Philosophy - further reading guide

That's some reading list and by the time I scrolled down to Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" I was well and truely scared - you need a degree to understand that book alone!!!

Personally I would add some of the pillars of analytic philosophy who were radical in their own right, and offer perhaps a more proletarian methodology for the presentation, engagement, and construction of philosophy than say... hegel. Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein come to mind. You could add early communists coming out of the anglo-american philosophical tradition too like Thompson. Bakunin had his own critique of metaphysics and philosophical works.

on the dialectical side, you're missing Dietzgen.

Agreed about Wittgenstein...

... the 'duck-rabbit' and how we perceive for example, the 'cliff edge of language' etc

Particular books: "Tracatus Logico-philosophicus" which should be augmented with "The Blue and Brown Books" (and perhaps "Wittgenstein for Beginners" for plebs like me).

Hegel, Shopenhauer and Goethe are useful for a better understanding of Nietzsche

Hegel "Phenomenology of Spirit" (1807) and "Elements of the Philosophy of Right" (1822)
Shopenhaur "The World as Will and Representation" (1818)

Gottlob Frege would be important from an analytical perspective:

"Function and Concept" (1891)
"Logical Investigations" (1924)

You might also consider Peter Singer

"Animal Liberation" (1975)
"Practical Ethics" (1979)

some ancient but in parts still interesting stuff:

- Laozi: Daodejing
- Zhuangzi
- Liezi
- Epicurus: Letters
- Lucretius: De rerum natura

You rockin' out the Daoist mystics I see ;-). Have you read the LeGuin transcription of the Daodejing (afaik the only version assembled by an anarchist).

the old taoist philosphers displayed both dialectical thinking and a criticism of institutions and (confuzianist) culture ... must have a look at the LeGuin translation

the old taoist philosphers displayed both dialectical thinking and a criticism of institutions and (confuzianist) culture

This is true, but actually dialectics is common to many cultures. Plus, the Daoist critique of property, the state etc. is entirely mystical and highly regressive, stressing 'returning' rather than progress or advancement. I was very struck when reading it by what DeBord said about cyclical time in Ch. 5 of SoS:

Debord

From this moment on, the succession of the generations left the natural realm of the purely cyclical and became a purposeful succession of events, a mechanism for the transmisiion of power. Irreversible time was the prerogative of whoever ruled,

I think the Daoists represented a reaction against this movement away from the primal, cyclical time - this would be borne out by the rejection of modernity (writing, tool use) evidenced in the penultimate chapter of the Book of De. Confucianism, on the other hand, represented a more 'civilised', sophisticated and rational way of viewing the world, which is probably why it eventually became the dominant belief system in Chinese civil society.

For more modern stuff on knowledge, reality, mind, etc. John McDowell is the best.

Mind, Value and Reality *
Meaning, Knowledge and Reality
Mind and World

Also:

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Camus?

Yeah, to echo what s.nappalos said:

Joseph Dietzgen's Nature of Human Brain Work: An Introduction to Dialectics
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica
Bertrand Russell's The Principles of Mathematics
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

If you’re interested in the ideas of Kant and need a great introduction, read Roger Scruton’s ‘Kant’, Oxford, 1985. A right wing git writes the best book (I know of) on Kant. Don’t buy it get it from your library.

I have some comments I'd like to make on this list.

First, a simple mistake. Under the section for Heidegger, it says "Being and Nothingness." Being and Nothingness is one of Sartre's main books, not Heidegger's. Heidegger's opus is Being and Time (Sein und Zeit).

Anyway, on to more substantive comments. First, I think the amount of material dedicated to "dialectical materialism" critical or otherwise is out of proportion to how important that ideology is. Engelsian/Leninist diamat is shit and is also not that relevant today other than the insistence upon it by Stalinists and some Trots. For anarchism and communism, I think a better grounding in modern and contemporary thought is a lot more useful in terms of illuminating or at least providing context for current debates. Some works I think are sorely missing, even if we don't endorse what is said within them:

