Product Description

In the revised and updated edition of this classic introductory text, Martin Hollis leads his readers through the age–old philosophical questions of free choice and human nature, appearance and reality, reason and experience.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73616 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
"A wonderful introduction to the subject for both the general reader and the beginning student, and will be read with profit and pleasure by those more seasoned in the discipline." Time Higher Education Supplement (of the first edition)

"This book is witty, wide–ranging, punchy, and engrossing. It could not fail to ignite the thoughts of those with even the faintest philosophical spark in them." Journal of Applied Philosophy (of the first edition)

From the Back Cover
In the revised and updated edition of this classic introductory text, Martin Hollis leads his readers through the age–old philosophical questions of free choice and human nature, appearance and reality, reason and experience, and to newer ones of rationality and morality, other minds and inner selves, and the relation between the natural and human worlds.

Using theories and examples ranging from Plato, Descartes, Hume and Kant to T. S. Eliot and Sherlock Holmes, the author paints a delightfully vivid picture of the discipline that is a perfect start for students beginning courses in philosophy or for anyone meeting the subject for the first time.

About the Author
Martin Hollis is Professor at the School of Economic and Social Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is author of numerous publications including Models of Man (1977), Philosophy of Social Science (1994) and Reason in Action (1996).

Customer Reviews

Don't read this book if you are happy to just accept
This book has, I can say with some confidence, knocked about 10% off my degree. Why? The reason is simple and straight forward, it has inspired me to start to look at the world in a new light. When I started it, I already had misgivings about Western ethics and our belief in 'Right' and 'Wrong'. By the time I finished it, my doubts had been made far deeper and a whole range of new questions - many of them somewhat unanswerable - had been opened up.

Mr Hollis does not pretend to be able to squeeze the whole corpus of philosophy into one book, instead he briefly examines some aspects of several fundamentals. I found the book riveting, it challenges the privileged position of science in the western World: it explores ideas of logic and the processes of thinking, and it does so in a way that I, by no stretch of the imagination a genius, found accessible but always challenging. Whether, like me, you finish it then read bits again and forthwith start buying and borrowing philosophy books wholly unconnected with my degree (in as much as anything is unconnected to the study of the mind and the purposes, unwritten rules, assumptions and presumptions of existence).

Joking apart, I would recommend this book to anyone who feels that science, religion and society do not, of themselves, constitute a reason for anything, and wishes to look more deeply.