Customer Reviews

About Philosophy with CD-ROM (9th Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Wolff's perennial textbook, now in its eighth edition, has faults. This is a given for any book or other work in the print medium, and, for that matter, for any human artifact. Nevertheless, after teaching philosophy for thirty-six years using everything from classic sources to newspapers to novels as texts, I have settled on Wolff's About Philosophy as the best means for introducting the most diverse of all academic disciplines.
Naturally, the book reflects the author's interests and preferences, although these are never presented as truths above debate. In fact, Wolff reveals his willingness to revise his own traditional, Western preferences for rationality-based theoretical constructs devised (virtually solely) by those of the male gender. Objectivity, too, comes up for careful scrutiny and, ultimately, rejection as an appropriate property of an acceptable philosophical theory.
In the end, About Philosophy is both a highly personal, and yet, a highly accurate documentation of 2500 years of philosophical speculation and research. Its faults may include that, in spite of its thoroughness and clarity, it does not summarize the views of every philosopher and movement in the Western tradition. No volume, introductory or not, could accomplish this, but the ideas selected by Wolff are clearly among the
germinal springboards for the entirety of Western Civilization.

Although this book has much good information about the origins and reasons that philosophy came about, the author chose to use this college textbook as a springboard for his bias towards some of the great philosophers. Yes, maybe in today's society some of the views of the great philosophers may not be PC. This book is not the place to express your own views.

This book does not explain in plain English the philosophical ideas. All you get summaries and direct quotes but no true explanation. The writer assumes the reader has a solid background on the subject. It was fustrating.

It was the exact version as was told. It was in great condition and came on time. Great doing business!!

I give such a high rating to cancel out the overly critical opinions of the two other reviews. This book is fine introduction to Western Philosophy with all of the major topics discussed in detail in a way that is very approachable to the beginner with good citations of the major work of each philosopher where appropriate. The others reviewing might suggest their own idea for a text book since they understand so much better than the auther the proper way to teach philosophy to the beginner.

This is the worst textbook that I have come across. Unfortunately, this book makes me have a dislike for philosophy. This text is unorganized and difficult to read (this is coming from a student with a 4.0gpa, bio major). It reads more like a novel(the format) than a text. The author constantly adds his own opinions and stories into the same paragraphs that explain a Philosopher's ideas. By doing this, it makes it extremely difficult to distinguish the words of the author from the words of the philosopher. Like I said earlier, this book does not read like a normal text. It's not functionally readable and I feel that it has no place in the classroom. I feel as though my professor is setting the class up for failure... especially since our entire class is lost! I've had many professors who had horrible teaching techniques but I was able to still come out of classes with a 'A's because the courses' textbooks were so helpful. This book is plain bad, on every level. Although I haven't received a horrible grade in this class (yet), our class grade average is poor. The fact that our class average is horrible and that the students constantly complain about this book should be a wake up call to this professor (as well as other professors out there who are assigning this book to their beginner students). It's not about whether this book contains relevant facts, it's about finding the best possible tools for getting 'the message' across to students. This book is FAR from being the best tool for teaching. Often times, professors forget about the needs of the student.

Book was in great condition, and got to me very quickly. Very pleased with seller, and would recommend.

Great condition and fast shipping! Would strongly recommend anyone else to buy from this seller.

This is one of the worst text books I have ever had to read and try to understand. Used this text for an online class -- tough subject to figure out on one's own and the text, laden with the author's opinion and stories, made it difficult to weed out what was important and what was crap. I had to use a different, older Philosophy text book as a guide to understand what Wolf was trying to convey in this text. I thouht I was going to enjoy philosophy--I'm counting the days until I don't have to open this book ever again!

This book will teach you nothing about philosophy. I would have given this book a negative star review but thats not an option on this grading scale. The most common theme in this book is telling you how philosophers work. they tell you a step by step processes that are oversimplified and can be combined to make less steps or in some cases one step. what is important in philosophy is what the questions are then what the suggested answers are and finally how to understand how to come to the suggested answer.

I would reccomend a book called sophies world which is advertised as a story ( that is really boring ) but is actually a text book that does what I suggested earlier. if you can force yourself to read through sophies world you will actually learn something about philosophy. Anyone who reads this book will notice there is a lot of information that was just added in to make the textbook long enough to be considered a text book. one example is how the book tells us that platos written work is considered a philosophical work as opposed to a work of art. wow how important. another problem is the definition format. instead of explaining a philosophical aspect they just waste the readers time an example of this is aristotles term catharsis which is "a cleansing or purging" the book could have just stated that some people feel plays arouse emotions while others feel they purge emotions and then explained the argument behind both views.