Jay Stevenson PhD - Philosophy

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize theres no such thinghow could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone to understand everything there is to know. So when you come across a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you know better.

You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one, and youre okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just the next thing. You know what you dont know, youre confident enough to admit it, and youre motivated to do something about it.

At Idiots Guides, we, too, know what we dont know, and we make it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work, asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible way possible.

After all, thats our promiseto make whatever you want to learn As Easy as It Gets. That means giving you a well-organized design that seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic. It means controlling the pace youre asked to absorb new informationnot too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It means giving you a clear progression from easy to more difficult. It means giving you more instructional steps wherever necessary to really explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more illustrations wherever its better to show rather than tell.

So here you are, at the start of something new. The next chapter in your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but youve been here before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end of this book, you wont be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little less complicated than it was before. And well be sure your journey is as easy as it gets.

Mike Sanders
Publisher, Idiots Guides

ALPHA BOOKS

Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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International Standard Book Number: 978-1-61564-537-4
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013956272

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Publisher:Mike Sanders

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Introduction

To me, philosophy is not only the most interesting field to think about, it is also something thats great to think with. Once youve got a good philosophical concept in your head, you can start to see ways of using it all over the place, and you begin to see how it ties in with other concepts with which youre already familiar.

Learning philosophy, in other words, is something like installing new software in your brain. This software can give you new ways of thinking whole new ideas about what thinking is as well as new things to think about. But all software, like any other technology, changes and develops over time. Idiots Guides: Philosophy, Fourth Edition, outlines the most famous developments, right up to the presentthe ones most people interested in philosophy find most intriguing and important.

, The Basics of Philosophy, gives you a general sense of what philosophy is, breaking the subject down into the three main areas: being, knowing, and acting.

, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, describes the origins of philosophy in ancient Greece and outlines its development in the thinking of the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Hellenistic philosophers, and the Christian philosophers of Europe during the ancient and medieval periods.