Product Description

Have you ever lain awake at night fretting over how we can be sure of the reality of the external world? Perhaps we are in fact disembodied brains, floating in vats at the whim of some deranged puppet-master? If so, you are not alone - and what's more, you are in exalted company. For this question and other ones like it have been the stuff of philosophical rumination from Plato to Popper. In a series of accessible and engagingly written essays, "50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know" introduces and explains the problems of knowledge, consciousness, identity, ethics, belief, justice and aesthetics that have engaged the attention of thinkers from the era of the ancient Greeks to the present day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2044 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

About the Author
Ben Dupre read Classics at Exeter College, Oxford before pursuing a career in reference publishing. He was Children's Reference Publisher at Oxford University Press from 1992 until 2004 and, all told, has more than 20 years' experience of bringing complex and challenging concepts to the widest possible audience.

Customer Reviews

Food for thought
This book presents the reader with 50 short and to-the-point essays on philosophy ideas. Dupre draws upon significant published works and discusses the meaning of them, also comparing the differences between older and newer studies. I found it to be well written with useful factual information, as well as specualtion on the thoughts and arguments that arise before and after a new idea is put forward. I was pleased to note that there is no hint of bias toward any particular school of thought, and empiricism, realism, dualism, naturalism, consequentialism...etc are all refered to in a relevant manner. I have little knowledge of philosophy but the essays reached out to me and I was able to understand them easily (and give them a lot of thought!). A wonderful starting point for students, beginners or anyone with a slight interest in how we think about life, the universe and everything.

Philosophy for everyone!
This brilliant book turns some of the most important (but nevertheless rather weird) ideas within Philosophy into issues of fundamental importance to everyday life. The first philosophy idea (Are you a brain in a vat?) links the 1641 Meditations of Descartes with the 1999 movie The Matrix; idea 23 asks whether it is morally bad to be unlucky.

The writer explains philosophy simply and makes it important. I think this book is brilliant. I've given it to loads of my friends and bought the others in the series too!

Western philosophy for the uninitiated
A fascinating - and more to the point, enjoyable - collection of 50 essays, each spanning 4 pages and accompanied with various sidepanels, quotations and notes. From slippery slopes to the prisoner's dilemma, from the cosmological argument to animal rights, Dupré brings a welcome clarity to questions that we should all care about. If you're looking for an accessible introduction to the ideas of Plato, Descartes, Hume and other influential thinkers throughout history, and if you don't know your consequentialist from your deontologist, this is a superb starting point.