Ebook: A Continental Guide to Philosophy

Helps you understand the central debates in the three main branches of Continental philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics

• Defines key terms like forms (Plato), substance (Descartes), impressions (Hume), transcendental (Kant), culture (Nietzsche), and action (Arendt) at the beginning of each chapter
• Teaches you how to read philosophical texts by introducing you to 5 elements that can be analysed in every text: question, concept, claims, evidence, and implications
• Includes chapter summaries, questions for further discussion to help you consolidate your own ideas, and a historical timeline to contextualize each philosopher’s life and work

What is real? How can we know what is real? How might we live authentically? These are the three fundamental questions about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. John Macready guides you through these questions by reading three pairs of philosophers and texts:

• Metaphysics: Plato's Sophist and Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy
• Epistemology: Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
• Ethics: Nietzsche's ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ and Arendt's ‘Labor, Work, and Action’

Each chapter introduces you to basic philosophical problems, concepts, and methods of philosophical inquiry. You'll learn how to read and understand these key texts so that you can answer these three questions for yourself.