diego wrote:The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Not that influential, but such a cool title!!!!!

Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century.

diego wrote:The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Not that influential, but such a cool title!!!!!

Yeah, it really is very influential Diego. But not the most enthralling book you'll ever read. What's more interesting to me is that it was written in the trenches in World War One. Like, my pissing and moaning about not coming out of uni with the best mark possible in philosophy due to economic factors doesn't carry a lot of weight when you think about that. 'Shells? Gas? Whatever; shut up, I'm thinking.'

He went to school with Hitler, you know.

Only one. Wow.

46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal

I've read a lot of books, too. Apparently not influential ones though.

I read the entire list.

And by "I read the entire list" I mean I clicked on the link and read the entire list.

That's got to count for something, right?

2 The OT
3 Illiad and Odyssey [Aren't these two books? Cf. C/NC]
8 Great stuff, but can't beat Bk. I of the Republic.
10? I'm still searching for something Aristotle wrote called "Works." Do they mean the McKeon compilation? That's more readable but less literal than the Sachs translations. Either way, we'll call it The Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics and Physics to start.
12 Republic. This is the only Plato on this list? How would any of the western philosophic texts be possible without the Apology. Crap.
18 The NT
19 some [Nerbly Bear, you read the whole Dryden?]
27 Guide of the Perplexed, parts. Really esoteric shit.
29 Summa Theologiae, most.
32 The Prince. This should rank way past all that Eastern stuff. This is the founding document of modernity.
38 Quixote
40 New Organon. New Atlantis is more accessable.
41 Shakespeare [cop-out grouping them all together, but WTF, you can't go wrong with this stuff.]
43 Discourse on Method
44 Leviathan. Vulgar.
47 Spinoza's Ethics. Oxymoron.
50 Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Tedious, at best.
53 Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. Only more exciting than 50 because it's more rediculous.
56 Candide. I don't remember it. I was smoking a lot of shit at the time.
60 Critique of Pure Reason
61 JJR's Confessions. His Emile's fun.
69 Clausewitz. You could learn all this from #32 and NM's Discourses.
71 Commie Manifesto
74 On Liberty. More thoughtful presentation of the ACLU's platform.
77 War and Peace. I really wish I could get into these Russian novels.
79 Zarathustra. The Prologue kills. FN should be ahead of a bunch of these contemporary guys. Hegel?
97 Structure of Scientific Revolutions. If you want to get kicked out of a social science program, go ahead and question this book. It's dogma.

Read parts of these, but probably forgot much of them:

2. The Old Testament

3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer

12. The Republic, Plato

18. The New Testament

38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes

50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke

53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume

Pretty good retention on at least significant portions of these:

32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli

57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine

72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau

Been inside these books, but there are huge gaps in my memory of them:

59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud

86. The Trial, Franz Kafka

88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes

89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre

58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The only book that I would claim to know well on his list, and certainly the most influential book on the list for me:

93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

The rest of the 100 will have to wait for my reincarnation as someone smarter and with more free time, or for a long sentence to a prison with a great library.

Peripatetic wrote:Only one. Wow.

46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal

I've read a lot of books, too. Apparently not influential ones though.

Are you consciously avoiding '1984'?

ebeam wrote:According to Martin Seymour-Smith....seems to be a bit of controversy about the author and his methods, etc. but it seems at least relatively comprehensive.

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

Which have you read in their entirety, or are currently reading?

I'll start with my meager list (hey I studied engineering, OK!):

66. (reading now)
77.
93.
94.

I've completely read numbers 1, 2, 3,5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38, 43, 44, 46, 47,48, 50, 51, 52,53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 66 (woof!), 67, 70, 71,72, 73, 74, 79, 80, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95 and 97.

Gurdjieff? You have to be kidding me.

matthew wrote:Gurdjieff? You have to be kidding me.

No, why? He is 100% Not Crap according to EA. What more do you need to know?

Actually I was searching for Gurdjieff and Hegel, cause it seems as I am reading the latter that the former was perhaps influenced by him. I didn't find anything along those lines, but that list popped up and I found it interesting.



Oh, and I have read large parts of many others...just not completely.

matthew wrote:
I've completely read numbers 1, 2, 3,5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38, 43, 44, 46, 47,48, 50, 51, 52,53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 66 (woof!), 67, 70, 71,72, 73, 74, 79, 80, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95 and 97.

Sure you have. Seems like all that reading would have rendered your spelling and grammar adequate.

EDIT: now I know you're full of shit. #55 is Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language.