I want to read philosophy which books should I read first

11 points

Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer is my favorite intro to Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and it’s hosted on ProleWiki. It starts with Idealism, Dialectics, Materialism, Dialectical Idealism, then Dialectical and Historical Materialism.

Do you have a specific, non-Marxist interest in philosophy?

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7 points

Yessss we’re gaining traction Politzerbros

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6 points

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3 points

No not really I want to study philosophy so I can make the best video games :>

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6 points

If you want to add some depth to your game with philosophy, the very end of Elementary principles of philosophy contains a section on ‘dialectical method of analysis’ of literary works. Try to reverse-engineer the process to structure your game/story for a proper development of the story.

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2 points

How do I reverse engineer it

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5 points

The SEP is an invaluable resource.

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2 points

I don’t even know what to being to look for lol

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1 point

Keywords you’re interested in. You said you want to learn philosophy to improve your video game making, I just typed in “video game” into the search bar: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=video+game

Some results: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/it-moral-values/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/

You can also try searching for “dialectics” and stuff like that. SEP is like the wikipedia for philosophy, one can spend hours reading it and going down rabbit holes.

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5 points

On Contradiction and On Practice

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2 points

I thought this was theory?

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5 points

Marxist theory is philosophy that seeks to change the world. (The good stuff, anyway.)

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3 points

Philosophy covers a lot of ground. It’s been built up over millennia. It’ll be useful to get an overview first. This will help you piece things together and understand what goes where and why.

To get an overview, you could read a general introduction or you could read excerpts from the big names in a few of the big trends. Or maybe articles on main themes and trends – SEP is good for that and another comrade had provided a link, although it might be hard to know where to start.

Alternatively, if you prefer videos, I could suggest some lectures.

Later, you can dive deeper into whichever philosophy/ers you enjoy most.

What do you know about philosophy so far? If you think ‘nothing’, what do you expect to find by learning more? If you can answer that, no matter how vague (to start with), I or others may be able to give you some more direction.

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1 point
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Will Durant - the story of philosophy. Only about western thought, but it’s very readable, engaging, and short.

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