A Bibliography for Understanding Modernity

Want to know who we think we are?

PRINT: Including books, papers, articles, essays, etc. By Author

A
Ackrill, J.L., Aristotle on Eudaemonia, Lecture, Oxford University Press, 1974
Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics, as translated by W.D. Ross, internetarchive.org

B
Bakan, Joel, The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power, Penguin, 2004
Baudrillard, Jean, Fatal Strategies, Semiotext(e) MIT Press, 2008
Bowler, John, World Religions, Discovery, 2009

C
Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus,Penguin, 1955
Cooper, John M., Reason and Human Good, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975

D
Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, 1995

E F
Feinberg, Joel, Doing Philosophy,Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005
Ferguson, Niall, The Ascent of Money: The financial history of the world, Penguin, 2008
Fresco, Jacques, Designing the Future, thevenusproject.com
Fuller, R. Buckminster, Earth Inc., Anchor, 1973

G H
Haidt, Jonathan, The Happiness Hypothesis, Basic Books, 2005
Hawking, Stephen, A brief history of time, Bantam, 1988
Horgan, John, The End of Science,Broadway, 1987

I
Iserbyt, Charlotte Thompson, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, Conscience, 1999

J K
Kelly, David R., The Art of Reasoning, W. W. Norton, 1990
Kristol, William et al, the Project for a New American Century, www.newamericancentury.org

L M
McGraw, Phil, Dr., Self Matters, Free Press, 2001

N O P
Packard, Vance, the Hidden Persuaders, Pocket Books, 1957
Perkins, John, Confessions of an economic hitman, Berrett-Koehler. 2004
Popper, Karl, The Open Society and its Enemies: Vol. One: The Spell of Plato, Princeton, 1971

Q R
Rand, Ayn, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Signet, 1967
Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, 1980
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, The Social Contract, Penquin, 2003
Russell, Bertrand, The Problems of Philosophy,Oxford, 1967

S
Sagan, Carl, The Demon Haunted World, Random House, 1997
Sagan, Carl, Pale Blue Dot, Random House, 1997

T
Tolle, Eckhart, The Power of Now: A new Earth, Plume, 2008

U V W
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, 1974
Wolfe, Naomi, The End of America, Chelsea Green, 2004


The following list contains mostly films, some are classes you can purchase from The Teaching Company. Google it!
(in no particular order)

“Manufacturing Consent”
“What we still don't know.”
“A quest beyond the limits of the ordinary.”
“Beyond Belief 1, 2 and 3”, the Science Network,
“Philosophy: A guide to happiness”
“Why we fight”
“No end in sight”
“War made easy”
“Quest for the lost civilization”
“Islam: Empire of Faith”
“China from the inside”
“What a way to go: Life at the end of Empire”
“Expelled: No intelligence allowed”
“The century of the self”
“Commanding Heights: The battle for the world economy”
“Flooded Kingdoms”
“What is Enlightenment?”
“Denial Stops Here”
“The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of power”
“Zeitgeist: Moving Forward"
“The Hawking Paradox”
“Collapse”
“Life at the end of Empire”
“September Clues”
“Endgame”
PBS's “Frontline: The Dark Side, Frontline:Karl Rove The Architect”
“Esoteric Agenda”
“Global warming or global governance?”
“Evidence of Revision”
“Zero: An investigation into 9-11”
“Rumsfeld's War”
“Fields of Armour”
CBC - “The War on Drugs”
“The Money Masters”
“Loose Change”
“Afghanistan Unveiled”
David Icke “Secrets of the Matrix”
“An inconvenient truth”
“The power of nightmares”
“What is Enlightenment?”
“Religulous”
“Crude Awakening”
“Stop Loss”
“Captive Minds”
“Constantine's Sword”
“Game Theory: In life, business and beyond” TTC, Prof. Scott Stevens
“The Psychology of human behaviour” TTC, Prof. David W. Martin
“Understanding the world through experience and reason” TTC, Prof. James Hall
“Argumentation: The study of effective reasoning” TTC, Prof. David Zarefsky
“The self under siege” TTC, Prof. Rick Roderick
“Philosophy of Mind” TTC, Prof. John Searle
“The Conservative Tradition” TTC, Prof. Patrick Allitt
“No excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life” TTC, Prof. Robert Solomon
“Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language” TTC, Prof. John McWhorter
“The Enlightenment: Invention of the Modern Self” TTC, Prof. Leo Damrosch

This is just the research I've done.
Anyone can feel free to add to this list.

-George Orwell's 1984 (1949)
-A People's History of the United States (1980)

reply to post by briantaylor


Don't worry about who we are.
Who are you? What are you? Can you find the self?
Books can not show you to you, only you can look.

You are what you seek.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by briantaylor

 

Don't worry about who we are.
Who are you? What are you? Can you find the self?
Books can not show you to you, only you can look.

You are what you seek.

edit on 8-1-2012 by Itisnowagain because: (no reason given)

I seek you.

That's a healthy list.

I would suggest (oddly, for the second time this morning), Benedictus de Spinoza. Particularly his masterwork Ethics. He's been labelled the Prince of Philosophers and is highly regarded by such people as Einstein and Goethe.

Also of course Nietzsche, who is not only pleasurable and refreshing to read, but pretty much destroys every philosophy he goes near. His philosophies have been called dangerous; nothing wrong with that at all. I would recommend all of his books be read—twice.

A real challenge would be anything by Hegel.

reply to post by briantaylor


No love for Joseph Campbell?

wikilink

His favorite phrase "Follow your bliss".

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

Also of course Nietzsche

Blazing Saddles (1974) memorable qoutes:

Reverend Johnson: Order, order. Goddamnit, I said "order".
Howard Johnson: Y'know, Nietzsche says: "Out of chaos comes order."
Olson Johnson: Oh, blow it out your ass, Howard.