Reading Political Philosophy for RC Forum

[RamTitan]

In the "160+" advice thread, I noticed a few people listed reading political philosophy as a good way to practice for the RC section. Do you agree? And if so, have any book recommendations?

I started reading "The Prince". Pretty simple read thus far....

[Legacy Rabbit]

Statecraft as Soulcraft by George Will

Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman

PoliSci majors of TLS should really contribute...

not political philosophy but strong reads
The Black Swan and Antifragile both by Nassim Taleb

[MrBalloons]

Read A Theory of Justice.

Rawls rewls.

[RZ5646]

In the "160+" advice thread, I noticed a few people listed reading political philosophy as a good way to practice for the RC section. Do you agree? And if so, have any book recommendations?

I started reading "The Prince". Pretty simple read thus far....

Not necessarily a good choice, since isn't it one of the field's founding texts and translated from like medieval Italian? Even ignoring any curveballs thrown by the translator in trying to improve the text, the discourse was rather different back then and the language barrier might present some serious difficulties. (Aristotle is an example of both of these problems: he was basically inventing the form of the philosophical treatise as he went, and Ancient Greek had a number of peculiarities which, if the translator is at all faithful to the original, make the English exceedingly awkward and convoluted.) If you're going to read political philosophy for the purpose of LSAT prep, look at contemporary writers like Rawls and Nozick. Personally I've been making my way through Theory of Justice and Rawls is a very readable philosopher, if a bit boring, and his book seems representative of modern academic argumentation, which is what I take it you're looking for.

[The Abyss]

You can check out some Leo Strauss, who is another important 20th century political philosopher. I'll also recommend A Theory of Justice.

[fredfred]

If you can read and understand Kant, you will be fine.

[Dcc617]

I recommend some good old Plato. I was making my way through Laws when I took my test. Before that I read Timaeus and Critias. Both of them are kind of boring, but I feel like it helped my reading skills.

For easier Plato, you should read the Socratic dialogues and then The Republic. The dialogues are very easy to read and short enough that you can fly through them. The Republic is super interesting and written much more briskly than Laws.

[ibopm]

This is the wrong choice IMO. Increasing your reading ability for RC is a good thing, but this is far from the most effective way to increase your score. You need to start years in advance if this is the technique you want to take.

What's most important is that you should focus on being able to read RC texts well. I talk a lot about this if you click my name and see my posts.

[Op_Diom]

Actually, rationalistic philosophy in general is good for RC. The other, more 'idealistic' ones are not that helpful because they spew hyperbolic and unfounded statements a lot of the time. Hence, any philosophical works with clear, concise and extreme rational approaches will be helpful for RC, because that is essentially what each passage is doing: It takes a set of premises and then forms them together in some way to arrive at a supported conclusion. Thus, only by way of the laws of logic can one do such things.

Here are some of my suggestions: (btw, I'm a PHI/ECO major with a minor in Poli-sci)

'Critique of Pure Reason' by Kant (dry but after reading this, RC passages are a cinch)
'Metaphysics of Morals, by Kant (a lot about moral laws, justice, etc.)
'Leviathan' by Thomas Hobbes
'Two Treatises of Government' by John Locke
'Epistemology Naturalized', 'Ontological Relativism', 'Two Dogmas' and other essays by Quine
'Justice for Hedgehogs' by Ronald Dworkin
'Philosophical Explanations' by Nozick
etc...

[Dcc617]

Actually, rationalistic philosophy in general is good for RC. The other, more 'idealistic' ones are not that helpful because they spew hyperbolic and unfounded statements a lot of the time. Hence, any philosophical works with clear, concise and extreme rational approaches will be helpful for RC, because that is essentially what each passage is doing: It takes a set of premises and then forms them together in some way to arrive at a supported conclusion. Thus, only by way of the laws of logic can one do such things.

Here are some of my suggestions: (btw, I'm a PHI/ECO major with a minor in Poli-sci)

'Critique of Pure Reason' by Kant (dry but after reading this, RC passages are a cinch)
'Metaphysics of Morals, by Kant (a lot about moral laws, justice, etc.)
'Leviathan' by Thomas Hobbes
'Two Treatises of Government' by John Locke
'Epistemology Naturalized', 'Ontological Relativism', 'Two Dogmas' and other essays by Quine
'Justice for Hedgehogs' by Ronald Dworkin
'Philosophical Explanations' by Nozick
etc...

Leviathan is pretty awful to read. Brilliant, but holy crap it's painful. At least for me it was.

OP, you should also check out Richard Rorty and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.

[Op_Diom]

Actually, rationalistic philosophy in general is good for RC. The other, more 'idealistic' ones are not that helpful because they spew hyperbolic and unfounded statements a lot of the time. Hence, any philosophical works with clear, concise and extreme rational approaches will be helpful for RC, because that is essentially what each passage is doing: It takes a set of premises and then forms them together in some way to arrive at a supported conclusion. Thus, only by way of the laws of logic can one do such things.

Here are some of my suggestions: (btw, I'm a PHI/ECO major with a minor in Poli-sci)

'Critique of Pure Reason' by Kant (dry but after reading this, RC passages are a cinch)
'Metaphysics of Morals, by Kant (a lot about moral laws, justice, etc.)
'Leviathan' by Thomas Hobbes
'Two Treatises of Government' by John Locke
'Epistemology Naturalized', 'Ontological Relativism', 'Two Dogmas' and other essays by Quine
'Justice for Hedgehogs' by Ronald Dworkin
'Philosophical Explanations' by Nozick
etc...

Leviathan is pretty awful to read. Brilliant, but holy crap it's painful. At least for me it was.

OP, you should also check out Richard Rorty and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.

Yeah, a lot of those dense works can be miserable when reading through the first time but it's definitely worth it in the end. I mean these guys are some of the most brilliant minds in the western world, ever. So yeah it can be brutal to try to keep up with them, especially when they are writing in 16th and 17th century english, german, etc.

[Op_Diom]

Yeah Rorty is good. He is probably the leading sceptic of the 21st century.

[appind]

rorty's contingency may not help much as the writing is much more straightforward than the rc passages. same with Rawls theory of justice.

any suggestions on untranslated dense writing replete with various causal/conditional arguments?

[Op_Diom]

rorty's contingency may not help much as the writing is much more straightforward than the rc passages. same with Rawls theory of justice.

any suggestions on untranslated dense writing replete with various causal/conditional arguments?

Yeah, Donald Davidson's essays in 'The Essential Donald Davidson' collection fits this category perfectly. He basically attempts to unveil how a compositional theory of meaningful language can be constructed on a Tarski-like Truth Theory. Hence, the relations between language's components (whether it be a sentence in relation to other sentences in a paragraph or words in relation to other words in the sentence) are key for deriving such information. So his entire philosophy hinges upon conditional reasoning, causation and logical laws in general. However, warning: it is not for the faint of heart.

[RamTitan]

Wow, lots of excellent recommendations; thanks so much!