Our centre member Angie Hobbs’ book “Plato’s Republic: A Ladybird Expert Book” has been selected by Nigel Warburton for Five Books as the number one “Best Introductions to Philosophy”!
Introductory books are important, as he points out in an inteview about his choices :
“Now, some philosophers, when asked about introductory books, say, ‘Well, of course, you don’t really need an introductory book, you can start with the great classics: you can read Plato’s dialogues, you can read Descartes’s Meditations, you can read Hobbes’s Leviathan – or at least parts of it. Why bother with an introduction?’ But I don’t think most people can actually get a huge amount out of those sorts of books by just picking them up. Somebody who’s a very competent reader could, but it might take them quite a long time. What a book like Angie’s does is point you to the arguments which philosophers have considered the most important in the history of reading this book. She gives you a map of what’s there, an overview, and a way of grasping something which you might lose in the detail on a slow, first reading of the Republic.”
He recommends reading Angie Hobbs’ book alongside reading the original – as “a great way to teach yourself to read Plato’s Republic“.
You can check out the full interivew, and the other four top introductory book choices here.
Centre for Engaged Philosophy 