[U.S.] Thomas Nagel: “Your First Philosophy Book”

[U.S.] Thomas Nagel: Your First Book of Philosophy, translated by Bao Shu, Contemporary China Publishing House, February 2005

Today I had a lot going on, and I didn’t finish the reading task I had planned. To barely make it up to one book a day, I dug out this tiniest of philosophy books and read it straight through.

This book is really far too short. I found its English electronic edition online; the English text is just a little over 20,000 words, and the Chinese edition is priced at 15 yuan. Alas…

Still, this book isn’t bad. You can tell from the Chinese title alone (the English title is What Does It All Mean) that it is written for young people who know almost nothing about philosophy but have a bit of interest in reason and speculation. For me, since I’ve already read quite a few philosophy books, this one isn’t really suitable; it was just something to pass the time.

The author uses nine “questions” as the thread running through the whole book, and these discussions are all exercises in digging down to the roots and asking again and again. Most of these are core questions in philosophy—such as knowledge, mind, words, free will, death, meaning, and so on. In Zhang Xianglong’s terms, they are all “marginal questions”; they cannot encompass the current hot topics of debate in today’s philosophical circles, but they are indeed the most basic questions in philosophy.

In discussing them, the author hardly ever “lays down a position”; instead, he keeps on asking questions—“The aim of this book is not to provide answers—but to lead you in a very simple way to these questions, so that you yourself can begin to feel puzzled by them. Rather than first learning a lot of philosophical theories, it is better first to become puzzled by the philosophical questions those theories are trying to answer. (p. 5)”

I think of “the history of philosophy” as being strung together by “questions,” rather than by classic works or schools and figures. When I taught an introductory philosophy course last year, I insisted that even if one says “philosophy is philosophy’s history,” “questions” are still what matters most; in a conversation with Teacher Li some time ago, I also mentioned that even if philosophy’s history is said to have “steps,” those steps should be made up of “questions.” And the author’s emphasis on “questions” is something I appreciate—“This book does not intend to discuss great philosophical works of the past, or the cultural background of those works. Philosophy centers on certain specific questions. And when faced with these questions, a reflective mind will naturally feel puzzled. The best way to begin studying philosophy is to think about these questions directly. Once you have begun this kind of thinking, you can better understand the writings of people who have tried to solve the same questions. (p. 2)” Of course, as the Chinese title suggests, this is your “first” book of philosophy. Its significance lies only in bringing out your puzzlement, stirring your desire to seek answers, and thus drawing you toward reading more philosophy books. And classic works are the most helpful thing for your search for answers. If you want to “do philosophy,” then classics are of course extremely crucial. Reading is the main body of philosophical study and requires the greatest investment of energy. But one must not forget that reflection on, discussion of, answers to, and practice around “questions” are the starting point, main thread, and final destination of philosophical study. Without an awareness of “questions” running through it from beginning to end, philosophical research is like a person without eyes, without a spine, without feet—unable to see direction, limp and scattered, unable to move an inch; no matter how strong the muscles may be, they are utterly meaningless.

As for the author’s specific way of exploring the questions, I don’t want to say much. These reflections are all things we ourselves could also possibly come up with; it’s just that the author’s reflections are more systematic and more thorough than most people’s. “Around the age of fourteen, many people begin thinking about philosophical questions on their own: What is really real? Can we know anything for certain? Is there really such a thing as right and wrong? Does life have meaning? Is death the end? For thousands of years, there have been many philosophical writings about these questions, but philosophy’s raw material comes directly from the world in which we live and our relationship to it, not from writings of the past. Therefore, even people who have never read such works will think about these questions again and again. (pp. 1–2)” In fact, I do not really recommend this book. Since the author does not lay down any position, if you are a lazy person—someone who is unwilling to push your own thinking further (and before getting an answer, the process of searching and thinking is painful; indeed, the answer you get may be even more painful), and even less willing to read the many tedious philosophical works—then these “puzzlements” may well turn into “disturbances,” because philosophical reflection will undoubtedly make many simple, clear, natural things unbearably complicated and dizzying… So I would recommend this book only to those young people who may well continue reading and thinking more deeply, but who have hardly ever read philosophy books, and who are only willing to read one book first as long as it is short enough—so short that they can finish it while standing beside a shelf in a bookstore. Even so, I still feel that perhaps it would be better to provide some constructive suggestions while reflecting, and to intersperse some introduction to philosophical resources and knowledge as a reader’s guide to philosophy. I still give first place to The Tree of Philosophy.

This book is a brief introduction to philosophy for people who don’t know
the

first thing about the subject. People ordinarily study philosophy only
when they

go to college, and I suppose that most readers will be of college
age or older.

But that has nothing to do with the nature of the subject, and
I would be very

glad if the book were also of interest to intelligent high
school students with

a taste for abstract ideas and theoretical
arguments—should any of them read it.

Our analytical capacities are often highly developed before we have learned
a

great deal about the world, and around the age of fourteen many people
start to

think about philosophical problems on their own—about what really
exists,

whether we can know anything, whether anything is really right or
wrong, whether

life has any meaning, whether death is the end. These problems
have been written

about for thousands of years, but the philosophical raw
material comes directly

from the world and our relation to it, not from
writings of the past. That is

why they come up again and again, in the heads
of people who haven’t read about

them.

