Problems from Philosophy

By James Rachels and Stuart Rachels

Book Overview

Problems from Philosophy is an introduction to philosophy which is organized around the great philosophical problems the existence of God, the nature of the mind, human freedom, the limits of knowledge, and the truth about ethics. It begins by reflecting on the life of the first great philosopher, Socrates. Then it takes up the fundamental question of whether God exists. Next comes a discussion of death and the soul, which leads to a chapter about persons. The later chapters of the book are about whether objective knowledge is possible in science and ethics. Each chapter is self-contained and may be read independently of the others. Problems from Philosophy represents the final work of author and philosopher James Rachels. In it, he brings the same liveliness and clarity to the introduction of philosophy that he brings to his best-selling ethics text, The Elements of Moral Philosophy . The second and third edition have been revised by Rachels' son Stuart, who carefully has carefully refined his father's work to further strengthen its clarity and accessibility."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0073535893
• ISBN13: 9780073535890
• Release Date: January 2011
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Companion

This book was required for a college Philosophy class that I took, and I honestly did not read it until final exams rolled around. Throughout the semester we had been reading Plato, Descartes, etc. And mostly I thought I had understood those philosophers. However, Rachels' book helped me work all of the problems out for myself. I sat down for hours reading this text aloud, boring my poor roommate to tears. But honestly, this book is in incomparable resource. Even if it is not required, I would recommend this book. You can find it for very little expense, and it's worth every penny spent. Philosophy of Human Nature.

Good Textbook for Philosophy 100

At Cerritos College, Norwalk, California, Philosophy 100 class, Dr. Stolze is teaching based on this book for the first part of the semester. he uses two books and one of em is this book. It's good good contents and a lot of good examples to easily explain theories and examples.

An excellent introduction to philosophy

After reading T.Z. Lavine's _From Socrates to Sartre_, I stumbled upon Rachels' _Problems from Philosophy_. While Lavine's book is a great history of philosophy, Rachels covers what philosophy IS. The book broadly discusses the major fields of philosophy: free will vs. determinism (exploring the question "is there such a thing as free will?" - the answer may surprise you), the nature of evil ("how can there be evil if there is an omnipotent, benevolent diety?"), ontology ("is there a God?") and ethics ("what makes right?"). These questions are fascinating, but Rachels does much more than simply asking solid philosophical questions. He engages the reader into grappling with them, providing clear, logical arguments on both sides of the issue, and leaving the reader to arrive at their own conclusions and wrestle with the implications of their answers. The PowerWeb (an on-line resource through the publisher) was moderately helpful - while its a good and useful thing to be able to read source work by the great philosophers (from Plato and Augustine to Hume and Nagel), they can be a bit dense and difficult reading for the amateur (at least they were for me.) Rachels' explainations were much preferred. While it is merely an introduction, I highly recommend it.