New Reading List

The plan is for us to read a series of texts. The one connecting thread that links these texts is what Montaigne called l'humaine condition, our common condition or nature. This blog serves as a focus for our discussions, both before and after they take place. It will also provide us with a record of sorts of what we have covered. 

 

(1) Our first reading consists of two relatively early texts by Plato. These are Euthyphro and Socrates' Apology, that's to say his defence speech at his trial. The recommended edition is: Plato: Five Dialogues, translated by G.M.A. Grube. It is available at Amazon for £4.67. (All the prices are taken from the Amazon site, but you should check to make sure that they are up-to-date). Some introductory notes on these will be published in due course before we meet. The other texts are listed in reading order, but in summary fashion.

(2) Thucydides: Pericles’ Speech on the War Dead and The Melian Dialogue. The recommended edition is On Justice, Power and Human Nature, edited by Paul Woodruff at £5.45

(3) Michel de Montaigne: On Repenting, On Cannibals and On Experience

Selected Essays, edited by John Cohen at £5.84

(4) Henri Bergson: Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, published as On Laughter, edited by Cloudesley Brereton at £3.99. A second text is G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Penguin at £4.74.

 

(5) Immanuel Kant: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Lewis White Beck (2nd edition) at £7.99.

(6) J.J. Rousseau: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Oxford World Classics, edited by Donald A.Cress at £5.95.

 

(7) Arthur Schopenhauer: On the Suffering of the World, Penguin Great Ideas, at £3.99.

(8) Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, Penguin Classics at £5.49.

Each of these eight selections represents one month’s reading assignment. The total outlay for this selection of texts would amount to £38.32. People would be able to buy each book one at a time so they would not be committed to the whole series of meetings if they wished to drop out. There is nothing fixed ort unalterable about this list with the exception perhaps of the Plato and Montaigne texts, which provide a kind of leitmotif for the series.