This is a direct introduction to nine philosophical problems, each of
which

can be understood in itself, without reference to the history of
thought. I

shall not discuss the great philosophical writings of the past or
the cultural

background of those writings. The center of philosophy lies in
certain questions

which the reflective human mind finds naturally puzzling,
and the best way to

begin the study of philosophy is to think about them
directly. Once you’ve done

that, you are in a better position to appreciate
the work of others who have

tried to solve the same problems.

Philosophy is different from science and from mathematics. Unlike science
it

doesn’t rely on experiments or observation, but only on thought. And
unlike

mathematics it has no formal methods of proof. It is done just by
asking

questions, arguing, trying out ideas and thinking of possible
arguments against

them, and wondering how our concepts really work.

The main concern of philosophy is to question and understand very
common

ideas that all of us use every day without thinking about them. A
historian may

ask what happened at some time in the past, but a philosopher
will ask, “What is

time?” A mathematician may investigate the relations among
numbers, but a

philosopher will ask, “What is a number?” A physicist will ask
what atoms are

made of or what explains gravity, but a philosopher will ask
how we can know

there is anything outside of our own minds. A psychologist
may investigate how

children learn a language, but a philosopher will ask,
“What makes a word mean

anything?” Anyone can ask whether it’s wrong to sneak
into a movie without

paying, but a philosopher will ask, “What makes an
action right or wrong?”

We couldn’t get along in life without taking the ideas of time,
number,

knowledge, language, right and wrong for granted most of the time;
but in

philosophy we investigate those things themselves. The aim is to push
our

understanding of the world and ourselves a bit deeper. Obviously it isn’t
easy.

The more basic the ideas you are trying to investigate, the fewer tools
you have

to work with. There isn’t much you can assume or take for granted.
So philosophy

is a somewhat dizzying activity, and few of its results go
unchallenged for

long.

Since I believe the best way to learn about philosophy is to think
about

particular questions, I won’t try to say more about its general nature.
The nine

problems we’ll consider are these:

Knowledge of the world beyond our minds

Knowledge of minds other than our own

The relation between mind and brain

How language is possible

Whether we have free will

The basis of morality

What inequalities are unjust

The nature of death

The meaning of life

They are only a selection: there are many, many others.

What I say will reflect my own view of these problems and will
not

necessarily represent what most philosophers think. There probably
isn’t

anything that most philosophers think about these questions anyway:
philosophers

disagree, and there are more than two sides to every
philosophical question. My

personal opinion is that most of these problems
have not been solved, and that

perhaps some of them never will be. But the
object here is not to give answers—

not even answers that I myself may think
are right—but to introduce you to the

problems in a very preliminary way so
that you can worry about them yourself.

Before learning a lot of
philosophical theories it is better to get puzzled

about the philosophical
questions which those theories try to answer. And the

best way to do that is
to look at some possible solutions and see what is wrong

with them. I’ll try
to leave the problems open, but even if I say what I think,

you have no
reason to believe it unless you find it convincing.

There are many excellent introductory texts that include selections from
the

great philosophers of the past and from more recent writings. This short
book is

not a substitute for that approach, but I hope it provides a first
look at the

subject that is as clear and direct as possible. If after reading
it you decide

to take a second look, you’ll see how much more there is to say
about these

problems than I say here.

February 17, 2006

Latest comments

 
Gu
2006-05-23
15:08:05
Collingwood’s The Idea of Nature I have unquestionably read, and it was unquestionably quite good. But I have not yet read The Idea of History. 
As for the claim that “philosophy is philosophy’s history,” I think it depends on exactly how one understands “history.” The idea of “history” is quite important; when Marx and Engels said that “there is only one science, namely the science of history,” that truly has profound implications. What we advocate as “natural history” is in fact precisely “natural history.” But modern natural science seems to have forgotten the “spirit of natural history”; in fact, at the same time it has indeed lost “history,” and meanwhile modern historiography, being too deeply permeated by modern science, has a different meaning as well. I think that if one wants to say “philosophy is philosophy’s history,” one must first make clear what “history” is. If it is “dead history,” “things that happened in the past,” “a heap of historical materials,” and so on, then I firmly cannot agree with the proposition that “philosophy is philosophy’s history.”

 
Geoy
2007-01-01
00:30:00 
Comrade, hello. I happened upon your blog by chance, and I very much want the English edition of this book. I wonder where I can download it, or whether you could help send it to me. Many thanks!

 
Gu
2007-01-04
12:49:40 
I found it on a forum a long time ago, but now I’ve forgotten where, and I deleted the downloaded file long ago too……

 
UNIC
2007-01-05
16:29:48 
I had seen this book before too, and at the time I also really wanted to buy it, but it was just too thin, and it really didn’t match such a high price……
Thanks for the introduction.

 
Helen
2007-09-08
19:34:02 Anonymous 222.71.177.151
It’s really quite interesting, isn’t it? I’m very interested in philosophy哦
~

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.