The Bedside Book of Philosophy

by Michael Picard

From Plato to Paradoxes: Thinking through the ages.

Genres: Philosophy

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Frederick Colbey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm generally a big fan of philosophy but I didn't like how this book was written.

Too academic to be casual reading. Yet too casual to be academic reading.

Nothing was explained simply, and it made already difficult topics impossible to understand.

[John Frankham · Rating 2 out of 5]

A basic 170-page primer of the main divisions of philosophy, and their progenitors and current leading lights. Knowledge; ethics and morality; metaphysics and spirituality; logic and infinity. Exercises and puzzles make you think, but the tone and content get too unnecessarily stiff for the interested but non-specialist readership aimed-at.

[Robin Houghton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for the layman (me) and the academic. I learnt a lot from this book. It told me what I wanted to know and explained it clearly. It starts to ease you into the subject and gets deeper and more academic as you go further into the book. By two thirds in it was losing me a little as the maths concepts began to build, but by this time I had gained enough to be happy with my purchase of this book. It is a very good introduction to the subject and gives you enough information to investigate the different aspects from other sources if you so wish. It makes a good companion volume to the Bedside Book Of Paradoxes which I read prior to this. There are repetitions of some of the paradoxes covered in both books but this probably is hard to avoid as they are classic examples.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent book that is nicely written in two page bits. I found that the content got a little more difficult as I went (but logic isn't really my thing). A good book if you want to delve into philosophy a little bit at a time.