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To a 15 year old

  



From Quora, question and answer

How should I get started with philosophy? I'm 15 years old.

That is a very good time for it. You might want to try to define for yourself what kind of philosophy problem most interests you and cluster your readings (and your early manuscripts) there. Many young people are driven by social/political concerns. Can philosophy say something foundational about these concerns? Can it help us get a Big Picture into which the day-to-day headlines and debates will fit? If that is what you mean by philosophy, you might want to look to John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and older figures like Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke.

Others are feeling a more existential angst. What is the point of even getting out of bed in the morning? Do my actions matter? Are they determined anyway, so that I am just a ping-pong ball bouncing around? If those questions are what philosophy means to you, I suggest the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a follow-up with the work of William James and his great interpreter, Jacques Barzun!

Or perhaps you’re the more epistemological type of 15 year old? How do we know anything to be true? After all, it could all be a dream, or a Matrix, right? You may choose to dream, then, that I give you this answer. Jônadas Techio’s Threat of Solipsism (2021) is very up-to-date on this. It will send you back to Wittgenstein for further guidance — a valuable reference, When you’ve satisfied yourself you do live with a world, look to early modern figures like Pascal and Locke — two very different writers — for understanding what understanding is.

Those are three roads for you. You will surely find your own.

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