My friend Steven Harms has just put up an excellent reference for those interested in philosophy. It attempts to chart the relationship context between the various books mentioned in my Episteme post from a while back. Steven writes:

Recently I read about a “Most Influential Books” list via Daniel Miessler’s post “Episteme”. I commented that it was a bit presumptuous to believe that the reader of the 100 list would be able to get anything out of some of the selections without other key concepts and items discussed in the previous authors’ work. For example, to make sense of Hume or Berkeley, you really need to know Aristotle’s Categories and Descartes’ Meditations. The former is not singled out and the latter didn’t make the list ( cogito ergo sum doesn’t rate? ).

I gave some thought as to how I could give a rough sketch of Western intellectual development in a broad-strokes sense that worked visually. Enter FreeMind. FreeMind is a mind-mapping software ( Free! ) that exports to PDF.

So I took an attempt at producing a PDF that gives context for these books.

Head over to Steven’s site to see the full post as well as the mind-map.

[ A Mind-Map to Western Philosophy ]

 

One does not become more intelligent or wise simply by being born in a more modern age. The knowledge and understanding of previous generations is not absorbed through some default means.

No. To gain that knowledge we must read. We must actively seek out those shoulders before we can stand on them, and I for one am tired of stumbling upon profound wisdom that should have been part of my early education. Here’s what I’m doing about it:

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtinfluential.html

I am building a master book list. Please let me know, either by comments here or via email, what you think should be included. The only criteria is that they should be must-reads — i.e. books that should, in your opinion, be required reading of all humans during secondary education and/or university. I’d prefer your favorite classics, but new books are fine too.