Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer is my favorite intro to Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and it's hosted on ProleWiki. It starts with Idealism, Dialectics, Materialism, Dialectical Idealism, then Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
Do you have a specific, non-Marxist interest in philosophy?
Yessss we're gaining traction Politzerbros
No not really I want to study philosophy so I can make the best video games :>
If you want to add some depth to your game with philosophy, the very end of Elementary principles of philosophy contains a section on 'dialectical method of analysis' of literary works. Try to reverse-engineer the process to structure your game/story for a proper development of the story.
How do I reverse engineer it
the process, in brief, goes something like this:
this can be very frustrating to begin with, but after a few tries you will start to see some improvement, and maybe even something you actually like.
You know how learning how to read can help to be better writer? Same principles. If you know how people analysis a story, you could structure it in a a way so the reader can reach the conclusion you intended and not be stranded and confused.
Philosophy covers a lot of ground. It's been built up over millennia. It'll be useful to get an overview first. This will help you piece things together and understand what goes where and why.
To get an overview, you could read a general introduction or you could read excerpts from the big names in a few of the big trends. Or maybe articles on main themes and trends – SEP is good for that and another comrade had provided a link, although it might be hard to know where to start.
Alternatively, if you prefer videos, I could suggest some lectures.
Later, you can dive deeper into whichever philosophy/ers you enjoy most.
What do you know about philosophy so far? If you think 'nothing', what do you expect to find by learning more? If you can answer that, no matter how vague (to start with), I or others may be able to give you some more direction.
The SEP is an invaluable resource.
I don't even know what to being to look for lol
Keywords you're interested in. You said you want to learn philosophy to improve your video game making, I just typed in "video game" into the search bar: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=video+game
Some results: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/it-moral-values/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/
You can also try searching for "dialectics" and stuff like that. SEP is like the wikipedia for philosophy, one can spend hours reading it and going down rabbit holes.
On Contradiction and On Practice
I thought this was theory?
Marxist theory is philosophy that seeks to change the world. (The good stuff, anyway.)
Will Durant - the story of philosophy. Only about western thought, but it's very readable, engaging, and short.
On Practice and On Contradiction as someone else as said would be a good start. A Handbook of Philosophy written by B.I. Syusyukalov and L.A. Yakovleva is a decent read, though it is important to note that it is from the revisionist era of the USSR.
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