## Kind, difficulty and style There's two different kind of philosophical books: - **Normative**: they're about things that ought to be done, like a cookbook or a manual. - **Theorical**: they're about, i.e., the difference between good and bad, or about being, thinking, etc... Philosophical book difficulty can be set by two different categories: - **First order question**: adapted for general readers, mostly classical philosophy until 1930 - **Second order question**: for experts, mostly written by modern philosophers. Reading philosophy is a matter of answering first order questions. And there's no other way to do it than just thinking more and more, using our own experience and forced/evident truth. There's no other tools as the one used by scientific, i.e., to verify and validate experiences. There's at least 5 different styles of philosophy books: - **The dialogue**, where there's mostly exchanges between philosophers, achieved by epistolaries exchanges - **The philosophical essay**, or treatise, that is more a development of thoughts - **The meeting of objection**, where a philosopher mostly answer to objections from other philosophers. - **The systematization of philosophy**, seems to be more by adding a scientific character to questions and thinking - **The aphoristic style**, with concices, terse, laconic or memorable expression of a general truth principle. Thus spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche, i.e. ## Reading philosophy Good philosophy books, just like good scientific books, are free from propaganda and oratory (see: [Be careful about practical book's propaganda](202107072122%20Be%20careful%20about%20practical%20book's%20propaganda.md)) When reading this kind of book, we need to find the controlling principle of the author by ourselves, and make our own evaluation and idea of these concepts (see: [Don't use extrinsic aid synchronously](202107062109%20Don't%20use%20extrinsic%20aid%20synchronously.md)). Once we found it, we can agree or disagree. Disagreements are as important as agreements. We can be in position to judge only when we have both arguments in the head. Adults do not lose their inquisitiveness, they just stop questionning [The Why](The%20Why.md) of things in profit of truth. Philosophy is also the art of clearing complexity and ask for childish questions. We should always keep and sustain our childish view to enhance curiosity and see things differently. ## References - [How To Read A Book, The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren](How%20To%20Read%20A%20Book,%20The%20Classic%20Guide%20To%20Intelligent%20Reading%20-%20Mortimer%20J.%20Adler,%20Charles%20Van%20Doren.md) - #books/philosophy - #books/essay