works were “reverse-engineered” from the notes of some of his students.:eek: ---
**Author:** ![4d3fect](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/4d3fect/32/9728_2.png) [@4d3fect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/4d3fect)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/22 "2015-10-17T00:53:30Z")
I could never finish Being and Nothingness. Just forgot what he was talking about by the end of one of the paragraph-long sentences. but what always stuck with me (paraphrasing here, as I’m too lazy to pick up the book and look for the quote) “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being, like a worm” ---
**Author:** ![thanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/23 "2015-10-17T05:29:21Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Oh, dear God. It’s just… Hegel. > > I mean, just [look at it](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm): > > 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. WTF did i just read ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/24 "2015-10-17T07:25:21Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > 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. With you on Hegel. It’s as if he starts up the engine and just tries to go full speed ahead without starting small and building on basic concepts. He literally sounds insane to me. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/25 "2015-10-17T16:15:18Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Hardest to read? Every Philosophy grad student, ever. …who somehow convinced their department to let them write on Rand. ---
**Author:** ![northporlarbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7bcc69/32.png) [@northporlarbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/northporlarbear)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/26 "2015-10-17T17:18:53Z")
“The utter servility of mankind comes out in his preference for a bovine existence.” I like that sentence. A bit too many big words for an ESL like me, but it quite captures a unique notion rather precisely. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/27 "2015-10-17T17:57:05Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I agree that it’s probably someone German. I second that. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/28 "2015-10-17T19:04:36Z")
> [@northporlarbear](#): > > “The utter servility of mankind comes out in his preference for a bovine existence.” > > I like that sentence. A bit too many big words for an ESL like me, but it quite captures a unique notion rather precisely. Dumb people on the internet say basically the same thing when they throw out the term ‘sheeples’. I am not sure it is that profound when you fancy it up and use cows instead. “Sheeple (a portmanteau of “sheep” and “people”) is a derogatory term that highlights the herd behavior of people by likening them to sheep, a herd animal. The term is used to describe those who voluntarily acquiesce to a suggestion without critical analysis or research.” ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/29 "2015-10-17T19:44:01Z")
Both Adam Smith AND Karl Marx are long-winded, clumsy and tedious writers who are never content to make a point just once. ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/30 "2015-10-17T20:36:53Z")
29 replies. No kierkegaard. I’m disappointed. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/31 "2015-10-17T21:34:32Z")
Sartre. Could not understand a word after numerous tries ---
**Author:** ![Graymalkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@Graymalkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Graymalkin)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/32 "2015-10-18T01:56:02Z")
I remember picking up a copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and reading the first sentence–it was something about the “existent,” and I understood nothing of it. I thought, well, I guess I have to go to college and find out what the big deal was. I went to college. I still have no idea what he was saying in that first sentence. Reading Hegel is like drowning and then getting a little bit of air, and then down you go again. The section on master-slave is somewhat comprehensible, but usually only after reading an every-day language synopsis of it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/33 "2015-10-18T17:45:18Z")
Derrida. The answer is [Derrida](http://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Derrida/Differance.html). And I _like_ deconstruction. Derrida on Hegel: > [@](#): > > Could not this (active) movement of (the production of) différance without origin be called simply, and without neographism, differentiation? Such a word, among other confusions, would have left open the possibility of an organic, original, and homogeneous unity that eventually would come to be divided, to receive difference as an event. And above all, since it is formed from the verb “to differentiate,” it would negate the economic signification of the detour, the temporizing delay, “deferral.” Here, a remark in passing, which I owe to a recent reading of a text that Koyré (in 1934, in Revue d’histoire et de philosophic religieuse, and reprinted in his Etudes d’histoire de la pensee philosophique) devoted to “Hegel in Jena.” In this text Koyré gives long citations, in