The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy [Hardcover]

Norman Melchert (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0767400127 | ISBN-13: 978-0767400121 | Publication Date: July 1998 | Edition: 3rd

This is the instructor's manual to accompany Norman Melchert's The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy", Fourth Edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Melchert's book is unquestionably the best philosophy textbook I have ever read. My students love the book. Melchert writes with utter clarity and his examples are superb. His careful choice of primary sources and brilliant use of them in his prose is nothing short of genius. I generally cringe at the wooden writing style of textbooks, and find some philosophy texts particularly deadly. Melchert's text shatters all of my textbook nightmares. " --Thomas Bell, Brevard College

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Norman Melchert is at Lehigh University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 736 pages
• Publisher: Mayfield Pub Co; 3rd edition (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767400127
• ISBN-13: 978-0767400121
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,447,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The just-right philosophy book, June 5, 2008

By 

Aaron S. Becker - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy (Hardcover)

A professor of mine in college assigned this book for a class, and it quickly became my favorite book of all time and remains so a decade later. I have what I would consider a sizable passion for philosophy, but I found taking a survey of the great philosophers rather difficult. Reading the primary, original texts are often opaque and dense at best (and there is no way one can read everything, even by a single philosopher), but many books that claim to be "introductions" to the greats are often very terse and rarely get too deep into the material.

This book is just-right. It introduces you to the the major philosophers neither by overly simplifying them or batting you over the head with their details.

Finally, as the title of the book suggests, Melchert wonderfully connects these philosophers together showing how they influenced each other and how different philosophers attempt to answer the same fundamental questions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best Intro Philosophy Available, April 25, 2011

By 

Richard Mansfield (Simpsonville, Kentucky) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy (Hardcover)

I've now used three different editions of Norman Melchert's The Great Conversation in intro philosophy classes over the past few years, and I know of no better textbook for an introductory course. The new edition contains only minor updates and introduces a little bit of color to the the text (but not much), but the tweaks are minor because in its sixth edition, the book is quite "mature" in the sense that it has been honed into a very stable overview of philosophy.

Not only is the text itself very thorough, I've discovered that Melchert has a bit of a dry sense of humor that comes across now and then. I often see this more easily than my students. Melchert is an interesting individual whom I've corresponded with a couple of times. For those of us with faith concerns, he treats religious ideas with respect which is appreciated.

The textbook also has a website at the publisher's domain with study materials for students as well as notes and a test bank for instructors.

My copy didn't come from Amazon, but from the publisher since I get a free deskcopy. However, I'd gladly purchase my own copy if it came in a Kindle edition. This is Oxford's doing, not Amazon's, as I've talked to them (Oxford) repeatedly about the need for an ebook edition.

The only REASON I'm giving this book four stars instead of five is its lack of a Kindle version. The text itself really deserves five stars. I would encourage everyone reading this to click the link telling the publisher you'd like to read it on a Kindle.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview - highly recommended for majors and for anyone who wants to know more about the history of philosophy, April 16, 2010

By 

Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy (Hardcover)

This book provides a highly readable and accessible introduction to some of the major participants and their important contributions to the historical and ongoing conversation that is philosophy. Philosophy, as it developed in the Western tradition, is not a set of doctrines or ideas; it is, rather, a kind of ongoing conversation that began with the ancient Greeks and continues into the present. It turns out there are certain basic questions, that keep coming up, but that always call for a reasoned response that is both attentive to the specific context in which they arise and aware of the ways in which the question has been addressed before, in other contexts. Contemporary discussions on philosophical topics cannot fully be understood in isolation from this "great conversation."

Reading this would be a good way for the undergraduate philosophy student to "fill in the gaps" in their grasp of the context for the topics they are interested in; while it is no substitute for going through the primary texts, it does include several excerpts from primary texts and manages to represent the dominant concerns of most thinkers included in a way that is clear and accessible without oversimplification. The primary value of this text would be to provide an outline of the main thinkers and issues and methods, that would serve as a basis for more thorough exploration. The book does include helpful guidance for the reader who wants to explore a particular thinker or topic further. One might quibble about what is left out in this overview -- I wish there were a chapter on Rousseau, for example -- but what is astonishing is how much he manages to cover in a single volume. He covers nearly all of the major "canonical" movements and thinkers from the time of the ancient Greeks to contemporary analytic and continental philosophy. It is quite an accomplishment and a rewarding read. Highly recommended.