An introduction to philosophy with selections on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and logic. The emphasis is on exposing students to important philosophers and issues in philosophy. Chapters include multiple choice questions to test reading comprehension.

Aesthetic Theory and Practice offers fresh perspectives on canonical and emerging topics in aesthetics, and also brings attention to a number of culturally sensitive topics that are customarily silenced in introductions to philosophical aesthetics. The papers are heterogeneous in terms of length and degrees of difficulty, inviting the reader into the study of contemporary aesthetics, which spans a lifetime.

This collection is co-created thanks to contributions from the Americas, Japan and China, Australia and Austria, England and France, Italy, Germany and Ethiopia. It is not surprising, therefore, that all eleven chapters adopt active critical and often multicultural perspectives, so as to evaluate aesthetics in relation to the tradition, its cultural potential, and the messy, geopolitical circumstances of the 21st century.

If you are adopting or adapting this book for a course, please let us know on our adoption form for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwf2E7bRGvWefjhNZ07kgpgnNFxVxxp-iidPE5gfDBQNGBGg/viewform?usp=sf_link.

Houston Community College TLE OER Certified Course for PHIL 1301 Introduction to Philosophy.

Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context.

The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools:
Chapter learning outcomes
Key terms
Images of philosophers and related art
Useful diagrams and tables
Boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material
Questions for reflection
Suggestions for further reading
A glossary

For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy series.

We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others’ behavior and choices.

This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition. It considers basic questions about moral and ethical judgment: Is there such a thing as something that is really right or really wrong independent of time, place and perspective? What is the relationship between religion and ethics? How can we reconcile self-interest and ethics? Is it ever acceptable to harm one person in order to help others? What do recent discussions in evolutionary biology or have to say about human moral systems? What is the relation between gender and ethics? The authors invite you to participate in their exploration of these and many other questions in philosophical ethics.

If you are adopting or adapting this book for a course, please let us know on our adoption form for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwf2E7bRGvWefjhNZ07kgpgnNFxVxxp-iidPE5gfDBQNGBGg/viewform?usp=sf_link.

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is an important primary text. Hobbes's social contract theory relies on a thought experiment involving a hypothetical state of nature in which there are no rules or laws. He argues that life in the state of nature would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," and that accordingly we should renounce most of our rights and freedoms by giving them to a powerful sovereign, who will in turn protect us from foreign threat and from one another.

This text is intended as an introduction to questions of moral philosophy. While the text itself is a survey, covering many of the topics in a standard philosophy course, the aim here is twofold–first to teach students about the power of stories as a vehicle for understanding moral questions, and second to give students a set of interpretive tools that will allow them to make good ethical decisions in a world that is becoming more ethically complex. At the risk of claiming too much for a course in moral philosophy, the most important skill students need when entering the working world is not so much a knowledge of marketing or accounting, finance, programming, or venture capital, as an understanding of the diverse audiences they will be working with as both colleagues and customers. In essence, the most valuable skills employers need today are human skills. In a world where we are are all attached to our social media accounts and we live and die by how many pings we receive on our phone, this text attempts to do something more old-fashioned–to tell stories about people–about their feelings, thoughts, desires. This text hopes to show both that each individual is unique and that we are all for better and for worse separate beings, but at the same time that we share with other creatures on this planet a sense of living, a wish for respect and dignity, and a connection to all that is. In teaching to face head-on the contradiction between being different and yet like everyone else I hope that the text will give students the tools to negotiate this difference.

This is a complete contemporary translation of Plato's Euthyphro. While the dialogue is made famous by the Euthyphro dilemma, the text offers a rich picture of the difference between relying on one's prior knowledge (like Euthyphro) and remaining open to inquiry (like Socrates).

This is an excellent contemporary translation of the first book of Plato's Republic. It introduces the dialogue's central question ("What is justice?") and portrays Socrates as embodying the ignorance for which he is known while refuting the definitions proffered by his interlocutors. Since many philosophers think that this book was originally a standalone dialogue that was subsequently connected to the remainder of the text, it is a great option for classes to read (more or less) a full dialogue that features multiple interlocutors. Woods' translation has the further advantage of not Latinizing Plato's Greek, which may make pronunciation less intimidating for students who are challenged by the interlocutor's names.

Machiavelli's classic contribution to the "mirror to princes" genre, widely seen as one of the foundational texts of modern philosophical philosophy.

During [his] teaching career [David Boersema] heard the same question, “What can you do with a degree in philosophy?” many times from some students [he] taught (and their parents)...many other philosophy professors have heard the same question. This book works to dispel the view that studying philosophy is impractical or unimportant. As it turns out, most of the students I taught over the years who got a degree in philosophy went on to non-academic jobs and careers. They eliminate the notion that the only thing one can do with a degree in philosophy is to teach philosophy. Does studying philosophy teach one how to fix a leaky faucet? No, but neither does studying economics. Does studying philosophy lead to rewarding and fulfilling careers? Not necessarily, but it certainly can.

Purcell's article on Aztec moral philosophy provides a fruitful supplement to teaching the classical Greek virtue ethicists Plato and Aristotle. While the Greeks and Aztecs each center character formation, the latter lack the emphases on rationality and happiness found in the former.