German, of the Jena Logic, and proposes their translation. On two occasions he encounters the expression differente Beziehung in Hegel’s text. This word (different), with its Latin root, is rare in German and, I believe, in Hegel, who prefers verschieden or ungleich, calling difference Unterschied and qualitative variety Verschiedenheit. In the Jena Logic he uses the word different precisely where he treats of time and the present. Before gethng to a valuable comment of Koyré’s, let us look at some sentences from Hegel, such as Koyré translates them: “The infinite, in this simplicity, is, as a moment opposed to the equal-to-itself, the negative, and in its moments, although it is (itself) presented to and in itself the totality, (it is) what excludes in general, the point or limit; but in its own (action of) negating, it is related immediately to the other and negates itself by itself. The limit or moment of the present (der Gegen-wart), the absolute ‘this’ of time, or the now, is of an absolutely negative simplicity, which absolutely excludes from itself all multiplicity, and, by virtue of this, is absolutely determined; it is not whole or a quantum which would be extended in itself (and) which, in itself, also would have an undetermined moment, a diversity which, as indifferent (gleichgultig) or exterior in itself, would be related to an other (auf ein anderes bezogen), but in this is a relation absolutely different from the simple (sondern es ist absolut differente Beziehung).” And Koyré most remarkably specifies in a note: "different Relation: differente Beziehung. One might say: “differentiating relation.” And on the next page, another text of Hegel’s in which one can read this: “Diese Beziehung ist Gegenwart, als eine differente Beziehung (This relationship is [the] present as a different relationship).” Another note of Koyré’s: "The term different here is taken in an active sense."l5 ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/34 "2015-10-18T18:39:25Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Oh, dear God. It’s just… Hegel. > > I mean, just [look at it](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm): > > 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. Heh, even popularizers of education do acknowledge how unnecessarily confusing Hegel was, but it is interesting to check the good ideas he had inside that morass. [QUOTE] The German philosopher Hegel believed that strange and alien bits of history have much to teach us. History and civilisation do not move in a straight line, so important ideas and attitudes get left behind. Through Hegel's dense, unappealing prose, some brilliant ideas stand out. [/QUOTE] (7 minute video, that I would call it “Hegel in a nutshell”, that I wish I had seen when I was also studying philosophy.) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/35 "2015-10-19T04:20:32Z")
I also do remember the amusing tale of J Edgar Hoover investigating Sartre, Hoover thought that Sartre’s existentialism was a front of communism. The FBI found _nothing_… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/36 "2015-10-19T06:01:12Z")
Ludwig Wittgenstein. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/37 "2015-10-19T09:32:23Z")
Kant. I found Hegel (marginally) more palatable than Kant. Kant makes me want to get a nail gun and see how many nails I can get through my skull before the sweet embrace of death claims me. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/38 "2015-10-19T13:16:49Z")
I could manage Kant, but Hegel… Hegel starts with nothing, spends fifty pages explaining that nothing is something, then spends fifty more pages explaining that something is nothing. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Derrida. The answer is Derrida. And I like deconstruction. Derrida on Hegel: Derrida explaining Hegel is like the Time Cube guy explaining two girls and a cup. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/39 "2015-10-19T15:59:35Z")
Are there any philosophers who _don’t_ fit the OP’s question? ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729/40 "2015-10-19T16:18:24Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Are there any philosophers who _don’t_ fit the OP’s question? JS Mill likes subclauses and sub-subclauses but aside from that, he’s an easy read. Hume, Isaiah Berlin, Bentham, Popper, Montesquieu are easy enough to read as well. I’ve not read Searle but I’ve heard him speak and it was quite easy to follow. Arendt might require you to do a little research or have some of her premises explained since she seems to be working off Greek philosophy rather much on some topics. Even Descartes can be easy enough if we make allowances for the fact that he wrote more than 300 years ago and the a priori nature of much of his philosophy. Analytical philosophy may involve looking up some terms or at least the way they’re used in philosophy but if you can learn law, you should be able to read much of analytical philosophy. Continental philosophy from the 19th century onward is where it gets frustrating for me. It can also change according to the topic. I apparently understood Husserl’s critique of Mill’s ideas quite well. What Husserl proposed to replace them, not so much. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-philosophers-to-read/734729.md?page=1)