I’m well qualified to give an opinion of this beginner’s primer in the history of philosophy. I know very little, apart from many of the philosopher’s names and one or two of the paradoxes, philosophical illustrations or scenarios.
My opinion is, save your money and don't buy this book. Unlike secondhand car salesmen (at least in Spain) who are legally bound to return your money for a known but undisclosed defect, the publisher Simon & Schuster will not. To add salt to the wound, the back cover says:
‘Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy theories, principles, and figures of philosophy into tedious discourse that even Plato would reject. Philosophy 101 cuts out the boring details and exhausting philosophical methodology and instead gives you a lesson in philosophy that keeps you engaged … ‘
It doesn’t. This is a very tedious discourse.
Nominally, the author, Paul Kleinman, sounds like a mid-twentieth-century existentialist, but I believe the only skill he’s brought to writing this book is summarisation, though on this occasion it hasn't been successful. Though it's a feat of technical virtuosity to pack not just the history of philosophy, but that of science, religion and Eastern philosophy (though these three are treated with too much brevity at the end of the book) into 284 pages, he's not only reduced the quantity of required text but unfortunately much of the meaning as well.
A mastery of his subject and the ability to write creatively may have overcome such a severe pruning but the writing is unstructured, uninspired and lacks the ability to explain complex ideas. It seems it was written by someone not fully conversant about what they were writing about since what is removed obliterates the meaning of what remains, and so what remains is barely understandable. This makes it dull, uninteresting and a difficult read for the beginner. It needed a lighter touch: this book would put off many from further reading.
Much of the meaning is obscured because a lot of the philosophical terminology remains unexplained: one would need to return to a fuller description of the philosophy in question, defeating a primer's purpose. For example, none of the terms in the following passage are described clearly.
‘Entities within nominalism about propositions can be broken into two categories: unstructured and structured. Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds. Within these worlds, functions have the value of True (arguing the proposition is true) and the value of False (arguing the proposition is false).’
I was lost, and this passage is typical of much of the book.
Many have criticised the lack of chronological order. I don’t think this is necessarily a problem. There is indeed a complete lack of structure and though chronological order would have resolved that, there could have been many other interesting ways to order the book. For example, those philosophies that believed in a God and those that didn’t; those that believed in the importance of internal thought and those that believed in the influence of nature; those that were political and those that weren't; those that believed in empirical data and those that believed in a priori knowledge, etc., etc.
For me, the writer seemed not to grasp the fundamentals, was unable to order his thoughts and truly seemed bored by the whole effort of putting this sorry book together.
Shame on you Simon & Schuster.