The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained - Explore History's Greatest Thinkers & Concepts | Perfect for Students, Educators & Philosophy Enthusiasts

Although I can’t speak to the nature of the e-book on any device, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained is a very entertaining introduction to various historically significant philosophical minds. It includes images as well as a light amount of biographical information which is important for gathering the context through which these people were developing their thoughts. The intention of the book is be an overview of an entire subject since its inception in ancient times, so personally I find it difficult to fault for being brief considering how much content it aims to tackle. The segregation of time from section to section is fine given, once again, what a large time-span the book seeks to cover. In addition, this book is tailored to be appealing to youths who probably aren’t yet enabled to take a formalized philosophy course so there’s little cause to make it hyper-informative of individuals or get into the weeds of specific time periods. It is not a history book after all. If someone wants to learn more about a specific philosopher’s ideas this book provides a litany of paths to go down and without a publishing like this, it’s hard to have a significant awareness of the breadth of what is out there.However, there are some things it seems like the book could benefit from. Dedicated passages describing concepts of empiricism and rationalism would be a big plus since a lot of philosophers consider themselves to be decidedly one or the other. Without defining these terms the book’s intended audience, being people who are potentially reading their first book about philosophy, might come to feel like they were in the dark if they learn these things later. As well as this a page or two dedicated to the various formations of logic-based arguments you can make would have been instructive since that is where most meaningful philosophical dialogue is derived from. One more thing that may have been worthwhile would be a page indicating the various ethical theories in brief definition and who was able to first formally publish works regarding them such as utilitarianism, feminism, Kantian ethics, etc. It also needs to detail that although science does explain many things about the universe it cannot begin to explain everything, such as life after death or the nature of “God”. This is especially relevant to any of the stoic philosophers since their conception of God was pantheistic and radically different to any sort of self-centered human looking creation that many people today are inclined to conceptualize it as.All things considered the book is highly informative and more than intriguing enough to get someone more interested in the original subject. It could use more expansive discussion of what many of the cornerstones of basic philosophy courses are. It also quite crudely brushes by conceptions of “God” and takes no time describing the basics of forming an argument. I still am giving it the highest rating just because the interest it generates overwhelms all other deficiencies in it, especially given most people don’t receive a philosophy class in high-school and in terms of daily life it’s definitely critical to be able to contemplate things on a deeper level.