Just be glad Kant isn’t on the list – I read The Critique of Pure Reason in English translation (which is supposed to be easier than the German original) after three months, I still had no fucking idea what he was banging on about.
A History of Western Philosophy.
Start there if you want context. Be aware that it was first published in 1945, so really ends with positivism, and doesn’t really do justice to the Continental European tradition, if I remember correctly. It does, though, cover the history of the fundamental problems that your course seems to be driving at.
The problem with an “Introduction to philosophy” course is that there is a long history of thought that makes it difficult for the uninitiated. I’d also suggest that philosophers like to be cryptic…
In my opinion, you should look at the course as relating to how we respond to problems with epistemology (theory of knowledge) and metaphysics (theory of the ultimate organisation of the universe) – all of the philosophers you list have something to say about that topic, so from what you’ve posted, it seems that might be a useful angle to take.
Basic questions to think about when reading:
1. What exists?
2. How do we know? What is the justification for this knowledge?
3. How is the universe organised/what organises the universe?
4. What does it mean to ‘know’ something? (this is more useful with later authors)
For example, Descartes begins by:
1. What exists?
He dismisses all his knowledge of the world, even his self-awareness, as it is unreliable – his senses have deceived him in the past, so they could be deceiving him now.
He starts from a foundation – I must exist because there is a thought/representation of information. This requires that there be a thinker/perceiver, no matter how those thoughts may not represent reality. This leads to the most famous aphorism in “modern” philosophy: “I think, therefore I am”.
2. How do we know?
Descartes’ arguments can be viewed as both metaphysical and epistemological claims – I know that one thing exists, and that there is a logical demonstration of it.
3. How is the universe organised?
Descartes goes on to argue for the existence of God as a cosmological creator.
2. (again, more specifically): How do we know that the material world exists?
Descartes then uses his ‘proofs’ of the existence of God and his ‘knowledge’ of His properties to argue for the existence of a material world – God is not a deceiver. These metaphysical claims become the lynchpin of his justification of knowledge. This leads to:
4. What does it mean to ‘know’ something?
Descartes argued that by perceiving things with “clarity and distinctness”, it was more reliable than other things. He came to this arguments, in my opinion, through his study of geometry (he was a very influential geometer as well, innovating the Cartesian system of co-ordinates) – certain things can be demonstrated to be true without actually looking at the world – like the proposition that the sum of the internal angles of a triangle will equal 180°. These are the kinds of thing Descartes viewed as “clear and distinct”.
So yeah, four main questions that can be asked of modern British/American philosophy.
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