i don’t even understand why so much craze about analytic philosophy all across the world. people should read continental instead

Oh man this guy’s writing is horrific

Nussbaum was the worst phil professor I ever had. Conant all the way.

This was exactly Nietzsche's criticism of so much philosophy. For him, philosophy is a corrupted discipline long poisoned by clandestine theologians. He had in mind Kant and Hegel. Many of them are trying to demonstrate the validity of immaterial axioms, especially their endless redefinitions of 'truth.' So much of what they write about is more or less unprovable materially. Axiom piled upon axiom, which is why it seems so impenetrable to read.

In many ways, a strong mind must be disgusted by this type of decadent verbosity. For example, I recently read Karl Jasper's On the Origin of History and felt physically repulsed by how drunk he was on attempts to re-define far too many basic words that don't need philosophical definitions. He wrote pages upon pages of drivel. Nietzsche famously said that one of his short aphorisms can state far more clearly and briefly what some philosophical books cannot do in hundreds of pages. Instead of clarifying reality, these philosophers butcher it.

Outside of the history of philosophy as an academic discipline, a lot of prior philosophy is now irrelevant because nobody believes in Kant's 'categorical imperative' anymore, nor the belief from Hegel that history unfolds towards a final spiritual truth. We cringe at such things today. And we cringe because philosophy has lost its prestigious purpose. Physics, economics, and psychology have replaced many of the reasons for why philosophers used to write. Nobody writes about the good life anymore, but we think in terms of economics or psychology. Rather than Aquinas waffling on about his axioms, we consult physicists to learn about the universe.

Nietzsche represents the ending of that old philosophical system that commenced with Plato and the Ionian philosophers. Nietzsche even blamed Plato and Socrates for poisoning philosophy with moral questions that have no material grounding. That's why it's very hard to decipher the systematic and moral philosophers like Aquinas, Kant, and Hegel. They are writing for things that are defunct.

Such was Nietzsche's influence and his larger intellectual symbolism on Western philosophy that we can refer to 'Before Nietzsche' and 'After Nietzsche.'

We now live in the year 126AN (After Nietzsche).

In Nietzsche's own words:

All the ideas that philosophers have treated for thousands of years, have been mummied concepts; nothing real has ever come out of their hands alive.

A philosopher, Jonathan Bennett, tried to address this issue by translating early modern texts into plainer contemporary English. His translations are available online here:

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/

Hume is one of the best philosophers in terms of writing clearly. So no, those lengthy paragraphs and expressions are not unnecessary. More likely, you lack background knowledge to understand why he found it necessary to mention all those things you think are unnecessary.

The process of understanding is how you develop critical thinking. The reason 2 sentences become a long winding paragraph is that the twists and turns are a necessary part of the thinking. It’s like stretching or doing yoga. Sure, you can just drop down into a forward fold: sometimes that’s what you need to do. But if you want to push yourself and really develop your flexibility, you do other stretches before and after that develop other components alongside it.

Edit: if you want to see what I’m talking about in action, go read some Platonic dialogues.

Are you pursuing an education in philosophy formally? If not, I think it’s helpful to take a few classes at a community college. Having a professor who can lecture about the texts, answer questions, and lead discussions is incredibly helpful. I’m working on my undergraduate degree in philosophy, and when I started I felt completely lost. But after taking 3 years of philosophy courses I am pretty good at reading primary source materials. A lot of theory builds on other theories that came before it, or is in response to other theories the author disagrees with. It’s a rabbit hole, knowing where to start to get to the stuff you want to read is important. The more you read, the more you will start to recognize that philosophy has its own language and jargon like any other discipline. Also keep in mind that a lot of theory is not supposed to be easy to understand, epistemology especially can get incredibly abstract so there’s not always going to be a way to simply explain it. Philosophy is about critical thinking, and you should have to sit with the text. Be patient, ask questions, try and formulate your own thoughts in response to readings. I’m by no means an expert, but this has been a useful approach for me!

I spent ten years solving the meaning of life, and three years on the final draft of my book on it. I applied cross-disciplinary reasoning to force a deduction. What did it achieve? People stealing my book and insulting me for how rigid my analytic reasoning is.

That 10 years was the book alone. I’ve had a mountain of experience in philosophy, and I’m telling you it’s a waste of time. The OP can be rescued, but I’m not so sure about people who got hooked on that pseudo-intellectualism drug.

Time is onlh ‘wasted’ on philosophy if you think thinking to the point of intellectual exhaustion is time wasted. Maybe it is. But it’s sn exhaustion like no other I’ve come across.

If you found Hume difficult, just wait until you try Kant! He’s a world of linguistics pain. But, sadly, deeply profound.

I might technically fit the definition of a philosopher so I’ll bite.

Don’t waste your time on philosophy. Philosophers are idiots, why? Exactly the reason you listed: why write a convoluted paragraph if you can explain it plainly in a sentence? There are two possibilities: one, you’re not understanding the nuance that requires the complexity, or, two, the complexity wasn’t really necessary for explaining the idea.

