read Jostein Gaarder's "Sophie's World"
a great novel, following Sophie Amundsen, a teenage girl in Norway, receiving a course in philosophical thinking and the history of philosophy.
this book is the only reason i started started with philosophy, and it really is great at describing and explaining various philosophical concepts
I got about 50/60% of the way through this book but just couldn't connect to it. For one, I don't really like the concept of the story. I'd rather just someone present me the information in a interesting and entertaining lecture-like format. A lot of the story just seemed baggage and useless, but perhaps it all came together at the end? Also, I felt that the fact that in the story the concepts are being explained to a child made some of it a little too simplistic, as if the author was taking me as a dullard. I realise it's meant to be accessible but it just didn't spark any interest or curiosity in me.
I was going to suggest as an actual way to get interested in philosophy the Stanford Encyclopedia. It's what I thought this thread might be about. We don't always need to dumb everything down.
yeah but thats just really heavy to get through, im just saying what worked for me.
Yeah I get the different approaches for different audiences, I'm just worried by what I see as an overarching trend to simplify things (like Kant and Descartes and Aristotle) that shouldn't necessarily be simplified. I should note that I'm a bit out of line here because I haven't actually read the book in question, just reviews of it.
I haven't read the book either, but I see the value in simplifying things and presenting it in a certain way. I feel like if they explain the basic concept well enough (or as basic as you can get with guys like Kant, whom I struggled with), it will encourage the reader to research the ideas further. Sometimes if I want to see if a certain philosopher will interest me, I'll see if there's anything on Philosophy Bro first because it's entertaining and gives me a good introduction to the topic before I have to dive into the deeper thinking.
it doesnt really oversimplify as much as explaining it in another way, like a good teacher
I, personally, really liked that it felt like i the terms was tought to me, in an understandable tone. the longer you get into it the more things start to make sense, then things get fucking weird in the end.