Every time a list like this shows up on HN, multiple commenters will show up to say things like this. Do you really have such a hard time believing that other people sincerely have different taste from you/the general population?
If you ask people about their favorite restaurant, some people will give you the name of a high-end steakhouse, others will say Taco Bell. This is just the reality of human difference.
It’s like when people think anyone reading in the park is pretentious and showing off - nooo, it’s just media. I like slow burns of stories, and was riveted by War and Peace just as much as the show Midnight Mass.
But on the other hand I get it, school taught me to hate reading, and it wasn’t until my late 20s that I realized that you could enjoy novels.
I’ll still never enjoy Joyce Ulysses because there’s too much context you need to know, but I get why people who do have all that context love it on a visceral level.
I've actually read close to 20 here. The only one I'd put desperately in that category is the Critique of Pure Reason. Seriously, nobody should be reading that book. Just read a summary or take a class. It is the type of brutal density that would have been much better conveyed if YouTube existed and he could have recorded his ideas as a lecture.
As much as I appreciate your attempt to put the categorical imperative into action, surely major milestones in the history of philosophy don't fall into the set of books that "nobody" should read (assuming that that is a non-empty set to begin with)?
> Just read a summary or take a class
If you take a class on Kantian philosophy, surely the teacher will have read Kant and will ask you to read some Kant?
Maybe an interested reader doesn't need to commit to reading the whole book and can dive into some selections? https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1072226-kritik-der-rei... offers some starting points. e.g. I dug into the quote on the "light dove" on archive.org, and found this following passage that I think is fantastic:
"But it is the usual fate of human reason in Speculation, to make its edifice ready as soon as possible, and then for the first time investigate, whether the foundation has been even well laid. Then all kinds of excuses are sought after in order to console us for its want of fitness, or rather indeed to avoid so late and dangerous an examination."
You cite the categorical imperative, that shows up in the Critique of Practical Reason, which I would happily suggest folks interested in philosophy.
To actually sit down an read the first Critique, though, you'll probably need to know a significant amount of background, and a lot of the conclusions on how the mind work are certainly inaccurate.
Again, the Critique of Pure Reason is (from my understanding in studying if for a year a very long time ago) a unification of empiricism and rationalism, and a rejection of idealism in a period when that was an active fight. This was a period when there were constant concerns about proving the existence of God.
Ultimately it's obviously an important book, but it's just not a very accessible book. If you take a class on it you'll likely be expected to read much of it, if not all, but to say I struggled with it is an understatement.
