CC BY-NC 4.0 by Colin Allen <prof.colin.allen@gmail.com> -- You have permission to link to this document or reproduce or adapt it for non-commercial purposes only. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
If this is your first philosophy class, you may find the nature of the reading assignments somewhat unusual. In most other classes you are asked to read and memorize relatively large quantities of material. In most philosophy courses, however, the amount of reading that is required of you will be relatively small (although there are exceptions, especially in more advanced classes). In comparison to some other classes you have taken it may also seem difficult to figure out what you are being expected to memorize. It is not as if the material presents facts, like a science textbook, or has a plot and characters, like a piece of literature. Instead you will find philosophers arguing for conclusions that may seem utterly implausible to you, and giving arguments that initially seem impenetrable.
The first thing to realize is that philosophical positions are initially interesting precisely because of their apparent implausibility. The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno argued that motion is impossible - a result that is so much at odds with our common sense view of the world that no one who first encounters it can think it the least bit plausible. Making Zeno's work of enduring interest are the very clever arguments he constructed to support his implausible conclusion. Implausible conclusions in themselves have little enduring interest. Implausible conclusions supported by good arguments challenge us to think hard about our preconceptions of the world, and about how to defend our most cherished views in the face of arguments that seem to undermine them. Discovering what is wrong with an argument is the single most important skill in critical thinking. What philosophy aims to do is to teach you to do this for yourself, when presented with any argument.
The next thing to realize is that philosophers, being human, suffer from the same cognitive limitations as everyone else. They have sometimes been more attached to their conclusions than the evidence would warrant, and they sometimes try to give arguments that are more complicated than they can successfully keep track of. Some of them are also tempted to rely on jargon rather than explaining their ideas clearly, and some of them simply have confused ideas. All these things mean that the arguments presented are often less than complete and less than completely clear, and this can make it difficult to decide exactly what argument a given author is presenting (and in the worst cases, even, what conclusions they are arguing for).
So, what to do? Realize that to make progress with reading philosophy texts you should expect to have to read the material more than once. Save the yellow highlighter until after you have read the material several times, because on a first reading you will not typically be able to decide what is really important. Only after you feel as though you have a handle on the sections you are reading, go back and mark what seem to be the key conclusions and supporting premises.
Read the text once through, relatively quickly, to get an overall sense of the piece. Then go back to the beginning and read very slowly, stopping after every sentence and asking yourself these questions:
The final thing to know about reading philosophy is that there are no short cuts. The subject matter is hard, the arguments are complicated, and the terrain is unfamiliar. Don't expect to get everything out of a piece of philosophy right away. It may take weeks or months to feel that you really understand what is going on. Even those of us who have made an academic career in philosophy have had the experience of rereading something that we first encountered as undergraduates, and suddenly realizing that we had not fully understood it until now, or that we have found a new way of criticizing or defending the view. Just like physical training, taking on intellectual challenges builds capacities that produce benefits many years later, even if you aren't planning a career in philosophy.