>>24789322 (OP)
Exquisite taste. I would say:
>Saint Maximus the Confessor - Centuries on Theology and Centuries on Love
>Plato - Phaedrus and Symposium (but honorable mention to the Alcibades, even if he didn't write it, Republic, and Apology)
>Boethius' - The Consolation of Philosophy
>D.C. Schindler - Freedom From Reality: The Diabolical Nature of Modern Liberty (best genealogy on modernity, although the second volume on freedom in Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, Bernard, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham is really great too).
>Dante - The Divine Comedy (actually my favorite work, but as philosophy it is mostly derivative, if a great presentation, but I also think it's very original in its understanding of history and politics)
Honorable mention to Hegel's key works and Houlgate's excellent commentary on the Logic. Hegel was the first thinker I really got into and while I eventually realized the best stuff in him is largely from earlier times, he still investigates things in a new and important way. He is a rare modern with a coherent vision of freedom, and while Dante might have history better, Hegel helped get us Solovyov and Bulgakov, who are the best on history).
Also, Robert M. Wallace's book on Plato and Hegel is really what made me "get" Plato for the first time and while I think his Hegel is perhaps not accurate to the historical Hegel, I like it far more. He also wrote a fairly accessible book focusing on the Logic, a challenge in itself, and working through that helped me get Eriugena and Saint Maximus when I got to them.
Saint Bonaventure's Mind's Journey is great too but I feel you have to be prepared for it by other stuff first. It's more of an experience after you've read a lot.
Hadot is a big influence too, his book on Plotinus being excellent. Proclus and the Book of Causes too. And of course, the Ethics.
More recently, I think Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is a wonderfully accessible book everyone should read and it helped me understand a lot having grown up in a dogmatically athiest and scienticistic household.
Currently, I'm reading Milbank's Suspended Middle and that is a great work too. Obviously, Social Theory and Theology too, but that's very dense, which is why I think Schindler and Taylor have the better genealogy.
I'll always have a soft spot for Beyond Good and Evil as my first philosophy book too, and even if Byung-Chul Han's Agony of Eros is mostly saying what trads were saying for a century, I really like that one too.
I haven't made it far into Ulrich yet, but I like everything else in OPs list.
>>24789529
Pluralism is not necessarily a virtue. Also, Ulrich is not that obscure in Catholic philosophy, which is its own large space in academic philosophy.
I rarely find philosophy that is wholly without value. The existentialists, who I dislike for many reasons, still do some stuff very well for instance. But they won't be my favorites.
