rationalskepticism.org

katja z wrote:

shh wrote:
An intro will probably tell you enough to at least let you know what they were talking about, and probably a bastardized version of what they said, but enough to let you know if you're interested enough to bother.

I've come to mistrust this method because it has happened more than once that what I "knew" about an author from introductory material didn't quite fit with what I found when I started to actually read him ... but this may be more an issue with the quality of said introductions. They mostly came from lecturers in literature anyway, and my philosopher colleagues at the Uni were known to go into fits over this As a result, I'm very unsure about anything I've learned this way. I'll give Sophie's world a try and see how it goes.

Yeah I've not got around to reading that yet, it's always touted as excellent.
I expect what you've found about intro's is just a restriction of the genre, people are always going to have some bias, and since they have to exclude stuff in an intro, bias is what you're going to get. I think "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" is a pretty good intro too(mainly to Kant rather than philosophy as a whole), but I disagree with most of it.

Thanks for the tip! This rings a bell. The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, is that it? The Apollonian and the Dionysian? I've read about it, may have even started reading it, but I don't remember much. I think I even still have it on my bookshelves somewhere. And what about the next step, if I wish to read something a bit less "naive"?

Yeah that's the one. I'm not sure about next step, tbh, but Beyond Good and Evil is probably my favourite.