philosophy majors, help me!

Fides_et_Ratio
Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:00:15 +0000

Before taking any other philosophy courses, you should take an Introduction to Philosophy course in your first year. If you enjoy it, do well, really want to major in it afterward, etc., THEN focus on philosophy in your second, third, and fourth years. Studying philosophy can be quite a lot to wrap your head around, and the last thing you want to do as a first-year beginner is overload yourself with it. Again, an Intro course is more than sufficient for first year.

Anyway, the best written introduction to philosophy that I know of is still the old multi-volume A History of Philosophy series by Frederick Copleston, S.J. It is a massive work altogether, but you could start with volume one, Greece and Rome.

Also supremely helpful are Antony Flew’s A Dictionary of Philosophy and Simon Blackburn’s The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. As a philosophy specialist, I don’t know what I would do without at least Flew’s classic.