Customer Reviews

Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources

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

 

 

Modern Philosophy -- full of writings from philosophers such as Locke, Kant or Spinoza -- can be seen as a daunting period of philosophy. I read this book as a text for a modern philosophy class, and found that it is a very competant editing of these difficult texts. The anthology begins with "premodern" writings of Galileo and others, goes through Descartes (with a selection of criticisms of Decartes' work from his contemporaries), and then goes through the work of other modern philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley, Spinoza, Libeniz, Kant, and others. The editor does a wonderful job arranging texts to illustrate the back and forth dialog and critisms among the philosophers. In addition to the selection of texts, there are wonderful notes scattered throughout the text to help alleviate much of the confusion that can arise after reading some of the quite lengthly writings of some (many! ) modern philosophers. Perhaps on an aesthetic (non-content) sidenote -- the book itself is excellent. When I was reading a section, I did not have to worry about pages flipping on me, because the binding is very flexible. In addition highlighters don't bleed through the page -- a wonderful plus to a great anthology! I would highly recommend it.

I found Ariew's anthology of modern philosophical texts to be very helpful. The compliation of various philosophers is concise and well put together. One thing I would comment on is the binding of the book, I wish the book was made in such a way that it was easier to preserve. However, the content included does justice to the beauty of modern philosophy (albeit some major texts from Spinoza's Ethics were excluded). It is a fantastic read that includes major actors in modern philosophy whos ideas acted more as stimuli to the major philosophers of the era-thus Bacon, Galileo, and Newton affecting philosophers such as Descartes Hobbes, Leibniz, Hume and Kant. I would suggest this as a beginners anthology to those interested in the history and development of philosophy in the modern era.

I used this anthology in the late 1990's for a course I was teaching in the history of modern philosophy. I will be teaching the same course in the Spring of 2009 and I will be using the same textbook. It is comprehensive. And students will appreciate the fact that it is relatively inexpensive. Hackett does it again!

there's not much to say about this because it's a collection but they did a good job at picking out the philosophers from that era.

Because of a change of class, we were unable to use this book, but working with GreatGuyBooks on the return was great. Thanks again.