Principia Mathematica
This month I was forced to discharge some books from my apartment. Using a Facebook group that I belong to called Motainai Japan (meaning something like “don’t waste anything”) I advertised my books for free - I mean as free giveaways. That’s what Motainai Japan is - a group for giving away stuff. Typically, people are moving house, or returning to their countries and they want to discharge things like books, furniture, DVDs, household appliances, baby toys, and clothes. Alternatively, some people are just arriving in Japan and looking for furniture, books, etc. for their homes. I managed to redistribute about eighty hardcover books (including a 20-volume set of encyclopedias).
On August 5th I advertised (and quickly disposed of) my Principia Mathematica. I included the following photographs with my description:
For mathematicians, philosophers, historians and book collectors. One of the most important books of modern times.
Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, in three volumes (Cambridge University, 1950). Good condition.
In volume one they take almost 700 pages to prove the proposition that 1 + 1 = 2, and then announce that it is "a very useful proposition." It's the mathematical foundation of philosophical logic and a foundational text of the logical-positivist, or logical-empiricist school of philosophy.
Excellent for first date conversation!
I consider the Principia (1910 - 1913) to be one of the most important books of the modern world. Included in that list I place such things as Walter Rauschenbusch’s A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1923), Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943), Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), Karl Barthes Church Dogmatics (1932 – 1967), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963).
My list is what I consider important books, as opposed to influential ones - like Mein Kampf, or Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, and I’m not including works of fiction like 1984, Nausea, The Stranger, or To Kill a Mockingbird. At one time or another I’ve had all of these works in my library, and I even read (most of) them, too.