Fav commentaries on fav philosophers?

Say I dig one of your favourite philosophers and have read a significant amount of his/her work. I'm now interested in seeing what's really good in the secondary lit. What are some of the books/articles/chapters in edited volumes toward which you might point me?

Comments

[Kevin Timpe]

Oxford Bibliographies Online

[Chike Jeffers]

Kevin, who are you talking about?

[Ben Ricker]

Here: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/browse?module_0=obo-9780195396577

You can find by authors and/or subject and then get references to anthologies related to the author subject.

[Justin Caouette]

Great resource. Thanks Kevin and Ben.

[Patrick]

I believe Chike was asking about people's personal favorites. For example, I especially like Samuel Freeman's 'Rawls,' published by Routledge.

[Roman]

This exchange is the definition of "talking past each other."

[Chike Jeffers]

Yes - thanks very much, Patrick, for the recommendation. But though this was indeed talking past each other, I'm glad Justin was introduced to Oxford Bibliographies Online.

[Chike Jeffers]

Btw, Patrick, I just looked around on the net a bit and saw you're far from alone in taking Freeman's book to be a simply stellar commentary on Rawls. What makes it so great, in your view?

[Patrick]

Rawls is such a systematic thinker that you need to be familiar with his entire view and look at it synoptically in order to make sense of the particular positions he held. Freeman is so familiar with the entirety of Rawls's account, is sufficiently sympathetic, and is a sharp enough philosopher that you really get a good sense of what was animating the Rawlsian project deep down in its marrow. Not many contemporary philosophers even HAVE a forest, so there is no danger missing while you look at the trees. Freeman keeps you looking at the forest and draws connections between trees you wouldn't expect (to stretch the metaphor a bit).

It is also a surprisingly easy read for a work that is pretty steeped in Rawls country, with all the technical vocabulary that entails.

[Chike Jeffers]

Thanks for that, Patrick. I look forward to hearing from others about similarly excellent work.

[Marcus Arvan]

I second what Patrick said about Freeman's Rawls volume. Really makes Rawls' project clear -- clearer in many ways, I think, than Rawls did himself. Really tells an intuitive story about what Rawls was up to.

[Chike Jeffers]

Marcus, I know you've done some work on Kant - got a favourite secondary text on him?

[Marcus Arvan]

Chike: I only do Kantian moral theory, so that's all I can really comment on. Honestly, I'm not that big of a fan of the secondary literature on Kant's moral theory as a whole. I think it tends to obscure his moral theory more than anything else (though of course Kant is far from blameless here).

That being said, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to make a recommendation, I'd say that either of Allen Wood's books (Kantian Ethics and Kant's Ethical Thought) are among the better pieces of secondary literature.

[Brad Cokelet]

Hey Chike!

I think Tom Hill's "Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory" is great if you are interested in Kant's ethics. Hill's papers are great examples of critical but charitable engagement and I find they help me get sucked into the texts in a fruitful way. Marcia Baron's "Kantian Ethics Almost w/o Apology" is also good for the same reasons.

[Chike Jeffers]

So Wood, Hill, and Baron on Kant. Thanks for those recommendations. Baron's book cover is fun.

[Mark]

Great idea for a thread.

I've had a number of people tell me that Iris Murdoch is a philosopher they'd love to get to grips with, but don't quite know where to place her. In terms of secondary literature, Cora Diamond's "We Are Perpetually Moralists: Iris Murdoch, Fact, and Value" is an excellent starting point that really brings out (in a way that relatively few people have been able to) the argumentative thrust of Murdoch's writing. And if you like that, then Justin Broakes's Introduction to the recent edited volume "Iris Murdoch: Philosopher" is a serious, scholarly attempt to say something about the significance of Murdoch's work as a whole.

[Chike Jeffers]

Thanks, Mark! That is extremely helpful. I am certainly among the many who have long found Murdoch intriguing but have not yet gotten the chance to know and understand her work... indeed, up til now, I feel I have most gotten to know her through Judi Dench's powerful performance in the movie Iris!

[Marcus Arvan]

Mark: thanks for the Murdoch references. I haven't read that much by her, but what I have read has struck me as deep, important -- and unlike most of analytic philosophy -- profoundly relevant to real life. I look forward to reading some of the stuff you mentioned!

[Chike Jeffers]

I don't know that I would call John Locke one of my favourite philosophers - OK, actually, I know I wouldn't - but I'm in the middle of writing a paper that is significantly about him (it's actually a case of being now able to publish something I wrote back in grad school) and I've got to say... Jeremy Waldron's God, Locke, and Equality is such great reading.