A little history of philosophy
Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it. In forty brief chapters, Nigel Warburton guides us on a chronological tour of the major ideas in the history of philosophy. He provides interesting and often quirky stories of the lives and deaths of thought-provoking philosophers from Socrates, who chose to die by hemlock poisoning rather than live on without the freedom to think for himself, to Peter Singer, who asks the disquieting philosophical and ethical questions that haunt our own times. Warburton not only makes philosophy accessible, he offers inspiration to think, argue, reason, and ask in the tradition of Socrates. A Little History of Philosophypresents the grand sweep of humanity's search for philosophical understanding and invites all to join in the discussion.
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3recommend
4mentions
3people
2019–2025years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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3. A Little History of Philosophy - Nigel Warburton
Small, compact book. A quick interesting jaunnt through the history of philosophy. Entertaining and educational!
- Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy. Cathcart and Klein's Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar. Both are easy-going and fit the description of an overview. Further reading can be segued to Oxford University Press A Very Short Introduction Series. Concise but in-depth reads written by modern philosophers.
- A curated list of philosophy references:
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (1927, 1960) https://www.worldcat.org/title/story-of-philosophy-the-lives... (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Philosophy) Western only.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu
The Basics of Philosophy: https://www.philosophybasics.com
Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy. https://www.worldcat.org/title/little-history-of-philosophy/.... Light, but a good overview.
Peter Adamson, "The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps": https://historyofphilosophy.net. Extremely comprehensive.
Carneades.org on Youtube: https://youtube.com/user/carneadesofcyrene and homepage: https://carneades.org
Allain de Botton's School of Life series s light but often quite good: Western Philosophy: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwxNMb28XmpeypJMHfNbJ4R.... Eastern Philosophy: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwxNMb28XmpeUL1vz9Su7Om...
- That was in fact the original idea, though generally pitched as equating utility preferences between social classes -- the utility of a nobel and commoner were considered equivalent, a radical idea at the time.
Clearly there are difficulties with the notion, and direct comparisons between. individuals' peferences or utility functions are at best difficult if not impossible to measure. But the matter of unequal treatment by social class was the specific error Bentham was attempting to correct.
This aspect of Bentham's philosophy is specifically mentioned in Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy (2011), chapter 21.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/little-history-of-philosophy/...
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