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 | | About Philosophy (8th Edition) by Robert Paul Wolff ISBN-10: 0130853933 ISBN-10: 0-13-085393-3 ISBN-13: 9780130853936 ISBN-13: 978-0-13-085393-6 Hardcover 1999-12-16 Prentice Hall Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description This classic introduction to philosophy explores the major fields, problems, theories, and personalities of philosophy through the biographies and writing of leading thinkers. Contemporary Applications sections in each chapter show how classic philosophy connects to contemporary issues. Each chapter begins with a biography of a great philosopher, combines simple, clear explanations with short selections from classic texts, and focuses on WHAT the great philosophers said, and WHY they said it. Theory of Knowledge. Philosophy of Science. Ethical Theory. The Ethical Dimensions of Medicine. Social and Political Philosophy. Philosophy of Art. Philosophy of Religion. For anyone interested in Philosophy. | ||
Reviews | ||
Terrible Text Book for a Beginner This is one of the worst text books I have ever had to read and try to understand. Used this text for an online class -- tough subject to figure out on one's own and the text, laden with the author's opinion and stories, made it difficult to weed out what was important and what was crap. I had to use a different, older Philosophy text book as a guide to understand what Wolf was trying to convey in this text. I thouht I was going to enjoy philosophy--I'm counting the days until I don't have to open this book ever again! | ||
gooses review This book will teach you nothing about philosophy. I would have given this book a negative star review but thats not an option on this grading scale. The most common theme in this book is telling you how philosophers work. they tell you a step by step processes that are oversimplified and can be combined to make less steps or in some cases one step. what is important in philosophy is what the questions are then what the suggested answers are and finally how to understand how to come to the suggested answer. I would reccomend a book called sophies world which is advertised as a story ( that is really boring ) but is actually a text book that does what I suggested earlier. if you can force yourself to read through sophies world you will actually learn something about philosophy. Anyone who reads this book will notice there is a lot of information that was just added in to make the textbook long enough to be considered a text book. one example is how the book tells us that platos written work is considered a philosophical work as opposed to a work of art. wow how important. another problem is the definition format. instead of explaining a philosophical aspect they just waste the readers time an example of this is aristotles term catharsis which is "a cleansing or purging" the book could have just stated that some people feel plays arouse emotions while others feel they purge emotions and then explained the argument behind both views. | ||
A Professor's Perspective Wolff's perennial textbook, now in its eighth edition, has faults. This is a given for any book or other work in the print medium, and, for that matter, for any human artifact. Nevertheless, after teaching philosophy for thirty-six years using everything from classic sources to newspapers to novels as texts, I have settled on Wolff's About Philosophy as the best means for introducting the most diverse of all academic disciplines. Naturally, the book reflects the author's interests and preferences, although these are never presented as truths above debate. In fact, Wolff reveals his willingness to revise his own traditional, Western preferences for rationality-based theoretical constructs devised (virtually solely) by those of the male gender. Objectivity, too, comes up for careful scrutiny and, ultimately, rejection as an appropriate property of an acceptable philosophical theory. In the end, About Philosophy is both a highly personal, and yet, a highly accurate documentation of 2500 years of philosophical speculation and research. Its faults may include that, in spite of its thoroughness and clarity, it does not summarize the views of every philosopher and movement in the Western tradition. No volume, introductory or not, could accomplish this, but the ideas selected by Wolff are clearly among the germinal springboards for the entirety of Western Civilization. | ||
Student from NY I give such a high rating to cancel out the overly critical opinions of the two other reviews. This book is fine introduction to Western Philosophy with all of the major topics discussed in detail in a way that is very approachable to the beginner with good citations of the major work of each philosopher where appropriate. The others reviewing might suggest their own idea for a text book since they understand so much better than the auther the proper way to teach philosophy to the beginner. | ||
The author is way too opinionated to get anything across. This is the philosophy textbook that we're using in my Philosophy 101 class... and it's driving me nuts. The author finds a 'favorite philosopher' for each chapter, which is completely annoying if you wish to have any opinion of your own about western philosophy. The information might be complete, but it's extremely difficult trying to cut through the author's views in order to get to that information. The completely unsubtle partiality makes it difficult to learn anything concrete from this book. | ||