Photo Credit: UCSB Philosophy Department, http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~huizenga/Classes.html
I've read a good amount of philosophy over the course of my career as a student. In the early stages, some readings made me anxious because they rose questions that my mind: couldn't answer, was afraid of, or was unable to process. That is my guess at least. Nietzsche contributed the most to this, but I'm not sure how I feel about him yet. I'll probably know better in January, after I've gotten around to reading "On the Genealogy of Morals", because I place heavy weight on morality. Anyway, I've also read a lot of political science (I'm majoring in political science) and remember that after I read "The Prince" by Machiavelli I was surprised at the extent that Machiavelli came through in Tupac's lyrics.
I don't know how many people that read political science regularly associate with Hip-Hop culture too, but I enjoy reading it a lot, especially political theory. One book that I'm reading right now, and greatly enjoy is Alexis de Tocqueville's "On Democracy in America". Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who came over to the United States in the 1830s and wrote a book about what he observed while being here. He talks about all sorts of things in his book as some of the chapter titles make clear, "Why American Peoples Show a More Ardent and More Lasting Love for Equality than for Freedom" or, "How the Excessive Love of Well-Being Can Be Harmful to Well-Being".
One might be quick to point out that this study of America is not applicable today because so many things have changed since then, and in 1830 slavery still existed in the US. Tocqueville realized this "shortcoming" and focused his study in areas where slavery was illegal, like in the North. (Tocqueville means a social equality not a system of voting when he says Democracy.) Furthermore, Tocqueville was writing as a friend of democracy, so while he pointed out the advantages of it, he also criticized it in hopes that democratic peoples would avoid problems that Tocqueville believed would arise with democracy.
Here are a couple of quotes that I really enjoyed...
Vl. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 15-Talking about religious believes and Americans going to church and reading holy text- "...Thus at times the American in a way steals away from himself, and as he is torn away for a moment from the small passions that agitate his life and the passing interests that fill it, he at once enters into an ideal world in which all is great, pure, eternal."
Vl. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 11-Talking about how Americans cultivate the arts, a chapter in which I saw many comments that are applicable to Hip-Hop culture today, an art form born out of (in part) democracy, you decide- "...[the worker or artist] strives to invent processes that permit him to work not only better, but more quickly and with less cost, and if he cannot succeed at this, to diminish the intrinsic qualities of the thing he makes without rendering it entirely unfit for the use for which it is destined. When it was only the rich who had watches, they were almost all excellent. Scarcely any but mediocre ones are made any longer, but everyone has one. Thus, democracy not only tends to direct the human mind toward the useful arts, it beings artisans to make many imperfect things very rapidly, and the consumer to content himself with these things."
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226805360/104-7755750-5213519?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
