What you 'should have read' & are glad you did?

Last week, we had a fun, guilt-free thread where readers shared examples of philosophical works that they are "supposed to have read" but haven't. This week, I'd like to have another thread that turns this on its head: what philosophical work(s) are you supposed to have read that you were (perhaps unexpectedly) glad you did, and why?

I'll start things off! I have to confess that until a week or two ago, I had never read most of Alasdair McIntyre's After Virtue. I had read small bits and parts of it before, mostly because those bits had been cited in the literature and were relevant to things I was working on. But I had never sat down before and read the book from beginning to end--and I'm glad I finally did. Like some of the book's critics, I don't quite buy the book's positive argument. But what I found really insightful, deep, and plausible is the book's negative critique of contemporary ethics and the implications that the problems with contemporary ethics have had in modern society. I also very much enjoyed MacIntyre's writing style and manner in which he situates the book's philosophical theorizing in history.

To simplify greatly--and really, I encourage readers to check out the book itself--McIntyre's basic idea is that throughout most of human history, 'the moral' wasn't taken to be a distinct category of reasons or requirements (indeed, he argues, some historical languages haven't even had words that correspond to the modern notion of 'morality'). Rather, prior to the Enlightenment, the fundamental normative notion was to live a good life, where this conception of 'morality' (as it were) in no way divorced 'moral reasons' from descriptive psychological motivations or posited any 'is-ought gap' (McIntyre gives a rather quick yet masterful analysis of how, absent the modern philosophical insistence there is such a gap, there are plenty of intuitively valid inferences from what is to what ought to be). McIntyre then argues that the modern philosophical insistence of schisms between is and ought (qua Hume) and between moral and non-moral reasons (qua Kant) have been bad for moral philosophy and practice, by pushing them in two opposing directions: in the direction of mind-independent moral realism, on the one hand, and emotivism on the other. His critique here--again, to simplify greatly--is that both of these doctrines are problematic, turning morality either into a set of essentially contestable moral intuitions about what is right and good (here, MacIntyre notes how many modern moral debates appear to be based upon incommensurable intuitions), or mere appeals to emotion. 

Whatever you think of these negative arguments (and you might not be convinced!), I found the way that MacIntyre defends them both plausible and exciting to read. This is just one recent example of a philosophical work that I was 'supposed to have read' but hadn't. There are many others, as well. Another, less recent example is Charles Mills' The Racial Contract, which I read for the first time about nine years ago. I remember reading the book distinctly because (A) I had surprisingly never been exposed to it either as an undergraduate or graduate student, and (B) when I read it, I found Mills' account of how seemingly anti-racist liberal ideals can serve in practice to uphold white supremacy enlightening and important. While I'm not persuaded by Mills' longstanding critique of Rawls and ideal theory (see here, here, and here), I nevertheless found The Racial Contract to be an exciting read as well, one that has influenced me deeply as a researcher and teacher ever since.

Anyway, these are the two examples that most obviously spring to mind for me. What about you? Which work that you were 'supposed to have read' did you find exciting and important when you finally did get around to reading it, and why?

Comments

[Postdoc]

Chris Korsgaard's Sources of Normativity. I have very little sympathy for Kantian ethics and tend not to understand what Kantians are on about. But ... darned if this wasn't clear, compelling, accessible, and one of the most thought-provoking books I've ever read.

[Daniel Weltman]

This is true of basically all historical philosophy I've read. I know lots of people who don't do history mostly just stop reading this stuff once they're done with grad school but I've found it's quite valuable to keep reading more of it, even though I'm very unlikely to ever write directly about any of it. I want to give a special shoutout to Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics. It's perhaps kind of dry on the surface and people might be (or may in the past have been) inclined to skip it, but it's stupendous! Unfortunately I have almost nothing useful to say about how good it is that isn't just a recapitulation of the stuff Parfit says about it in Reasons and Persons and On What Matters. (In On What Matters, Parfit says The Methods of Ethics is the best book on ethics ever written, albeit sometimes boring.)

[Marcus Arvan]

Postdoc: totally agree! I was thinking yesterday that I should have given it as a third example in my OP. Sources is an excellent and important book!

[Sam Duncan]

Being and Time. I was assigned an excerpt in a required class in my MA that I otherwise did not like at all and it really grabbed me. Years later I had to read the rest as prep for a survey of "continental" philosophy I'd agreed to teach. Some of it's crazy (especially in division 2) and you can see how some of it lead to really dark places but some parts are brilliant and eye opening in a way that only great philosophy is. The bits on how post-Cartesian philosophy distorts the way we experience dealing with other human beings and the stuff on pragmatic engagement being more fundamental than theoretical reasoning are particularly good. He also beat Ryle to the "knowing how/knowing that" distinction by a decade or two. (In fact, there's a decent case to be made that Ryle cribbed it from him).