Modern Philosophy: 8an Introduction and Survey

"Modern Philosophy" provides an excellent overview of philosophical thought. Ideas are organized thematically and relationally - not chronologically and hierarchically. The author employs a dialectical and evenhanded approach in which views and opposing views are presented, analyzed and synthesized. The reader is rewarded with many insights and "aha" moments. The book is well-written and very engaging. It is highly recommended for the individual who is seeking a thought-provoking survey of philosophy.

I purchased Scruton's survey as an first-year undergraduate student who was eager to learn just about everything there is to learn about philosophy, and it proved very useful to me throughout my undergraduate career. And it's heartening to flip back through this book and see that I've actually learned a good deal in time I've spent studying philosophy. Before long I may know enough to write a book of this sort myself--not that I have the patience or talent for exposition that would be required to do so. The aim of this book is to provide a synoptic overview of the concerns and central arguments of philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present. It covers, at least briefly, just about everything that modern philosophers talk about, it displays broad historical erudition, it provides the reader with a sense of how the concerns of contemporary philosophers connect to the history of modern philosophers, and its extensive reading guide gives the reader some helpful suggestions about where to go in the literature for further work on the topics discussed here. It is, moreover, quite good at introducing the basic issues and positions, both of contemporary philosophers and their early modern counterparts, in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. And, although this isn't intended as a work of history, Scruton manages to present most of the major ideas of the most significant figures in modern philosophy (e.g. Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, et al.). Scruton's subject matter here is broad, to say the least. He discusses just about every subject about which philosophers have had anything to say in the last four hundred years. This book has sections about God, about free will, about morality, about politics, about science, about knowledge and belief, about minds and their relations to bodies, about language and its meaning, about space and time, about mathematics, and about quite a few more things. Indeed, there's simply too much covered here for Scruton to connect all the material and provide much structure to this book. So it's perfectly fine to treat this book as something like a reference work, and to dip into whatever section one finds interesting while ignoring much of the rest of the book. But, for people with little background in philosophy, it would help to begin by reading the fifteen or so chapters straight through. These chapters, which comprise roughly the first third of the book, outline the basic historical and contemporary philosophical ideas that the reader needs to understand most of the rest of the book, and they constitute a pretty good introduction to the material in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind that you need to know to understand the rest of the material here. Despite Scruton's professed intentions here, however, this text is probably too complex and too compressed for the absolute beginner. Even working wi

There is too much to recommend Scruton to the beginner, so I won't attempt to summarize them. I will say that this book is the best survey I've ever read. The complaints of complexity are legion in philosophy- it's not a subject for the average man by its very nature. Scruton does as well as any man living or dead in making philosophy understandable to the novice. The reviewers below simply do not understand that this comes with the territory by definition: philosophy is exegesis at the limits of the human grasp. I previously thought there was no way to make it as accessible as this without sacrifising too much: Scruton proved me wrong. You get farther with less hard work under Scruton than any philosopher since Nietzsche. And I know of no one who can make Kant instantly intelligable. I disagree with Scruton a good amount of the time, and it makes not one iota of difference: this is a little masterpiece. Even the scattered criticism is wrong. Scruton has taken on left philosophers head on more than once (he has a book on the subject). For the most part, he does an excellent job with the quick hack and slash job he does here. The line about anyone asking you to believe that nothing is true is asking you not to believe them is a little rhetorical gem. I don't think it's hard to dismiss the Sausser and Derrida clique outright and then get on to the job of doing philosophy. Maybe that is my fault for not being smart enough- I don't think being able to spot the inconsistancy of an argument from the first sentence means that I have to continue debating the issue. Either way, the hardest and most worthwhile philsophers extant get the long shrift here, which is precisely how any book purporting to be a survey should work. This book is for everyone: for the beginner looking to uderstand and for the veteran who likes clear and cogent argument. Buy this book.

Although I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy, I have not been able to enjoy the subject for many years because the demands of my law practice simply did not leave me with the time and energy to read and do philosophy. Recently, however, I read this book and once again discovered the pleasure of reading and doing philosophy. Scruton is obviously a master teacher, and he makes even the most complex ideas understandable. His book is lucidly written and fascinating. I highly recommend it.

This books has sections worth reading and re-reading. Scruton write in clear prose and amazingly gets to the heart of some dense matters and explicates the central concerns with relative ease. I majored in philosophy over 20 years ago and I wish that I had had such a well-written and comprehensive text to refer to in order to put modern philosophy all "together".A background in philosophy no doubt makes reading this a bit easier. A beginner might instead what to read Thomas Nagel's introductory text and perhaps Searle's little text on Mind, Language, and Society first. Then dive into this and you are on your way.First rate.