How to read philosophy

Reading philosophy is unlike reading anything else. It takes a special set of skills to read philosophy successfully, and if you don't have that toolkit, then reading philosophy can get frustrating. In this video, I'm going to show you the tools that you need to read philosophy successfully.
00:00 - Intro
00:28 - Philosophy is hard!
00:54 - Philosophy is a unique read
01:36 - Topic and Question
03:16 - The Thesis
04:10 - The arguments
04:58 - Method for reading philosophy
05:58 - Second & Third readings
07:27 - Interpretation vs analysis
09:38 - Is analysis necessary to read philosophy?
10:46 - Advice on how to read philosophy
14:12 - Learning to analyse philosophy
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Ko-fi.com/atticphilosophy
If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered, leave me a comment below.
Links:
My academic philosophy page: markjago.net
My book What Truth Is: bit.ly/JagoTruth
Most of my publications are available freely here: philpapers.org/s/Mark%20Jago
Get in touch on Social media!
Twitter: PhilosophyAttic
#philosophy

[@m_monemy]

Honestly saying, this is the best KZbin channel i've ever subscribed for.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Thanks!

[@janeylfoster6197]

Stumbled across your channel while trying to understand qualia. Wonderful clear and helpful vids, thanks so much.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Thanks, that’s great to hear!

[@dr.chrismort8448]

I completed my PhD 3 years ago but this has encouraged me to re read a particular genre of book ie Epistemic Injustice ( Fricker, Medina) and try and apply it to how certain narratives were rubbished during the pandemic. I’m suddenly re energised😁

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Great idea! Glad this video sparked an idea.

[@olgacooperman3360]

This really helpful, especially the advice to read contemporary philosophers. Would be great to get some specific reading recommendations

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Thanks! I’ll have a think about contemporary reading suggestions.

[@kazikmajster5650]

Whoosh, so glad that not all "philosophy" is needed.

[@frankavocado]

Great format for reading philosophy. Makes me wonder why more pieces aren’t written with it, too. Worth applying to the big ‘cornerstone’ papers you can discover as an undergrad - Gettier, Nagel, Quine etc… I disagree, though, that no one is going to find books on formal analysis fun - personally, I think they’re the most fun of all!

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Oh yeah, I loved it as an undergrad too, but I think there weren’t that many others!

[@dominickgarcia1401]

I remember reading Thomas aquinas on essence & being thinking I’m gonna fly through these six chapters just to be proved wrong .

[@AtticPhilosophy]

He is particularly hard going!

[@_zaaphiel]

Richness lies in the richness of the soul. الْغِنَى غِنَى النَّفْسِ Reference : Hadith 17, 40 Hadith Shah Waliullah

[@abdelkader8556]

Nice video sir ! I have a request if you don't Mind ... I know you have many videos where you speak about Logic , but Can you make some Videos about the functions Of various Kinds of Logic Like namely , where do we use different Kinds of Logic Like propositional Logic , formal/informal Logic , modal Logic ...etc?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

As a general rule, you use the simplest logic you can for a particular application. So, if you have arguments about all/some of something, you need quantifiers, so use FOL. If you need to talk about possibility or necessity, use modal logic. If you have both, you need quantified modal logic. And so on.

[@abdelkader8556]

@@AtticPhilosophy thank you professor !

[@joonatannogisto7311]

Thank you for the great philosophy content! Do you have any tips for leading a philosophy seminar? Any good practices you use to get students really engaging with the material and discussing with each other?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Thanks! My colleagues Andy Fisher & Jonathan Tallant wrote a guide about exactly this: www.routledge.com/How-to-get-Philosophy-Students-Talking-An-Instructors-Toolkit/Fisher-Tallant/p/book/9781138827875

[@joonatannogisto7311]

@@AtticPhilosophy Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for!

[@hyejinko4694]

Hello :) thank you for your videos :) I am 2nd year philosophy student at university of Nottingham. May I request you to make a video about philosophy essay exam in limited time, please? Your assignment guide (like writing essay and how to read philosophy like this video) has been tremendously helping me :) and essay exam is coming now and I have no clue. Thank you so much always

[@AtticPhilosophy]

I did this one a few weeks back, I was thinking about UoN exams, any good? How to write better sentences kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpyQpn2GmpJqha8

[@bishopbrennan3558]

I like how you picked Truth and Other Enigmas for the thumbnail... video on how to read Dummett next?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

That would be a painful video!

[@studiouspanda7183]

Where can we go to find these contemporary wider readings if our lecturers don’t give it to us? Are there certain key words etc we can use or somewhere we should look?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Probably best is the (free, online) Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. The articles are all written by experts & peer-reviewed (so not Wikipedia), and have great lists of references you can follow. Also good are the Philosophy Compass articles and Analysis 'Recent Work In ...' articles (if you have a university log-in for these).

[@desfurria6232]

But information eating is fun! A bit of Plato, Plotinus some Descartes, and Schopenhauer, Marx. Now Descartes demon could move atoms in such a way to give an inanimate object thought so that it thinks it's thinking. Now The demon is sad and isn't getting payed for it's labour, and identifies with unity and that's not The Good. Great videos! these have been fun to consume.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Thanks!

[@darrellee8194]

I like the polysemy of your channel name. Is it Greek philosophy? Nope Just an actual attic.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Right! It's just a terrible pun.