I've made a short list of books that seem to pop up in a lot of discussions and be held in fairly high esteem (philosophically speaking), so I intend to try to work through most of them this summer to try to help build on what I learned as an undergrad.
As a naive and impressionable not-yet-grad student, I'm hoping some older wiser students will happen across this entry and post their reading advice--"Look, if you don't read this, you'll be clueless"-type stuff. Especially if they are interested in analytic metaphysics and ontology. Here's my list so far (in no particular order and very subject to revision), composed of a general list and a analytic metaphysics list:
In General
1. The View From Nowhere; Thomas Nagel
2. Reasons and Persons; Derek Parfit
3. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy; Bernard Williams
4. Naming and Necessity; Saul Kripke (I've skimmed this pretty heavily)
5. Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Robert Nozick
6. An Essay on Free Will; Peter van Inwagen
Analytic Metaphysics
1. The Nature of Necessity; Alvin Plantinga
2. Lewis' collected papers on metaphysics and logic
3. Material Constitution: A Reader; ed. Michael Rea
4. 4-Dimensionalism; Ted Sider
I'm assuming you've had a broad exposure to classical philosophical works, but nevertheless, even with your analytic/anglo-american focus, you should be reasonably versed in the following:
Plato, Theaetetus
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (and the Organon in general), Nicomachean Ethics
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrhhonism
Descartes, Meditations and Discourse
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
First of all, congrats on FLA!
Second, have you already read Rawl's Theory of Justice? It is the book that Nozick is responding to in ASU. Probably the most important book in political philosophy over the last 100 years. (That's what I gather anyway...)
Posted by: Luka at April 16, 2004 05:29 PMClifton,
I've read very small portions of those works by Descartes, Kant, and Hume, and absolutely none of those other four. To my shame, I never took a class in ancient philosophy. It wasn't offered at my undergrad school until the last semester of my senior year, and then I chose phi of science and phi of mind over ancient. Hopefully I'll have a chance to take something from that era in grad school, but due to the way specialization seems to begin immediately, I don't know if it will happen.
Luka, good call about Theory of Justice--I didn't think of that.
Posted by: paul at April 22, 2004 01:32 PM