Reading Philosophy For Pleasure
What the best free guides teach, who each one is for, and what all four leave out.
You read the page. Then you read it again. You underline the sentence that sounds important, and you get to the end of the chapter with no idea what the author was arguing, or what it has to do with you and what you think.
That isn’t a sign you’re not smart enough for philosophy. It’s a sign you’re reading it the way you read everything else: front to back, for information, waiting for it to click. In over a decade of teaching, I’ve watched this trip up nearly every new reader I’ve worked with. Philosophy asks for a different kind of reading, one that starts with you.
A few philosophy teachers have written guides to help with this. I keep the four best in the How to Read Philosophy and Theory unit of the Free Philosophy for Independent Scholars curriculum. Below is what each one teaches, who it’s for, and where it falls short. Each gets a usability score from 1 to 5: how easily you could pick it up tonight and use it on a real text. Then, at the end, I pitch you my own version. Hint: It begins with you and is focused on reading philosophy and theory for pleasure. I’ll be running a live workshop next Saturday — info below, don’t miss it!
1. “Reading as a Philosopher” by David W. Concepción
Read it at The Philosophers’ Magazine →
This is a short essay from 2019 by a Ball State professor who chaired the APA’s Committee on Teaching. It’s a top-ten list of what he wishes he’d known when he started. The list moves from mindset (philosophy is strange, it’s disquieting, it takes courage) to method: get background from the Stanford or Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, track shifts between the author’s voice and the critic’s, summarize paragraph by paragraph, then evaluate and decide.
Best for: Beginners and returners who need to know why philosophy feels so hard before they learn how to read it. Introductory level.
Evaluation: This is the only guide here that admits reading philosophy can unsettle your beliefs and your sense of yourself, and that this is the point. His advice to watch for voice shifts (“critics might argue…”, “by way of reply…”) is the most useful single tip in any of the four. But he’s upfront that his method comes from analytic-leaning ethics and article-length English texts. It won’t carry you through Hegel or Irigaray. And it’s an essay, not a routine, so you’ll have to build the practice yourself.
Usability: 4/5
2. “Guidelines on Reading Philosophy” by Jim Pryor
This is a handout Pryor wrote for his own philosophy students. It has three steps: skim for the conclusion and structure, reread carefully, then evaluate. It shows how to spot signpost words (“therefore,” “however,” “a better response”), how to tell an auxiliary argument from the main one, and how to diagram an article’s pieces with arrows.
Best for: Beginners reading contemporary analytic articles, especially for a class. Introductory undergraduate level.
Evaluation: It’s the most concrete of the four. The worked example about the skeptic, where the main conclusion is not that skepticism is true, teaches more than pages of general advice. Pryor is also honest that he still rereads articles many times. The limits come from what it was written for. It assumes a tidy argumentative article and a classroom (“ask in section”). It says little about historical texts or theory, and nothing about turning what you read into your own ideas.
Usability: 4/5
3. Introduction to Philosophy, Section 2.5: “Reading Philosophy” by OpenStax
This is a section of a free, peer-reviewed introductory textbook. It covers setting up a reading space, building an annotation code instead of highlighting everything, reading with the principle of charity, tracking dialectic, and pre-reading the title, author, contents, and bibliography before you start.
Best for: Absolute beginners who want everything in one place. Introductory level.
Evaluation: It’s the most complete of the four, and it’s the only one that takes your physical setup seriously. Its sections on the principle of charity and on not mistaking an opponent’s view for the author’s are clear and worth the read. But it’s written in flat textbook prose for students taking a course. It tells you what to do without showing you on a real passage, so it’s easy to nod along and change nothing.
Usability: 3/5
4. “A Preliminary Guide to Critical Reading” by LSE Gender Institute
This one is a study-support handout from the London School of Economics’ gender studies department, written for dense theory. It lays out four passes: a fast first read all the way through, a second read that stops on hard spots, a “precise clarity” read that color-codes each passage against your summary of the main points, and critical engagement, including how to read one text through another.
Best for: Intermediate readers working on critical, feminist, or continental theory, where arguments circle back instead of marching forward. Upper undergraduate to graduate level.
Evaluation: This is the guide I’d hand to anyone wanting to read Butler or Foucault. It gives you permission to not understand on the first pass, and it says outright that “problems of understanding are not always to do with you.” Its advice on putting two texts in conversation is rare and useful. The downsides: it’s a plain PDF with no examples, it assumes you have plenty of time, and its best tip, discussing texts with other people, assumes you have people to talk with.
Usability: 4/5
What All Four Leave Out
Read together, these guides teach you how to understand an argument. But all four were written for students in a course, with a syllabus, a deadline, and a seminar room. If you’re reading on your own, three things are missing:
- A habit. None of them helps you actually sit down and read week after week without a class making you.
- Your own ideas. They teach you to reconstruct the author’s argument. Very little helps you keep track of where you come in and develop that into something you can write or talk about.
- Practice with other people. You can’t learn this from a handout alone. You learn it by doing it on a real passage, out loud, with someone who knows how.
But the key to reading philosophy for pleasure is starting with you. It may entail unlearning some academic schooling, and we’re gonna start there. Also, this workshop is the starting point for the free curriculum I’ll be taking a cohort through in the new year — join us if you want to be a part of a community of passionate thinkers.
Learn It Live With Others
That’s why I built How to Become a Philosopher, Or Just Learn to Think Like One, a live three-hour workshop on reading theory and philosophy from your own perspective.
Saturday, November 14 · 12:00 PM PST / 3:00 PM ET / 9:00 PM CET · Live online
You’ll leave with:
- A reading practice: a regular time or trigger, and a way to protect it.
- The C.I.A. method: Content, Intentions, and Assumptions, practiced twice on real philosophy passages in small groups.
- An ideas notebook: a running index and your own annotation shorthand, so the ideas that matter to you don’t get lost.
- A two-week reading challenge: you leave already enrolled, with an accountability pod if you opt in.
No background in philosophy is needed. The workshop is for complete beginners and for people coming back after a bad experience with philosophy in school.
Live: $85. Only 16 seats, so the small-group practice works. Includes the accountability pod and the recording. Video only: $65. The recorded lecture and live demos, sent after the session.
P.S., There are two scholarships. If cost is what would keep you away, write to hello@philosophypublics.com.