libcom's guide to further reading on philosophy, materialism and dialectics.
Karl Marx:
*Intro to Grundrisse
Preface to The Critique of Political Economy
The Holy Family (or The Critique of Critical Criticism)
*Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Poverty of Philosophy
Capital
Grundrisse
The German Ideology
Jean Hyppolite:
Logic and Existence
Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of History
Studies on Marx and Hegel
*Theodore Adorno:
Dialectic of Enlightenment (w/ Horkheimer)
Hegel: Three Studies
Prisms
Negative Dialectics
Against Epistemology
The Jargon of Authenticity
Critical Models
The Stars Down to Earth
Minima Moralia
*Max Horkheimer:
Critical Theory
Eclipse of Reason
Between philosophy and Social Science
Critique of instrumental reason
*Gyorgy Lukacs:
*History and Class Consciousness
*Ernst Bloch
Aesthetics and Politics
Essays on the Philosophy of Music
Heritage of Our Times
The Principle of Hope, 3 Vols.
The Utopian Function of Art and Literature : Selected Essays
*Open Marxism, 3 vols. – Bonefeld, et al.
*Notes on Dialectics – C.L.R. James
*Marxism and Philosophy – Korsch
*Marx’s Grundrisse and Hegel’s Logic – Uchida
Reason and Revolution – H. Marcuse
Towards A Critical Theory of Society - Marcuse
Dialectic of the Concrete - Karl Kosik
*Philosophy and Revolution – Dunayevskaya
The Marxist-Humanist Philosophical moment – Dunayevskaya
Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism – K. Anderson
The Origin of Negative Dialectics – S. Buck-Morss
The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923-1950 – M. Jay
Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas – M. Jay
Adorno – M. Jay
Permanent Exiles – M. Jay
Marx, The Young Hegelians and the Origins of Radical Social Theory – W. Breckman
The Poverty of Theory – E. P. Thompson
Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch - Jamie Owen Daniel
The Condition of Postmodernity – Harvey
*Notebooks on Dialectics - Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38
Non-Dialectical Philosophy Relevant to Marx’s Critique of Philosophy
Schelling and Modern European Philosophy – A. Bowie
On The History of Modern Philosophy – Schelling
Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche – A. Bowie
The Myth of the Other: Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Bataille - Franco Rella
Kant:
The Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Practical Reason
The Critique of Judgment
Prolegomena
On Friedrich Nietzsche:
The Gay Science
Beyond Good and Evil
Twighlight of the Idols
On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Human, All Too Human
Daybreak
The Anti-Christ
The Birth of Tragedy
Nietzsche and Philosophy – Deleuze
Why We are not Nietzscheans – Ferry, Ed.
Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle – Klossowski
Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy – M. Clark
Nietzsche and Postmodernism - Robinson
Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy – R. J. Hollingdale
Nietzsche’s Case – B. Magnus
Nietzsche: Life as Literature - Nehamas
Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics – S. Houlgate
*Nietzsche’s Corp/se – Geoff Waites
The Adventures of Difference – G. Vattimo
On Spinoza:
A Spinoza Reader (The Ethics and other works)
A Theologico-Political Treatise
The Savage Anomaly – Negri/Hardt
Spinoza, Practical Philosophy – Deleuze
Spinoza and Politics – Balibar
On Martin Heidegger:
Being and Nothingness
The Ticklish Subject - Zizek
On Deleuze and Guattari:
A Thousand Plateaus
Anti-Oedipus
What Is Philosophy?
Nomadology
Pure Immanence - Deleuze
Bergsonism - Deleuze
Foucault – Deleuze
Soft Subversions – Guattari
Chaosophy - Guattari
Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy – M. Hardt
Deleuze: A Critical Reader – P. Patton, Ed.
Deleuze and the Political – P. Patton
The Myth of the Other: Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Bataille – F. Rella
Slavoj Zizek:
Tarrying with the Negative
The Ticklish Subject
Lacanian Ink
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left – w/Butler and Laclau
On Michel Foucault:
Archeology of Knowledge
The Order of Things
Power/Knowledge
Madness and Civilization
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert L. Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow
Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977- 1984
Foucault Live
Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization - Ladelle McWhorter
Journals:
Capital and Class
Common Sense
Historical Materialism
Dialectical Materialism
George Novack:
Polemics in Marxist Philosophy
The Origins of Materialism
Existentialism versus Marxism
An Introduction to The Logic of Marxism
Perry Anderson:
In The Tracks of Historical Materialism
Western Marxism
The Question of Europe
A Zone of Engagement
Arguments Within English Marxism
The Origins of Post-Modernity
Friedrich Engels:
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Ludwig Feuerbach and The Outcome of
Classical German Philosophy
On Historical Materialism
Anti-Duhring
The Dialectics of Nature
V. I. Lenin:
*Notebooks on Dialectics - Lenin, Collected
Works, Vol. 38
Marxism and Empirio-Criticism
Marx, Engels, Marxism - Lenin
On Historical Materialism - F. Mehring
The Development of the Monist View of
History – Plekhanov
Fundamental Problems of Marxism - Plekhanov
Socialism and Philosophy - Antonio Labriola
Essays on the Materialist Conception of
History - A. Labriola
Historical Materialism - N. Bukharin
Four Lectures on Marxism - Paul Sweezy
Freedom and Determination in History - J.
Ferraro
Post-Modernism - A. Callinicos
Algebra of Revolution – A. Callinicos
Marxism in the Post-Modern Age –
Callari/Cullenberg/Biewener
For Marx – Althusser
Lenin and Philosophy – Althusser
The Philosophy of Marx – Balibar
Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics
and Philosophy Before and After Marx -
Balibar
Gyorgy Lukacs:
In Defense of History and Class
Consciousness
Ontology of Being (Hegel)
Ontology of Being (Marx)
Lenin
Destruction of Reason
Comments
That's some reading list and
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
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.
thanks for those comments -
thanks for those comments - could you list particular books please that we could add?
Agreed about
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
some ancient but in parts still interesting stuff:
- Laozi: Daodejing
- Zhuangzi
- Liezi
- Epicurus: Letters
- Lucretius: De rerum natura
You rockin' out the Daoist
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
the old taoist philosphers displayed both dialectical thinking and a criticism of institutions and (confuzianist) culture ... must have a look at the LeGuin translation
Quote: the old taoist
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
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
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?
Camus?
Yeah, to echo what s.nappalos
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
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
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.
Quote: First, I think the
Totally agree.
Do people find these guides
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 wrote: Do people
Joseph Kay
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.
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
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
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).