On Think

This is a great introduction to philosophy as a practice. I’d worried it would be overly academic, but I was pleased it wasn’t. From the table of contents I’d assumed the book would be segmented by discipline — “philosophy of mind,” “logic,” “epistemology,” “ethics” — but instead Blackburn organizes it around the larger themes and questions philosophers ask, diving into the positions different thinkers take and explaining their arguments. He’s charitable toward most of them, though he seems unconvinced by religious fundamentalism or post-Derridean deconstruction. His discussion of each issue is genuinely interesting, drawing mostly on early modern European philosophers (almost all of them before the analytic/continental divide), which is fair enough given that the target audience is Anglophones dipping their feet in for the first time; Descartes and Hume get the most attention, with plenty on Locke and Kant as well. His tone is almost conversational, with a dry humor that feels warm, and it eased the reading tremendously. I can’t say I “got” everything, but Think is an excellent place to start.