Reading Philosophy : Selected Texts with a Method for Beginners

This flexible introductory textbook explores several key themes in philosophy, and helps the reader learn to engage with the key arguments by introducing and analysing a selection of classic readings. Fully integrated introductory text with readings for beginning students of philosophy. Each chapter focusses on a core philosophical topic, and contains an introduction to the topic, 2 classic readings and interactive commentaries on the readings. An introductory book which doesn't merely tell the reader about the subject, but requires them to engage philosophically with the text. A pedagogical resource developed in the classroom by the authors at the University of London.

Samuel Guttenplan is a Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of The Languages of Logic (2nd edn, Blackwell, 1997), editor of A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind (Blackwell, 1994) and executive editor of the journal Mind & Language.

Jennifer Hornsby taught philosophy at Oxford from 1978 to 1994, when she moved to Birkbeck College, as Professor. Her chief areas of publication are the philosophy of mind, action and language. She has also written about the impact of feminism on philosophy.

Christopher Janaway was educated at Oxford and has taught for the past twenty years at Birkbeck College, where he is currently Professor of Philosophy. His chief areas of publication are aesthetics, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.