| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Philosophy for Beginners for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How do you know who is a philosopher?,
By Kurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (London, SW1) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Philosophy for Beginners (A Writers & Readers beginners documentary comic book) (Paperback)
This book by Osborne is an interesting brief introduction to the course of Western philosophy over the past 2500 years. It does not directly involve non-Western philosophies; a simple look at the introduction will show the standard progression of names and ideas from the pre-Socratic Greeks through the philosophers of the classical age, to Christendom, then Enlightenment, post-Enlightentment through to modern thinkers whose names often adorned the faculty lists of Western institutions as much as their names dominate the philosophy coursework today. However, on occasion as historical reality might require, there is a discussion of other cultures. For example, Osborne mentions both the Tang dynasty of China and the rising Muslim empire as both being more advanced than Christendom during the period around 1000. Of course, much of what is considered 'philosophy' outside of the Western framework is often more of a spirituality or mystical task than one that is properly philosophical. On the other hand, Osborne tries to define philosophy in the first few pages, with the help of Plato, Gramsci, Marx, and Russell, and comes to a sort of non-conclusion. Osborne's sense of humour, well established in this book, starts here, by his play with the idea that whereas Plato though philosophers should rule the world to set everything to rights, other philosophers speak of the meaninglessness of everything, which would leave one with no content or ideas, which would make ruling rather difficult. One of the drawbacks of this text is that it does not have the time or space to go in much depth on any of the topics represented. This is more or less a who's who of philosophy, giving some basic outlines of their thinking and showing in broad strokes the general trends of philosophy over time. I cannot really speak to how I would understand philosophy using this as an early text, as I came to it after some considerable philosophical education, but my impression is that it might leave a rather thin understanding in many areas. Fortunately, Osborne provides a bibliography, both of basic survey texts and of more advanced primary texts and studies. I'd like to see more done with this. Osborne does often refer to the primary texts in the narrative stories of the philosophers so that readers will become acquainted with them. Hopefully this will prove a motivation for further reading. There is a subtle (occasionally not-so-subtle) anti-Christian and anti-religious bias in the book. When discussing the fate of Hypatia, a deplorable event no matter who carried it out, he ascribes the blame not to the particular people involved, but with an off-the-cuff remark slams the whole of Christianity. Similarly, he offers Bertrand Russell's quote about philosophy being a no-man's land between theology and science, embattled from each side; odd how many theologians feel theology is embattled between science and philosophy -- I did note as well that there are no pointedly anti-scientific jabs the way there are against religion. This is a rather minor criticism, however, and probably one that most people wouldn't notice too greatly. It is true that the church and freedom of inquiry has not always been synonymous (to say the least) but there are better ways of approaching the issue. The presentation is an attempt, largely successful, to render into an interesting format a topic that frightens or bores many people today. Why is philosophy irrelevant to most? Again, this is a good question, asked at the beginning, and difficult to answer. This probably needs to answered by each reader for herself or himself; hopefully the reader will make it all the way through the book. It also asks the question, how can you tell if someone is a philosopher. Of course, you can always accept the answer of Gramsci -- we all are, to a certain degree. I've read several books in the 'For Beginners' series. They are often used in graduate and undergraduate classes to help people ease their way into difficult subjects. This, as a history of philosophy, is a fairly good text.
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
an excellent beginning,
This review is from: Philosophy for Beginners (A Writers & Readers beginners documentary comic book) (Paperback)
This book serves as an excellent resource to familiarize yourself with the great thinkers.It's easy to read and laid out well, providing a student to the subject, easy reference.The basics are so well explained that you will have no trouble in selecting further reading material to deepen your knowledge.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful,
By MandP (Solihull, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Philosophy for Beginners (Paperback)
I bought this book for my son who is currently unemployed but looking to keep improving himself. He finds this book very well thought out with information given in small chunks but which does not come across in a 'dumb down' way. He has learned quite a lot for the first book on a subject he wanted to know more about. He will certainly be wanting to expand the knowledge he has already gained!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
