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A Little History Of Philosophy (2011)

by Nigel Warburton(Favorite Author)
4.06 of 5 Votes: 1
ISBN
0300152086 (ISBN13: 9780300152081)
languge
English
publisher
Yale University Press
review 1: Awesome introduction to philosophy. 40 chapters of 5~7 pages of a biography of a philosopher or two. I had no idea what philosophy is even about before reading the book but now I have a general idea about philosophy and many philosophers and got excited to start reading books of some philosophers and take it from there. Easy-read and liked author's way of connecting consecutive biographies by showing how next philosopher ideas are building (or destroying) the previous one.
review 2: I loved "A Little History of the World" (by a different author) but this book didn't measure up. I think that Philosophy doesn't necessarily lend itself well to being presented in a "history" format: forty important philosophers and their views, one per chapter. This book would have
... more been more interesting and better structured if it had been organized around ideas, rather than people. Trying to cover so much, so piecemeal, in such a small volume, led to me feeling like the book glossed over the truly important ideas and never went deep enough to get me actually pondering. That being said, I did learn a lot and come away wanting to dive in a little bit deeper, so it wasn't a total waste. One other random thing I didn't like about the book is the author's subtle bias against religion - when a huge portion of the book was devoted to thinking about religion and Christianity, it was off-putting not to have the material presented in an unbiased way. less
Reviews (see all)
ocean121
Great book if you are trying to understand more about philosophy and completely easy to understand!
ivanavi
Great little fly through almost two and a half thousand years of philosophical thought.
a_mac
A brilliant way of explaining Western philosophy to the uninitiated.
SummerFairy
Amazing!
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