Philosophy: a Crash Course

by Zara Bain, Adam Ferner, Nadia Mehdi

Why do philosophers ask “why”? Because they want to know. Because they love knowledge. Taken literally, philosophy is nothing more (nor less) than the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia)—and who doesn’t love wisdom? All human societies have developed systems of knowledge to help them understand our place in the universe and to satisfy our distinctively human curiosity. However, while standard histories of philosophy tend to focus on canonical figures and their “big ideas,” ideas don’t spontaneously come into existence in isolation from a context. They occur in relation to other ideas, had by other people. This book emphasises the collaborative nature of philosophy, showcasing the way that thinkers’ thoughts become intertwined, and focuses on how philosophy—even in its most abstract form—intersects with everyday concerns, integrating older philosophical discussions with newer debates.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Lisa Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book to a point. There’s so many branches to philosophy that each branch in this book was limited to one page. It wasn’t enough detail to fully understand the section, but there’s not much that could have been done about that unless the book was 1000s of pages long.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little primer on most of the main branches of philosophy, good for people who have little knowledge of philosophy and/or want to get into philosophy, but not ideal for anyone who has some intermediate knowledge - regrettable impluse buy that had a nice cover. Might be a quick easy book that's useful for spaced repetition.

[lottie pike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was literally a reference book so idk why I read it like a normal book, but it was good nevertheless! The contents were so diverse and weren't just the usual kant, hobbes, descartes etc etc. So I will defo be bringing this to uni to spice up my essays