Are there textbooks on philosophy, and if so, why are they not

>>8752900
>In maths or physics you don't read "Newton", you read a book on Analysis or Classical Mechanics. But on /lit/ everyone says "read [Philsopher]" by which they mean "read the works of [Philosopher]".
What are you talking about, retard, scientists read other other's papers all the time, they don't make you read Einstein's publications or Principia Mathematica in school because you wouldn't fucking get it

>>8752909
This is wrong, you generally only read recently published papers.

Older papers (i.e those that do not present the most modern version of the ideas) are only read for historical context (e.g my department recently had a seminar on historic papers in physics) or because profs like to develop their lectures chronologically in undergrad, and then link the old papers for fun.

You would not read Einstein's papers to learn about General Relativity, you just go to the library and get a textbook about it.

>>8752900
The problem is that there is a division in philosophy between continental and analytic thought. Russell's book, which I suppose might have fulfilled this role at one point, takes a steaming dump on Nietzsche, who is basically Ground Zero for virtually everything that comes after him.

It's one of the things that suck about philosophy, tbqh, because you don't get this sense of everyone being on the same page with things. Most people will agree, more or less, on who matters and who does not matter from Plato until the 19C. But it gets pretty crazy after that, mainly because advances in philosophy are made by re-inventing the wheel, and it gets so completely re-invented in so many ways that people are still divided on what is and is not philosophy itself. So Anglo-Analytics see things one way, and continentals (even though the term is totally meaningless, b/c all it means is 'everyone in France, Germany, Italy, etc.') see them another.

It's a clusterfuck no doubt. And I agree, it should depend on the ideas, not the wording.

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>>8752933

>Russell's book, which I suppose might have fulfilled this role at one point, takes a steaming dump on Nietzsche

Luckily for Nietzsche, Russell's book is a big steaming dump.

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>>8752900
Well on the one hand this is a literature board, so often people approach philosophy from that perspective here. Hence why Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus are popular here.

But there most certainly are textbooks on philosophy and if you do any sort of degree in philosophy you will quickly become familiar with them.

In terms of
>a textbook that develops Kant's ideas in modern language
This would either be a secondary text on Kant or one of his particular books (there is a mountain of such secondary literature on most notable philosophers), or a chapter in a textbook on a particular area of philosophy (e.g. a chapter on his transcendental aesthetic in a metaphysics textbook).

The Routledge series pictured are generally reliable and aimed mainly at the undergraduate (they're what I often used in my degree).

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>>8752968
Pretty much. Kenny's book is more modern and less...well, let's just say it's more modern.

The other big one, if OP really has some time on their hands, is the Copleston series, all eleven volumes. I know no one who has actually read this, but it's there, and it will be there long after everyone in this thread is dead.

For cozy mode, Will Durant. Not the usual go-to "The Story of Philosophy," but the even rarer (possibly out of print, and wonderfully old-school) "Mansions of Philosophy," which is so fucking snug it will basically make you feel like you are reading The Red Book of Westmarch. People like to shit on Durant because he's not really an academic, but the man is cozy af and let's face it, in philosophy that's kind of unusual. Obviously.

>textbook
>on philosophy
Poor STEMfag cannot comprehend wisdom

>>8753007
I should add (before some chastises me) that there's also no substitute for reading philosophy from the words of its author. There are subtleties and assumptions lost and made in secondary literature. The language is often difficult because it's expressing difficult concepts. So you should read textbooks alongside primary texts.

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There are books that usually have Companion or Handbook in their title. They can talk about anything. Those books tend to have an ensemble team of specialists writing on contemporary issues and topics that are within their fields of expertise.

One of such speciality doesn't have to be a branch of philosophy, like metaphysics, it can be an influencial thinker or philosophical current instead.

Secondary literature does exist for those, they will tell you why an author living centuries ago matters today.

But secondary literature is something that I find within primary lit as well. In the introductions to a particular work, you typically receive information not only on the text, the author, the translation, but also on the very philosophical content therein. Same goes for footnotes and whatever other material the editor thinks is useful.

Beyond textbooks you have free online encyclopedias like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, with articles on branches of philosophy, movements, authors, etc.

You appear to be completely clueless about this thriving business of making difficult things simple. There's a lot of money to be made here.

In doing so, however (unless there's the occasional extensive commentary that is actually longer than the book being talked about) the writer of the secondary literature gives you a summary, follows his or her own interpretation and gives you his or her own opinions, even while typically presenting some other viewpoints. And people interested in philosophy usually recommend you to read your primary sources so you can enjoy the whole thing and have your own opinion about it.

Widely read books are going to be printed and reprinted to the point of being quite cheap. Plato and Nietzsche are dirt cheap here.

Then there's the thing that Plato has been the "tutorial level" of Western philosophy since, well, forever.

Would you find it strange, on a literature board, that we'd be more interested in recommending, say, The Silmarillion compared to something pic related?

What if I told you certain philosophers can be superb writers?

>>8753045
The bottom line is that while Plato may have been one, his commentators are countless.

Which is more likely for me: to tell you to read the Bible, or have you wade through the infinite sea and schools of Christian theology without ever opening it?