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An Introduction to Philosophy
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
260 pages, Paperback
First published October 29, 2009
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March 20, 2012
This book has already sunk into relative obscurity, but I think this is a great tragedy, because it, while being completely at odds with the modern method of instruction, introduces and addresses philosophy in full and vital context.
The modern style is to, as nearly as possible, give the basic facts in a streamlined and entertaining manner. Books that include such titular phrases as "brief", "simple", "made easy", "in ten minutes", "essentials", etc., are extremely popular. What I realized in reading this book is that such approaches rob one of the natural, unforced devices of memory by which we retain occurrences of our daily lives or events of stories; they neglect the fact that things naturally exist in some surrounding context. The common style of dropping the reader immediately into a neatly arranged overview of the basic philosophies and jumping forward categorically may make them feel that they are learning a lot at a swift pace; in fact, however, this makes full retainment of information incredibly unlikely.
An Introduction to Philosophy begins with the reasons why humans create philosophies, diving into the earliest religions and customs of cultures all over the world. Because I didn't know what the fuck, I thought, "yeah yeah, where are the philosophies?" Well, they begin around page 100. The journey up to that point -- for someone who actually wants an introduction to PHILOSOPHY, and not just a bunch of names and definitions -- is indispensable. Not only is it enlightening, intelligent, wise, and objective, it's also clear and readable.
I feel that the end of the chapter on Plato's main philosophy illustrates exactly what I mean; please compare this with the typical modern philosophical text:
"We see in every problem that Plato treated his chief purpose, namely, to refute the individualistic tendencies of his times. He shows that there is something permanent in the universe for the purpose of refuting the dominant idea of change ; he shows that the chief idea is the Good for the purpose of refuting the "might-right" theory; he emphasizes the place of knowledge to show that the common people are incapable of governing themselves ; he places them in the disparaging position of occupying the lower regions below the midriff for the purpose of showing their inability of doing anything of higher value. In summary, his metaphysics, his epistemology, his psychology, and his political theory are all the outcome of definite social conditions which prevailed in his day. We may indeed think of Plato as a great lawyer who was pleading a case before the bar of man's intellect, the chief point at issue being permanence versus change, the one versus the many, the universal versus the particular. His vision in behalf of his client was world wide -- he realized that an answer involved a consideration of the fundamental problems of philosophy."
The modern style is to, as nearly as possible, give the basic facts in a streamlined and entertaining manner. Books that include such titular phrases as "brief", "simple", "made easy", "in ten minutes", "essentials", etc., are extremely popular. What I realized in reading this book is that such approaches rob one of the natural, unforced devices of memory by which we retain occurrences of our daily lives or events of stories; they neglect the fact that things naturally exist in some surrounding context. The common style of dropping the reader immediately into a neatly arranged overview of the basic philosophies and jumping forward categorically may make them feel that they are learning a lot at a swift pace; in fact, however, this makes full retainment of information incredibly unlikely.
An Introduction to Philosophy begins with the reasons why humans create philosophies, diving into the earliest religions and customs of cultures all over the world. Because I didn't know what the fuck, I thought, "yeah yeah, where are the philosophies?" Well, they begin around page 100. The journey up to that point -- for someone who actually wants an introduction to PHILOSOPHY, and not just a bunch of names and definitions -- is indispensable. Not only is it enlightening, intelligent, wise, and objective, it's also clear and readable.
I feel that the end of the chapter on Plato's main philosophy illustrates exactly what I mean; please compare this with the typical modern philosophical text:
"We see in every problem that Plato treated his chief purpose, namely, to refute the individualistic tendencies of his times. He shows that there is something permanent in the universe for the purpose of refuting the dominant idea of change ; he shows that the chief idea is the Good for the purpose of refuting the "might-right" theory; he emphasizes the place of knowledge to show that the common people are incapable of governing themselves ; he places them in the disparaging position of occupying the lower regions below the midriff for the purpose of showing their inability of doing anything of higher value. In summary, his metaphysics, his epistemology, his psychology, and his political theory are all the outcome of definite social conditions which prevailed in his day. We may indeed think of Plato as a great lawyer who was pleading a case before the bar of man's intellect, the chief point at issue being permanence versus change, the one versus the many, the universal versus the particular. His vision in behalf of his client was world wide -- he realized that an answer involved a consideration of the fundamental problems of philosophy."
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