As per title , looking for a really good book that enhance critical thinking and concepts .

I'm influenced by great philosophers such as Aristotle and Confucius . Want to learn more about self-enrichment philosophy and the world around us .

go to kinokuniya - klcc . amazing section on philosophy from dummies to history of philosophy

also read the Bible modern version such as NLT OR TEV

How can the Bible be considered as philosophical?

Tamsin, I am not very familiar with philosophy but Stoicism does interest me, but not to the point of which I can commit myself to reading...
This might be a good introduction, though I cannot be so sure as I have not read it: The Stoic Life, T. Brennan

Sophie's world by Jostein Gaarder
Any Milan Kundera's book
Any Paulo Coelho's book

makes one think hard...

i haven't read sophie's world but it's been recommended in the philosophy circle as it gives an outline of the history of philosophy.

right now i'm reading principes élémentaires de philosophie by georges politzer. if you can find an english version of the book it'll be great.

i highly recommend it as it was written by a marxist back before world war 2, who wanted to give "labourers (proletariat)" access to philosophy in order for them to understand their social condition. politzer tries to remove preconceived notions that philosophy is convulated and "bourgeoise" by explaining the key concepts in philosophy in a simple but yet rigourous manner.

in the book he explores the philosophical problem between idealism and materialism, what is metaphysics, what is dialectics, historical materialism, dialectic materialism and ideologies. in a book containing 200+ pages, you could say half of the book covered antiquity to enlightenment (idealism and materialism) and the rest, german idealism and engel and marx.


p.s: i've found an english version of the book. it is called elementary principles of philosophy.

http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Principle...s/dp/0717804690

This post has been edited by papacatastrophe: Jul 12 2012, 09:28 PM

havard open course on PPS..

I had the same difficult path to try reading more from Aristotle and other great minds, but it's unlikely the way, because this is a section of extract of human great minds, if u want to take a glance into others life long extracts, I guess the best m easiest way could be start from visiting wikipedia or search "quote" by those philosophers, from there u may gain more information about their works n crawl deeper from there.

Those two philiosopers were lived too far from us n books r not exactly the "thing" they left for us, but in other forms.

Sophie's world is a good start if u r a book flipper; or else, go wiki or google for anything comes to your mind before u waste your time somewhere else ....
Afterall time is limited for dang volumn of info that u try to swallow ....

Hope it helps any ...

Namaste





This post has been edited by secretsquirrel: Sep 17 2012, 01:00 PM

Khalil Gibran's The Prophet was a pretty good book