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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy (2nd Edition) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jay Stevenson
Publisher: Alpha
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy Used: $1.30
You Save: $17.65 (93%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 499471
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0028643380
Dewey Decimal Number: 100
UPC: 021898643384
EAN: 9780028643380
ASIN: 0028643380
Publication Date: February 7, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
You're no idiot, of course. You think about your home, your family, and how to get to the office on time. But when it comes to understanding what life is all about, you don't know your Plato from your Kierkegaard. Don't stop seeking the answers! The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy shows you how the ideas of the world's great thinkers can help you make sense of your own reality as we head toward the twenty-first century. In this Complete Idiot's Guide, you get:
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Helpful for beginners August 3, 2008
I love Philosophy and can't get enough of learning about it. This book is good for newbies to the subject and will give you an overall idea about many of the ideas of philosophy.
 Find something else March 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I did not like this book at all. I would not even say buy it used and throw it away. The explanations are not clear, I found I could not learn anything about philosophy with it at all - which was the reason why I bought it.
 Kindle owners beware January 18, 2008
Note that despite implications to the contrary, the Kindle version will not be the same as the paperback version sold through Amazon. The paper version is Third Ed, 2005. The Kindle version is Second Ed, 2002.
 A funny introduction to philosophy May 29, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
My wife is a philosophy teacher and she enjoys with the book because give a new point of view to introduce her Highschool students in these themes. maybe it's not a textbook, but it's more friendly and funny.
A guide for the perplexed April 11, 2006
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
Philosophy is the attempt to enhance the traits we deem desirable and suppress the traits we deem unwanted (a matter of judgment) by getting better acquainted with the world around us (a matter of reality). An improvement in the world around us inevitably follows.Test
To qualify as a philosophical theory, the practitioner of philosophy - the philosopher - must, therefore meet a few tests:
1. To clearly define and enumerate the traits he seeks to enhance (or suppress) and to lucidly and unambiguously describe his ideal of the world
2. Not to fail the tests of every scientific theory (internal and external consistency, falsifiability, possessed of explanatory and predictive powers, etc.)
These are mutually exclusive demands. Reality - even merely the intersubjective sort - does not yield to value judgments. Ideals, by definition, are unreal. Consequently, philosophy uneasily treads the ever-thinning lines separating it, on the one hand, from physics and, on the other hand, from religion.
The history of philosophy is the tale of attempts - mostly botched - to square this obstinate circle. In their desperate struggle to find meaning, philosophers resorted to increasingly arcane vocabularies and obscure systems of thought. It did nothing to endear it to the man (and reader) in the post-Socratic agora.
Enter "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy (Third Edition)" by Jay Stevenson, Ph.D. (Alpha Books).
It is a delightful and structured excursion into the terrain more convolutedly trodden by "Sophie's World". It is a vade mecum in the true sense of the word. It gently holds you by the hand and unflinchingly introduces you to the one intellectual giant after another.
The author knows how intimidating philosophy can be. He, therefore, avoids professional jargon. He talks to the reader, rather than talk at him. The text is peppered with brief insets titled "philoso-facts", "wisdom at work" (how to apply what you have learned), "reality check" (where philosophers disagree with each other and with reality), and "lexicon". Two appendices comprise a glossary and further reading.
The book is an amazing feat. It covers all the major schools of thoughts and philosophers in c. 350 eminently readable pages. New chapters provide extended coverage of the latest developments in post-structuralism and post-modernism.
If this book does not make you fall in love with this tortured discipline - nothing will. Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
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