The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy

by David R Morrow, Norman Melchert, David R. Morrow

Book Overview

Now in its fifth edition, this historically organized introductory text treats philosophy as a dramatic and continuous story-a conversation about humankind's deepest and most persistent concerns. Tracing the exchange of ideas between history's key philosophers, The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, Fifth Edition, demonstrates that while constructing an argument or making a claim, one philosopher almost always has others in mind. The book addresses the fundamental questions of human life: Who are we? What can we know? How should we live? and What sort of reality do we inhabit? The fifth edition retains the distinctive feature of previous editions: author Norman Melchert provides a generous selection of excerpts from major philosophical works and makes them more easily understandable to students with his lucid and engaging explanations. Ranging from the Pre-Socratics to Derrida and Quine, the selections are organized historically and include four complete works: Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, and Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. The author's commentary offers a rich intellectual and cultural context for the philosophical ideas conveyed in the excerpts. Extensive cross-referencing shows students how philosophers respond appreciatively or critically to the thoughts of other philosophers. The text is enhanced by two types of exercises-"Basic Questions" and "For Further Thought"-and more than sixty illustrations. New to the Fifth Edition: A new chapter (25) on Simone de Beauvoir and her contributions to philosophy, New material on Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers, including profiles of the Buddha, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), A new profile of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Improved translations of several of Plato's works, including Protagoras, Gorgias, Phaedo, Symposium, Meno, and the Republic, Review questions that are now dispersed throughout the chapters (instead of at chapter ends) to follow relevant passages and facilitate classroom discussion, Thirteen new images, including seven explanatory cartoons that help students understand key concepts, A revised Instructor's Manual and Test Bank containing essential points, teaching suggestions, and multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay exam questions. Book jacket.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767400127
• ISBN13: 9780767400121
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Mayfield Publishing Company
• Length: 1 Pages
• Weight: 2.84 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview - highly recommended for majors and for anyone who wants to know more about the h

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.

Excellent!

This textbook is comprehensive in covering a broad historical overview of philosophy from ancient Greece through modern 20th-21st century contemporary philosophers. Highly recommended for anyone who would like to know more of the history behind philosophy and how we have come to think and believe what we do.

The just-right philosophy book

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.