I’ve collected theories like Pokémon cards, and they’re pretty much all useless. I question people’s motivation when they spend a life trying to make money or exercise endlessly, but with philosophy, I can tell you from experience that it’s the most futile waste of time ever. It doesn’t even make you more intelligent—in fact, philosophers are the dumbest people on the planet, but they’ve spent so much time repeating a process called “argumentation” that they can drag anyone in the dirt and win from experience. How do I know this? Because I could beat six people in a debate at the same time on six different subjects, and morons kept walking into my traps.

Philosophy is useful if you’re organizing an essay—but if you want to really build knowledge, philosophy is useless. If you use philosophy properly, you’ll end up as a nihilist like me. That’s the logical outcome of philosophy.

You might enjoy Will Durant's Story of Philosophy. It's like a hundred years old at this point, but Durant was a master at taking topics that are usually written about in a sort of monotone drone and writing engagingly about them.

Presumably contemporary non-academic English along the lines of Jonathan Bennett’s early modern texts project.

What language were they translating Hume into?

McDowell's "Mind and World" can't be beat

Honestly OP you're 100% correct. It's no secret that many philosophical texts are conveying pretty simple ideas through overly complex language, overabundance of intellectual ego, way more examples and analogies than needed to describe the same point and just simple waffle. Don't feel guilty just simply being more efficient and asking AI or reading a summary on what a philosophers key positions are and how they got there and then moving on with your life. 99.99% of people aren't going to pull you up on the fact you didn't read what Hume said in chapter 5 section 2.

I find it hilarious people are saying to develop critical thinking you need to read other peoples ideas. No, it's exactly the opposite. To develop critical thinking you need to critically think and you can critically think with just the core points. If you want to develop such a skill you're much better served debating yourself, your friends, other philosophers or even AI to synthesise, stresstest and develop others and your own ideas rather than forcing yourself to read through something that’s 10000 words of intellectual masturbation and barely absorbing one. This is how most actual people that aren't fusing it with their ego and identity with a stick up their ass about looking smart get into philosophy. When you discover what you vibe with then you can read the deeper stuff. Ignore all the intellectual gatekeeping in this sub.

I found a well structured, interesting lecture series available on YouTube, called “Introduction to the History of Western Philosophy “ by Leonard Peikoff. Each topic follows a logical sequence from metaphysics to epistemology. There’s even some humor sprinkled in.

Thi Nguyen OUP book Games: Agency as Art and also he published a trade book on the same topic this year. For analytic feminist philosophy, I would recommend Amia Srinivasan's Right to Sex.

I am rather confused here. Hume is not generally considered a particularly difficult philosopher to read, although as others have mentioned there is still a lot of technical vocabulary. I pulled the book off my shelf and from a cursory perusal did not find his style to contain unnecessary filler. He’s just precise.

This doesn’t mean you should feel badly about struggling! Philosophy is hard and requires the development of specialized close reading skills. It’s often like learning to read a foreign language.

The reason to read primary sources is to develop these interpretive skills. Usually when I am approaching a new, complicated (for me) text, I will often read it alongside commentaries or secondary literature. I think the initial first pass reading experience is valuable even if you don’t understand everything. Then you read some secondary literature to get better situated in the text. Then you re-read the original text.

The texts that I consider myself well-versed in are often texts I have read many many times. Reading is re-reading (I have, for example, read Kant’s first Critique at least 2-3 times cover to cover, and have read certain sections of it 5+ times because I have needed them for essay I’ve written - I am not even really a Kant scholar, but I’m a phenomenologist and CPR is really important to my field).

Also I would encourage you to write your own plain language translations as you go (ie take detailed reading notes!) rather than using (presumably) AI to do it for you. That process of “translating” texts into familiar language IS the process of learning to read philosophy, and by outsourcing that work you will be missing something essential.

Most of intellectualism is just masturbation.

You're picking up dense, technical works to start with. You don't know the jargon or the history or the references so of course it reads as obtuse.

Start by taking a beginner Philosophy course at a community college. It's one of the most enlightening things a person can do if they actually pay attention.

You don't start Math with calculus. You start it with addition and subtraction.

You don’t have a good appreciation for what it is to do philosophy or what it is to be a philosopher. That’s fine. Your conception of it will naturally change over time the more you read and take classes and get a feel for what’s out there. To start, you may find Routledge’s “The Arguments of The Philosophers” series to be of use. For Hume, in particular, reading Barry Stroud’s contribution helped me immensely. Fairly comprehensive, and well written.

Also, don’t buy books new. Buy used Hackett editions, which are super cheap, and use Anna’s Archive online. They have a pdf for virtually every book that’s been published.

P.s. you ought to condense your writing yourself. Found your post interesting but nobody will want read it all