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Books Related to Western Philosophy John G. Cottingham - ISBN: 1405124784
Excellent as a collection of extracts of major works - Rated
This is an anthology of extracts from the works of some of the world's greatest philosophers from Plato & Aristotle to Aquinas, Anselm and Descartes to Locke, Hume and many many others.
This book consists of chapters arranged by theme 'Self and Freedom'; 'Morality' etc etc under which appear extracts from principle philosophical works, each dealing with that theme in their unique way. The extracts vary in length but on the whole they are not more than several pages each and have been translated in such a way as to make it accessible to readers (especially those approaching philosophy for the first time) but which remains faithful to the original text.
Each extract is preceded by a short introduction by the book's editor, the celebrated John Cottingham. These intros efficiently prepare the reader for the extract that will follow.
This book is fantastic (and essential) in the following ways:
1) It provides you with key extracts from a very wide range of philosophers and works. This saves you a great deal of time faffing in libraries and trying to scan whole works for a single passage.
2) The intros lead you into the extracts gently so that you are not cold reading.
c) It covers a wide range of philosophy from philosophy of religion to metaphysics to philosophy of morality and ethics etc.
d) If your studies require set reading of certain passages, they will be for the most part, laid out in this book ready and waiting for you - no library catalogues needed here!
The things to consider:
It does not provide an indepth critique of the extracts, it simply introduces them to you. If you think the intros are going to tell you what to look for in a passage,what the key points are, or even offer a critique then you will be disappointed. The point of this book is to introduce you to the gist of a few passages in the hope that you will get interested and turn to the actual work itself for further consideration. You will definitely need to turn to other sources for a critique of the issues raised.
Overall, I think this is an essential work for any student of philosophy and would be an excellent collection for anyone interested in philosophical thinking in general.
A Review of Western Philosophy - Rated
This book is an essential text for my university course in philosophy. It gives a very broad range of philosophers and Cottingham gives clear and useful summaries prior to each passage. Different areas of philosophy "morality and the good life", "philosophy of religion" etc are divided into different chapters containing around seven philosophers in each. In his summaries Cottingham compares and contrasts the different schools of thought, which gives some useful suggestions for criticisms to use in philosophy essays. He also makes some of the more difficult texts a lot easier to understand. It is an excellent review of Western Philosophy. I would recommend it to students and to the interested reader as it gives a very good groundwork to philosophy.
