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rei28m's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
this book is a decent introduction to ancient philosophy. it introduces big philosophers like socrates, plato, aristotle, epicurus, diogenes and others, along with their ideas, such as plato's allegory of the chariot and stoicism's dichotomy of control, etc.
the book itself consists of six chapters, each chapter discusses the main ideas of philosophy at that time like understanding ourselves, plato's republic, happiness vs pleasure, reason and knowledge, logic and reality, and the history of ancient philosophical development.
there were definitely topics that i can digest easily, but there are some topics that i need to read from other sources in order to understand them better. it was not an easy read for me. sometimes the ideas are so alien to me due to the difference in era and culture. the middle of the book is kind of slow and tedious but i enjoyed the beginning and mostly at the end.
one thing that i found lacking in this book is that sometimes when the author introduces a set of ideas, she only provides her commentary about the ideas without really provides understandable reasons why she'd think that way. well what can i expect? it's a VERY short introduction anyway... but still i think that this book is well researched and informative.
the book itself consists of six chapters, each chapter discusses the main ideas of philosophy at that time like understanding ourselves, plato's republic, happiness vs pleasure, reason and knowledge, logic and reality, and the history of ancient philosophical development.
there were definitely topics that i can digest easily, but there are some topics that i need to read from other sources in order to understand them better. it was not an easy read for me. sometimes the ideas are so alien to me due to the difference in era and culture. the middle of the book is kind of slow and tedious but i enjoyed the beginning and mostly at the end.
one thing that i found lacking in this book is that sometimes when the author introduces a set of ideas, she only provides her commentary about the ideas without really provides understandable reasons why she'd think that way. well what can i expect? it's a VERY short introduction anyway... but still i think that this book is well researched and informative.
xjessieshaw's review against another edition
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
I've never read anything about philosophy before, so this was a fantastic introduction in my opinion. It put many more books on my reading list.
edlin314's review against another edition
informative
3.0
Built good structural knowledge for studying literature and understanding the world better. Easily understandable.
ciannait76's review against another edition
5.0
Please Read my review: Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
amavi's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
I didn't really enjoy this, I would not recommend this to a complete beginner as you have to have some prior knowledge of philosophy and the ancient culture(Greek for this instance). I wish ancient philosophy from other parts of the world was introduced, especially India and China, some chapters were interesting. Didn't add much to my existing knowledge but it also wouldn't explain much to someone who knows nothing about this topic