| Just my 2c below. I went down a similar path over the last few years. Here is what didn't work well for me: - Reading books on the history of philosophy summarizing a wide range of ideas from famous philosophers. Examples would be Bertrand Russell's and Anthony Kenny's books. The problem I found is that there's just too much stuff in there that is not of interest to me personally. - Reading books by author. For example, just reading through Plato's dialogues never worked for me, again because the topics are vast and varied, and many are not of interest to me personally. What worked for me are diving into specific topics that interested me deeply. In my case: political philosophy, the question of the existence of "God", and topics pertaining to morality and ethics. (There also happens to be a nice overlap across these topics making it easier for me.) Starting out is the hardest part. I find that the first books you pick seem to set the stage for one's worldview to a large extent. That's just a correlation from personal experience, not necessarily causation. My basic approach to not blindsiding myself to specific views has been to work my way up through history to understand how the ideas and arguments pertaining to a topic evolved over time. I found that during this phase I have to actively suppress my natural impulse to immediately criticize arguments I come across; I rather assume that I missed something. The next phase for me is to actually dig deeper into some of those criticisms that came up, and see if they hold up. Next, pick your translations very carefully. Research the best translations for each book before purchasing. /r/askphilosophy and /r/philosophy are great resources for this and the deep-dive phase of your research. A final piece of advice: read slowly. Comprehension is king when it comes to philosophy. I was reading, re-reading, and parsing through 2-3 pages per hour when I started out. This is mostly because many terms that you wouldn't think are technical turn out to be (for example, Aristotle's use of the term "motion" refers to something much more expansive than what we think of motion as today). However, on the bright side, that speed tends to go up (slightly) over time as you become familiar with the area. So to summarize: my recommendation to you for developing a personal philosophy is to ask questions first, and then seek out answers that you judge on their merit, regardless of who wrote them. TLDR: Ask questions first, read widely second, and think for yourself. |