The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy
Stevenson, Ph.D., Jay. 2005. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy, Third Edition. 3rd ed. Alpha.
Rating:
6
Review:
I originally bought this book because I was supposed to supplement a creative writing class I was teaching with an occasional exploration of philosophy. I thought the book might present philosophy at a beginner’s level that would make it interesting for my high school class. I never used it.
This is a decent book though. I’m a little hesitant to applaud the author and recommend the book to just anyone. First, the author. Jay Stevenson does have a PhD, but not in philosophy. That worries me. Sure, he may know quite a bit about philosophy, I’m sure there are a lot of people without degrees in philosophy that know a lot about it, but why would The Complete Idiot’s Guide people hire a non-PhD to write a book about philosophy when there are thousands of unemployed, professionally trained philosophers looking for work? Who knows. Maybe they thought Stevenson, whose credentials are in English, could do a better job getting his point across.
Second, why I wouldn’t recommend the book to just anyone. For two reasons. First, the writing is a little boring at times and for people that aren’t interested in philosophy, this book probably won’t suck you in and make you want to read it. Second, the philosophies are dumbed down almost to the point that it isn’t really worth reading about them. The book turns into a nicely packaged dictionary with fun little explanations rather than a treatise on philosophy. But, what should we expect, right? This is, after all, The Complete Idiot’s Guide. So, the book is boring and not a very detailed explanation of the philosophies that it attempts to discuss. However, for an introduction to someone that is interested but knows absolutely nothing, this book probably wouldn’t be too bad a place to get ideas of where to look for more information.
Overall, the book was semi-useful in exploring most philosophical perspectives but could have benefited from more depth in discussion of the philosophies and perhaps a history of philosophy (maybe even in some sort of graph-like form).