철학 계시판에 글쓴 분이 글을 지우셨군요.  영문으로 작성한 댓글을 여기에 올립니다. <div><br></div> <div><div><span>Not all philosophers are good writers.  But both Bertrand Russell and David Hume are clear writers and excellent stylists.  </span></div> <div><span><br></span></div> <div><span>However, I do not recommend Russell's <i>A History of Western Philosophy</i>.   Russell is a great philosopher, but he is no intellectual historian.  Instead, I recommend his (1912) <i>The Problems of Philosophy.</i>   It is a nice introduction to the central problems of modern Western philosophy, which is still widely read by beginning philosophy students at the college and graduate level.</span></div> <div><span><br></span></div> <div><span>Also, life is too short to read history books about philisophy.  It is better to read the philosophical classics themselves.   I second the recommendation to read some of Plato's dialogues: especially <i>The Apology of Socrates</i>, <i>The Symposium</i>, and at least the first two books of <i>The Republic</i> (Robin Waterfield's translations into English are good, and very readable).</span></div> <div><span><br></span></div> <div><span>Then you can try reading some early modern philosophy classics, like Descartes's <i>Meditations on First Philosophy</i>, Berkeley's <i>Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,</i> and two books by Hume: <i>An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</i>, and D<i>ialogues Concerning Natural Religion</i>.  </span></div> <div><span><br></span></div> <div><span>There's an excellent internet resource for the early modern texts: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/texts.html" target="_blank">http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/texts.html</a></span></div> <div><span><br></span></div> <div><span>Go to that website, and you will find PDF documents of the texts I mentioned (not Plato, but Descartes, Berkeley, Hume and others), edited and abridged for easy reading with commentary explaining difficult terms.  </span></div></div>