For undergraduate Introduction to Philosophy courses. The most widely-adopted introduction to philosophy text for more than two decades, this classic text introduces the major fields, problems, theories, and personalities of philosophy through the biographies and writing of leading thinkers.
Robert Paul Wolff was an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wolff has written widely on topics in political philosophy, including Marxism, tolerance (against liberalism and in favor of anarchism), political justification, and democracy.
A solid intro to Philosophy. It introduced me to all of the basic subfields and their major contributors. One thing I was increasingly frustrated by was that (though not directly a fault of the author) all of the “worthwhile” philosophical thinking has been done by OLD WHITE MEN. I’m kind of tired of that. They definitely do have profound ideas about all sorts of everything—social justice, ethics, epistemology, art, being. But aren’t we limiting our horizon by only reading the thoughts of those who have been in power? That in mind, this book was liberal for its time. I think it was written in like the 70s. I read it, in spite of its antiquity, because it was my dads intro philosophy textbook. If we hope to understand our society and its problems today, it might help to know a bit about the societies and their problems then, for what is today but a subsequent iteration of yesterdays?