I've read a lot of Wittgenstein and Sellars lately, and am about to make an attack on a pile of secondary literature I've been sitting on for a while. I'd like to go back over the Tractatus, which I only read once years ago, and Anscombe's introduction to it. Then I want to make another pass over Anscombe's Intention and attack some of the secondary literature on that.

Proclus wrote:

(I've still got some blank days at the end of the semester for contemporary analytic philosophy, so if anyone has any suggestions for essential essays (20–30 pages) suitable for juniors and seniors, I'd love to hear them.)

Anything more determinate you’re looking for? Do you just want papers that are good essays, in our view, or do you want papers that are representative of analytic philosophy?

If the latter, Frege’s “On Sense and Reference” (perhaps also “Function and Concept” and “Concept and Object”), Russell’s “On Denoting,” Quine’s “Two Dogmas,” and selections from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are all classics which are difficult but accessible to undergraduates. I think they’re intensely interesting, but they may find some of them rather dry. If they are not so thick-skinned, the Investigations stand on their own.

I think Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” is a great paper and is accessible, albeit difficult.

Not much of a philosophy book but I'm reading Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Really fascinating read--I adore his focus on archetypes, chaos and potential, and the importance of avoiding nihilism at all costs. I don't agree with everything he says, and I often think he may be philosophically confused on some issues, but I find a lot of what he says and writes interesting. Being a psychologist, his advice has also greatly helped me with some anxiety issues.

Greg wrote:

Proclus wrote:

(I've still got some blank days at the end of the semester for contemporary analytic philosophy, so if anyone has any suggestions for essential essays (20–30 pages) suitable for juniors and seniors, I'd love to hear them.)

Anything more determinate you’re looking for? Do you just want papers that are good essays, in our view, or do you want papers that are representative of analytic philosophy?

If the latter, Frege’s “On Sense and Reference” (perhaps also “Function and Concept” and “Concept and Object”), Russell’s “On Denoting,” Quine’s “Two Dogmas,” and selections from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are all classics which are difficult but accessible to undergraduates. I think they’re intensely interesting, but they may find some of them rather dry. If they are not so thick-skinned, the Investigations stand on their own.

I think Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” is a great paper and is accessible, albeit difficult.

Thank you for the suggestions.  I'm mainly looking for papers that are representative, but since there is no way to capture everything in a semester, I've given up on being truly representative and selected some things that I simply think would be fun to read.  The Quine and the Anscombe suggestions were already on my list of potentials, so I'll definitely do those.
 

Proclus wrote:

Thank you for the suggestions.  I'm mainly looking for papers that are representative, but since there is no way to capture everything in a semester, I've given up on being truly representative and selected some things that I simply think would be fun to read.  The Quine and the Anscombe suggestions were already on my list of potentials, so I'll definitely do those.
 

If you have space for any more, perhaps Davidson’s “Mental Events”. I’ve read a lot of Davidson lately and went back over that paper. It’s really a beautiful and creative piece of philosophy. And it brings to a head a lot of themes in analytic philosophy. And it’s pretty readable. (It may or may not be appropriate for your crowd.)