Classics of Philosophy: Volume III: The Twentieth Century

The most recent volume in Louis Pojman's highly successful Classics of Philosophy collection (OUP, 1998), Classics of Philosophy: Volume III, The Twentieth Century assembles definitive essays in twentieth-century Western philosophy. This work is considerably more comprehensive than the corresponding section of the single-volume edition of Classics of Philosophy. Its selections cover the whole spectrum of the field, representing the major movements of the century including British Realism, American Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Deconstructionism, and Ordinary Language Philosophy. Pojman includes fifty-four diverse and engaging selections by thirty-nine leading philosophers, featuring the work of Ayer, Carnap, Davidson, Dennett, Derrida, Foucault, Gettier, Goldman, Habermas, Harrison, Heidegger, Husserl, Kripke, McTaggart, Moore, Nagel, Nozick, Putnam, Quine, Rawls, Rorty, Russell, Ryle, Sartre, Searle, Strawson, and Wittgenstein. Seminal works in the philosophy of mind, free will/determinism, the debate over religious truth, and political and moral philosophy are included. Ideal for courses in twentieth-century and contemporary philosophy, the volume also includes an enlightening introduction, biographical sketches for each author, and abstracts and bibliographies for each selection.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195132831
• ISBN13: 9780195132830
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 2.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great

This is a massive and invaluable book for the student of philosophy. It has over twenty complete works of classical philosophy. Including many of the great works by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kierkegaard, Hume, Mill and many, many more. And it also includes fragments from the presocratics and careful abridgments of over forty more works from a full spectrum of philosophers, ancient to modern. All of this comes in one large yet manageable volume. So it is ideal for a student or someone who wants a single volume philosophy reference. I highly recommend it.

A Good Text for An Introductory Course in Philosophy

I use this work as the sole text for my Survey of Philosophy course. Both the breadth and depth of the readings are impressive, and the book lends itself to any number of combinations of readings, which makes this work uniquely versatile in my experience as a philosophy professor.I also believe that the earlier reviewer was overly harsh in his disparagement of the introductions and summaries to each philosopher's work. While some of the introductions and summaries are indeed rather weak (although even these are generally adequate), others are quite good, and it is in any case the part of the instructor to guide students through these works. A novice instructor with insufficient background in the history of philosophy would indeed find this text difficult to use. The text is poorly edited in parts, with any number of rather glaring errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, but these are minor when compared to the overall usefulness and versatility of this text.