The Classics of Western Philosophy: A Reader's Guide

by Jorge J.E. Gracia (Editor), Gregory M. Reichberg (Editor), Bernard N. Schumacher (Editor)

The Classics of Western Philosophy brings together 61 newly-commissioned essays on classic texts ranging from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. Surveying the history of philosophy, the book focuses on historical texts rather than historical figures and covers the entire range of classics in a single volume.

Genres: Philosophy

638 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2003

About the author

Jorge J.E. Gracia is the Samuel P. Capen Chair, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Comparative Literature in the State University of New York at Buffalo.

His areas of specialization include Metaphysics/Ontology, Philosophical Historiography, Philosophy of Language/Hermeneutics, Ethnicity/Race/Nationality Issues, Hispanic/Latino Issues, Medieval/Scholastic Philosophy and Hispanic/Latino/Latin-American Philosophy. While Gracia's earlier work was primarily in the areas of Medieval Philosophy and Metaphysics, much of his recent work has focused on issues of race, ethnicity and identity. His contributions to the philosophical study of race and ethnicity have been groundbreaking. It is within this area that Gracia proposed his familial-historical view of ethnicity and his genetic common-bundle view of race. These views of race and ethnicity have helped to shape the field and addressed many issues that previous theories had left unanswered.

Reviews

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most in-depth compilation of essays which explore varied philosophical themes from ancient Greece to the twentieth century, this is an excellent companion to an introductory philosophy course...

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book may be a good companion to an introductory philosophy class, but it's not a great stand-alone book. The contents are just essays about famous philosophers' famous essays; those original essays are not included, but merely referenced and sometimes briefly quoted. It's like a (very large) Cliffs Notes of Philosophy.

This could be a good companion to original texts; it could be good if you don't want/need to read the original texts; it just wasn't for me.

Initially I felt like I was missing something when reading; (as you can see by the struck-out text above) I wanted this to include the original texts. After reading a few more essays, though, I started to be okay with it. I think maybe because most of the first few essays were about texts that I remember well from reading in college, it seemed like something was missing, like the essay authors weren't getting the full essence of the original works. However, once I got beyond the works I knew well, I felt less cheated by the essays.

So then, I'll still say that this is like a (very large) Cliffs Notes of Philosophy, but not in a negative way. I now think it works both as a companion to the original texts, with possibly a philosophy teacher guiding the reader, but also as a stand-alone text to give the reader generally good overviews of philosophical works (although, sometimes the essays went over my head, too).