What is it like to be a bat? (50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Should Know - Ben Dupre)

Member Name: Mutalisk

Product:	50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Should Know - Ben Dupre
Date:	02/09/09 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: well-conceived, concise, fun to read, entertaining, extensive, covers a lot of concepts.

Disadvantages: may confuse those who have no idea about philosophy.

Published in 2007, "50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Should Know" is a book with a pretty self-explanatory title. It's part of the Quercus series of reference books which include such other titles as "50 Maths Ideas you really need to know," and "50 Psychology Ideas you really need to know." - You get the picture.

The book is written by a Ben Dupre`, and is 208 pages long. It contains explanations of such well-known philosophical constructs as Plato's Cave, The Brain in The Jar, Hume's Guillotine, The Ship of Theseus, Solipsism, and Just War, exploring the history, origin, virtues and likelihoods of each, over the course of 2-3 pages per idea.

Although Dupre` is an Oxford graduate with over 20 years of experience of elucidating difficult of ideas to a popular audeince, some of the language used still feels particularly recondite. This, coupled with the often rather floaty prose, causes the book to fail to work particularly well as a nice, cosy, all-encompassing introduction to the vast and complex world of Philosophy, despite its fairly thorough glossary and index. Nonetheless, its still a fairly easy read for those with a reasonable grounding in the material. Although some of the articles toward the end of the book reference earlier ones, it's still very much something you can flick through and put down, as cross-referencing is pretty easy with this one. The entire book is layed out in 9 categories; Problems of Knowledge, Mind Matters, Ethics, Animal Rights, Logic and Meaning, Science, Aesthetics, Religion and finally, Politics, Justice and Society.

While this book may be a bit of a slog for total and utter beginners, at least it isn't over-simplified. All of the ideas are covered fairly extensively, with counter-arguments, abstract questions and any foundational metaphysical constructs the individual ideas are grounded upon.

At around a fiver, it is well worth the money if you have even the mildest interest in Philosophy. The accessibility of its articles renders it excellent toilet literature and is overall a pretty meaty and helpful tome, covering Philosophy of Mind, Science and Religion. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Summary: An excellent little reference-book for those interested in Philosophy.