Customer Reviews

Introducing Eastern Philosophy

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

 

 

Good overview of the different aspects and schools of Eastern philosophy. Some of it is overlap from other books like "Introducing Buhhha", but this book is good on it's own.

Like all books in this series, this book has a sort of cartoon format, so the amount of text equals only about 50 pages. As a result, I expected this book to be fairly superficial, like its Western philosophy counterpart, Introducing Philosophy (Introducing...(Totem)). I was therefore surprised to find that Osborne has impressively achieved considerable breadth and depth in this book, which goes to show what a skilled writer can do with few words when he really knows his subject.

Osborne provides a nice balance between history, names and terminology, and philosophical concepts, and he integrates it all very well. He also makes many insightful and very helpful connections between Eastern and Western philosophy, implicitly revealing how many Western ideas were probably derived from prior Eastern ones.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Eastern philosophy. The book will serve as an excellent introduction for beginners, though they should probably plan to read it more than once, since the content is too rich to be adequately absorbed in one pass. And readers who have studied Eastern philosophy for a while will also benefit from the book, since it will serve as a nicely coherent review, as well as a means to deepen their understanding.

I am an avid reader of books on Eastern religions and Philosophy. I get several books a year through Amazon. My latest purchase was "INTRODUCING Eastern Philosophy" by Richard Osborne and Borin Van Loon. This is the first time I have felt compelled to write a review. The book is insulting,stupid and patronizing. Buying this book is a waste of money and reading it is a waste of time. The book is a ripoff. Do not waste any energy on it.Joseph Campbell would spin in his grave if he saw this waste of paper. As one star indicates I HATED IT!