Being and Nothingness - Sartre
Critique of Dialectical Reason - Sartre
The Age of Reason - Sartre
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology - Husserl
Creative Evolution - Bergson
Duration and Simultaneity - Bergson
Matter and Memory - Bergson
Time and Free Will - Bergson
Existence and Existents - Levinas
Otherwise than Being - Levinas
Totality and Infinity - Levinas
Time and the Other - Levinas
Knowledge and Human Interests - Habermas
The Gift - Mauss
Given Time I. Counterfeit Money - Derrida
Margins of Philosophy - Derrida
Writing and Difference - Derrida
Who's afraid of philosophy? - Derrida
In Praise of Philosophy - Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology of Perception - Merleau-Ponty
Signs - Merleau Ponty
Ideology: An Introduction - Terry Eagleton
After Theory - Terry Eagleton
Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - Fredric Jameson
Valences of the Dialectic - Fredric Jameson

I also find the Zizek selection sorely lacking. The selections presented won't even make as much sense without some other works. I'd suggest adding:

The Sublime Object of Ideology (MANDATORY)
Looking Awry
The Fragile Absolute
In Defense of Lost Causes
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
The Metastases of Enjoyment
The Indivisible Remainder
Welcome to the Desert of the Real
The Parallax View (which is in the library)
Less Than Nothing

To the collection of Marxist stuff I highly recommend:

Intellectual and Manual Labor - Alfred Sohn-Rethel
The Concept of Nature in Marx - Alfred Schmidt

And finally, in terms of journals, definitely add Radical Philosophy.

First, I think the amount of material dedicated to "dialectical materialism" critical or otherwise is out of proportion to how important that ideology is.

Totally agree.

Do people find these guides useful? I'm wondering if they need at least a sentence about each one explaining why it's of interest to libertarian communists, otherwise it's kinda just a list of ALL THE BOOKS.

Joseph Kay

Do people find these guides useful? I'm wondering if they need at least a sentence about each one explaining why it's of interest to libertarian communists, otherwise it's kinda just a list of ALL THE BOOKS.

I have found them useful enough. In that, I know if I want to read on something I can look at relevant guide. Obviously it would be better if there were a short description with each one similar to intros on library article, but that is a massive task.

Yeah it's a genuine question. Personally I haven't really used them, but I'm interested how/if others do.

I use them, just for book ideas. Not sure a specific intro is needed, should be obvious that it's books of interest to readers of the site, and it's clear that it's a libertarian communist site, I suppose it's no biggie either way.

I saw some comments suggesting more analytic philosophy for this list. So, I'll suggest some that may have been overlooked:

Logic:
forallx by P.D. Magnus
An excellent introduction into formal logic for the absolute beginner and the author has made it available for free (link below).
http://www.fecundity.com/codex/forallx.pdf

An Introduction to Modal Logic by G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell
If you read the text above you should transition pretty well into this one.

Epistemology:
A Defense of Common Sense by G.E. Moore
http://www.ditext.com/moore/common-sense.html

On Certainty by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein takes Moore's argument from the essay provided above and expands it a bit.

Political Philosophy:
Why Not Socialism? by G.A. Cohen
While this one is not necessarily up to the standards in the field, because he uses concepts which go on undefined sometimes, doesn't address his opponents, etc, this very factor makes it an easy introductory text into Cohen's socialism/analytical Marxism (I would suggest that, if you've never read Cohen, you read this book and then read the following in order).

On The Currency of Egalitarian Justice by G.A. Cohen
Pretty much his most influential work. From what I've read, everything else he wrote on egalitarianism stemmed from add-ons and re-working of theses' he put forward on this one.
http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/mprg/GACohenCEJ.pdf

The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom by G.A. Cohen
http://ls.poly.edu/~jbain/socphil/texts/14.Cohen.pdf

Incentives, Inequality and Community by G.A. Cohen
http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/cohen92.pdf

Anarchism: some theoretical foundations by Alan Carter
(This one was free on his academia.edu page until recently. I don't know what happened.)

Proposed Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Rusell
This one is not really philosophy, it's more political theory of the "political science" variety. However, it does show that Russell was a Guild Socialist with strong leanings towards syndicalism.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/RusProp.html

The Philosophical Foundations of Private Property by Alan Carter
(He gave me permission to post the entire book here; however, I have it on image files and I'm in the process of transcribing it and progress is slow. So, if anyone is interested in helping me transcribe it, shoot me a private message and I'll send them some files. The book is an excellent demolition of the most common arguments in favor of private property in political philosophy, e.g. Locke, Nozick, Rawls, etc).