An Introduction to Philosophy

I know 2 people who have studied philosophy and one who is a professional. One said that the book was excellent and this book is a present for my other friend.I started to read it and was surprised how easy it was to take in being a complete novice but interested in the subject.I recommend this book which is beautifully bound and of very good quality.

This is a remarkably succinct and interesting overview of a huge subject. It is organised so that you can read it from page 1 to 468 or check out a specific topic. The writing is lively and engaging. I found the whole book interesting and will return to it.

For the uninitiated philosophy can seem daunting, with its own terminology and diverse perspectives. Stephen's book carefully explains the basics and provides enough information about its history and key protagonists to give a useful oversight.I will be using this book for reference purposes because its structure and language is easy to navigate and understand. I particularly enjoyed part two where the potted history of philosophers was fascinating. There were many I had heard of but knew little about and Stephen has provided enough information from which to follow up if required for a deeper dive.Thank you Stephen for making philosophy understandable.

Stephen’s book is positioned perfectly at the right level of sophistication and readability for most readers interested in philosophy. It covers a wide range of topics and the historical timeline spanning several millennia of philosophical thought is particularly interesting.I found it useful to be able to delve into the details about the philosophers I was interested in to start off with, and then continued to read about the others at a later date.I was always interested in the Eastern philosophies, and the book gave me fascinating insight into the subject and encouraged me to read more about them.The Part four of the book was very interesting – it covers numerous areas that I did not think of as being ‘philosophy’, but the author makes the connections between these topics and the ‘philosophical thought’ well.This is a book that should be on a shortlist of anybody interested in history and evolution of philosophical thought, presented in an easily readable manner. Useful bibliography provides further reading list to those wishing to pursue more academic coverage of some of the topics. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book.

This book does exactly what it says on the back cover. It’s a very clear introduction to, what is often regarded as, a difficult subject. I did a module in philosophy as part of my university course, and I wish I’d had this book with me then. As well as covering all the main Western philosophers (and some Eastern ones), chapters 1 and 6 provide very useful definitions of many of the terms used in philosophy, so, when reading the book, one can keep referring to these until the concepts become familiar. Also, chapter 5 provides a fascinating list of logical fallacies that people might fall for when trying to think rationally.The book is well written and would be easily understandable to anyone interested in the subject. I especially liked section 4, which covers the two-way interaction between science and philosophy. I thoroughly recommend the book, it made me think, and it stimulated me to find out more about the philosophers and philosophies covered.