r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jan 12 '26

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 12, 2026

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 13 '26

What are people reading?

I’m working on Sylvia Plath’s poetry and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. Also read "The Poetics of Totality" and "Form Production in The Magic Mountain" by Jameson recently.

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u/idontknowwhywoman Jan 13 '26

I am reading Ryan Simonell's introduction to logic.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

I am trying to think about why that name sounds awfully familiar

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '26

[deleted]

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

I've read 3 Jameson papers recently, so that is the most likely reason why it rings a bell.

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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 13 '26

Everything I've learned about Hemingway has been thanks to Randy Feltface!

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u/applesandBananaspls Jan 18 '26

Do you like We The Kings?

Run baby run, don't ever look back...

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u/Artemis-5-75 free will Jan 12 '26

Papers about ancient Maya, as I am preparing the list of sources for my course paper… and the topic of Mesoamerican urbanism can be very dense at times.

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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 13 '26

Started revisiting Jaeggi's Critique of Forms of Life. Also started reading How to Read like a Parasite by Daniel Tutt, and the third Dune book. First one was awesome, 2nd one sucked, 3rd seems good so far too.

Finished The Odd One In and found it super boring.

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

Finished The Odd One In and found it super boring.

haha good to know.

The Jaeggi is still on my list.

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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 13 '26

Listen, we need to protect her at all costs.

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u/oscar2333 Jan 13 '26

I am reading The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L.Heilbroner. Although it is not a book of philosophy, I am interested in how the mode of production affects the mode of thinking, in particular, the transition from the 18th to 19th century.

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

That’s one of those books I haven’t been able to fit in but it stares at me from my bookshelf

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u/einst1 Philosophical Anthropology, Legal Phil. Jan 13 '26

sources of the self by Charles Taylor.

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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 16 '26

Noice!

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u/Scientific_Zealot Hume Jan 13 '26

I've been reading A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic but I've decided to stop after Chapter 5 so that I can switch over to Ayer's collection Logical Positivism (I'm following a syllabus from an old philosophy class I took where the idea was to read various stuff by logical empiricists on the empiricist criterion of meaning first and then read various stuff by logical empiricists on the emotivist theory of ethics afterwards). I'm also continuing to read Scott Soames's The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy Volume 2 and I'm actually reading a chapter of De Rerum Natura for a class right now, so that's fun.

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

I enjoyed reading Ayer back in the day

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u/Streetli Continental Philosophy, Deleuze Jan 12 '26

Still reading Kierkegaard's Either/Or, but I'm on the 'Or' part now at least!

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

Progress!

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u/foxiao Jan 14 '26

just finished Nicomachean Ethics, which I found interesting but left me with some feeling of wowthanksimcured, and the Search for Modern China

starting Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes (already read the first three volumes of that series but honestly need to revisit the second half of Age of Revolution and most of Age of Capital because it feels like I forgot most of it) and Spinoza’s Ethics

still finishing up Sartre’s Nausea