Product Description

Philosophy Made Simple will be of particular interest to students beginning degree courses in philosophy and to those who are studying it as an ancillary subject within courses such as sociology, education, linguistics, theology and psychology. It will,
in addition, be useful for a variety of liberal arts courses in adult education. The book also provides a valuable basis for an introductory self-study course. Avrum Stroll is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, USA.
Richard H. Popkin is presently Professor Emeritus, Washington University, St Louis and Adjunct Professor, History and Philosophy at UCLA, USA.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280731 in Books
• Published on: 1993-06-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

Customer Reviews

A solid introduction...
I have always been a fan of the Made Simple series, having from secondary school to the present relied on them for basic overviews and introductions to material I might not otherwise study yet wanted to know in broad strokes. Philosophy is one of the fields in which my education continued in some depth (particularly in regards to those fields that relate closely to theology), and yet for over 20 years, this text, 'Philosophy Made Simple', has remained on my shelf as a well-used ready reference.

The book is a collaboration between two authors, Richard Popkin and Avrum Stroll; they each wrote roughly half the book. The book is arranged topically, according to the following topics:

Ethics (Stroll)
Political Philosophy (Stroll)
Metaphysics (Popkin)
Philosophy of Religion (Popkin)
Theory of Knowledge (Popkin)
Logic (Stroll)
Contemporary Philosophy (Popkin and Stroll)

The largest, and perhaps most interesting, section is Contemporary Philosophy. This is subdivided into pieces dealing largely with Pragmatism, Existentialism, and Philosophical Analysis.

Within each section, the pattern of discussion generally proceeds historically, from the pre-Socratics or Greek classics to the present. Ethics, for example, begins with classical theories of ethics dealt with by Plato and Aristotle, and proceeds through the various Greek schools (Hedonism, Cynicism, Stoicism), to philosophical Christian ethics, to Spinoza, Utilitarianism, Kant, then finally more modern ideas of subjectivism and objectivism, natualism and the like. Some topics begin more recently (Philosophy of Religion begins with Hume, for example; Epistemology begins with Descartes, but circles back to earlier ideas).

The topic on Logic looks as both philosophical ideas as well as general tools for applying logical analysis. However, this does not serve as a logical 'mechanics' primer, and apart from the very basic ideas of logic, the scope of this book is too much a survey to get into much depth.

The last section, on Contemporary Philosophy, deals with philosophy of the past 100 to 150 years. It begins with William James, and proceeds through to Dewey, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and other people and topics of current interest. Philosophy is a slow-moving discipline in comparison to science and technology-driven fields, yet there is room for further developments that this text misses. On the other hand, it is hard to account for the whole of current philosophical discourse, for it is often only after a passage of time and analysis that the crucial ideas and development are recognised in hindsight.

As the authors state in their introduction, almost all of us have philosophical ideas, even if we don't really know it or call these thoughts philosophical. It is important to that all members of a society have an idea about the functioning of that society. This text is a basic, accessible overview of the key ideas of philosophy, and will serve those in any field, even the beginning philosophy and theology student, well as a guide and reference.

A gentle introduction to the subject
I wanted an introduction to Philosophy suitable for an English/History undergraduate. This turned out to be just what I was looking for - a gentle introduction to the subject, with key concepts clearly identified within the text. It is better than any "idiots" or "dummies" guide because it treats the reader as an intelligent person, not as a dummy or an idiot. If you want to know more about philosophical concepts, I would recommend this book without hesitation.

so good!!
This is a really fantastic book for the self study of philosophy. It takes you through the main topics very clearly and then suggests other books for you to study certain areas of philosophy more closely.