[ファブリス]

So to sum up so far, you can go for a general introduction, or you can pick something you are interested in, but instead of going straight for the original work, which may be very hard to understand, look for a guide or commentary eg:

Instead of going for Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature,

you can go for:

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rorty and the Mirror of Nature.

Or as you can see at bottom of this page , you could go for

Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks) by Marie McGinn, instead of the raw stuff.

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I posted this once before too, as an example, you can get a "plainer and more straightforward" version of early Modern philosophy here

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_why.html

I found George Berkeley's "idealist" philosophy particularly helpful last year, as it reads like a checklist of experiments, it makes you more aware of actual experience vs what is going on in the mind.

Hume also, on the subject of cause and effect can be potentially freeing. Do true causes exist in the world?

@ファブリス Are you interested in Buddhism? If so, as a religion or philosophy?

[ファブリス]

Hmm you could say I'm interested in Buddhist philosophy in general like the concept of interdependence. As a religion, no, I don't practice or consider myself a Buddhist. But it's all too easy to put things into fictional categories. There are many facets to religion.

For example, mindfulness practices are interwoven in Buddhist teachings and rites and rituals (eg. prayer beads, repeating mantras and so on), so it's not a simple matter of seeing the "religious" aspect of Buddhism as something to be outright rejected as a set of nonsensical/nonverifiable beliefs.

It's made all the more complicated because in the West we are coming from centuries of abuse from the church, and even when we say we are not believers... we continue to live our whole life in a society and culture where the concepts of sin and redemption are deeply ingrained.

Anyway... my interest in Buddhism I think developed around ~2000 when my anxiety was skyrocketing. I looked into books about mindfulness meditation. It didn't help me outright.. but over the years I then went to three Vipassana ten day silent retreats (also known as "Goenka retreats"), and had some experiences there that really touched me. Which are besides this topic.

Soooo I think that answers your question. Doing my best not to derail lol.

Interesting, and good info
I hope I'm not going too off topic, does

ファブリス Wrote:But it's all too easy to put things into fictional categories. There are many facets to religion.

For example, mindfulness practices are interwoven in Buddhist teachings and rites and rituals (eg. prayer beads, repeating mantras and so on), so it's not a simple matter of seeing the "religious" aspect of Buddhism as something to be outright rejected as a set of nonsensical/nonverifiable beliefs.

mean that if someone is to adopt some of the Buddhism philosophy she has to believe in the supernatural things (have belief in the religion) to justify where does the philosophy come from?

[ファブリス]

Sorry about derailing the thread. As the admin I should eat my own medicine, so to speak, and not break the "netiquette" needlessly.

Plus it can seem kinda rude if I undermine the original question of the thread with my metaphysical ramblings, I didn't mean to be rude.

EDIT: Moved my reply to undead_saif in a new thread for "metaphysical" discussions:

Metaphysics thread about reality/thought/self...

Good point, sorry too, I was going to stop with that post anyway!

The way I got into it was Eliezer Yudkowsky's/LessWrong's "Sequences". It's a huge series of blog posts available in downloadable form - google and you can find them.

On the one hand, all of it is self-contained. It doesn't require previous knowledge, and earlier posts introduce concepts used in later posts. It also has a lot of practical application, which the main thing I love about it.

On the other hand, it isn't nihilistic at all; in fact, I abandoned my nihilism quite eagerly as I was reading. Due to being self-contained, it also has no ties to outside sources - as in, unless you're eager to go out and explore, you might stick with that philosophy and never look at the outside world.

I just happened upon http://books.google.ch/books/about/Heide...edir_esc=y (I'm studying German lit and am taking a seminar on translation - I found this while looking for material on translation to and from Japanese)

- This book has a chapter of particular note to the users of this forum: A recreation of a discussion between an "inquirer" (Heidegger) and a Japanese person. It's about the difference between "koto" and "mono", and the nature of "kotoba" - language - as being the "foliage of "koto" things" - it's very interesting and shows that Heidegger has taken some very intriguing ideas from the Japanese language and appropriated them into German - a language where he pretty much had to create new terms for "koto" and "mono" with "Sein" und "Das Seiende"

Fascinating!