7th Edition

Philosophic Classics: From Plato to Derrida

Edited By Forrest Baird Copyright 2023
    945 Pages 69 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    945 Pages 69 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Philosophic Classics: From Plato to Derrida includes essential writings of the most important philosophers from almost two millennia of Western philosophy. In updating this Seventh Edition, editor Forrest E. Baird has continued to follow the same criteria established by the late-Walter Kaufmann when the Philosophic Classics series was first established: (1) to use complete works or, where more appropriate, complete sections of works (2) in clear translations (3) of texts central to each thinker’s philosophy or widely accepted as part of the "canon." To make the works more accessible to students, most footnotes treating textual matters (variant readings, etc.) have been omitted and important words from antiquity have been transliterated and put in angle brackets. In addition, each thinker is introduced by a brief essay composed of three sections: (1) biographical (a glimpse of the life), (2) philosophical (a résumé of the philosopher’s thought), and (3) bibliographical (suggestions for further reading).

    A timeline places important philosophers alongside other important thinkers, world leaders, and major global events. Photos and paintings with explanatory captions illuminate the ideas, debates, and places discussed in the text.

    New to the Seventh Edition:

    • New translations: Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo; Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines; Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy; Anselm, Proslogion; Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man; René Descartes, Correspondence with Princess Elizabeth; Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract; Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
    • Additional material: Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus (in part); Francis Bacon, Aphorisms (selections from Novum Organum); Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach; A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (in part)
    • Updated, annotated bibliographies with each bibliography now broken into two sections, one for beginning and another for advanced students.

    Preface
    Timeline

    PART I: ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY

    Socrates and Plato
    Euthyphro
    Apology
    Crito
    Phaedo
    (72c–83e, 114e–118b)
    Republic (Book I, 336b–342e, 347b–e; Book II, 357a–362c, 368a–376e; Book III, 412b–417b; Book IV, 427c–445e; Book V, 449–462e, 473b–e; and Books VI–VII, 502c–521b) 59

    Aristotle
    Physics (Book II, complete)
    Metaphysics (Book I, 1–4, 6, 9; and Book XII, 6–9)
    On the Soul (Book II, Chapters 1–3; and Book III, 4–5)
    Nicomachean Ethics (Books I–II; Book IV, 3; Books VI–VII; and Book X, 6–8)

    PART II: HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

    Epicurus
    Letter to Menoeceus
    Principal Doctrines

    Epictetus
    Handbook (Enchiridion)

    Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus
    Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Book I, 1–13)

    Plotinus
    Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus (selections)
    Enneads (Ennead I, Tractate 6)

    PART III: CHRISTIANITY AND MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

    Augustine
    Confessions (Book VIII, 5, 8–12; and Book XI, 14–28)
    City of God (Book XI, Chapter 26; and Book XII, Chapters 1–9)

    Boethius
    The Consolation of Philosophy (Book V, Chapter 6)

    Anselm (and Gaunilo)
    Proslogion (Preface; Chapters 1–4)
    Gaunilo and Anselm: Debate (selections)

    Hildegard of Bingen
    Scivias (Book I, Vision 4, 16–26)

    Moses Maimonides
    The Guide for the Perplexed (Part II, Introduction)

    Thomas Aquinas
    Summa Theologica (selections)

    William of Ockham
    Summa Logicae (On Universals Part I, Chapters 14–16)

    Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
    Oration on the Dignity of Man (in part)

    PART IV: MODERN PHILOSOPHY

    Francis Bacon
    Novum Organum (Preface, Book I, Chapters 3-4, 7-8, 11-12, 14, 19, 22, 24-25, 31, 36, 38-44; Book II, Chapter 10)

    René Descartes
    Meditations on the First Philosophy
    Correspondence with Princess Elizabeth (selections)

    Thomas Hobbes
    Leviathan (selections from Chapters 1–3, 6, 9, 12–15, 17–18, 21)

    Blaise Pascal
    Pensées (selections)

    Baruch Spinoza
    Ethics (Sections I and II)

    John Locke
    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (abridged)

    Gottfried Leibniz
    Discourse on Metaphysics
    The Monadology

    George Berkeley
    Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous

    David Hume
    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    The Social Contract (Book I)

    Immanuel Kant
    Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
    Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
    On a Supposed Right to Lie From Altruistic Motives

    Mary Wollstonecraft
    A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Chapter 6)

    PART V: NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

    G.W.F. Hegel
    Phenomenology of Spirit (B, IV, A: "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Relations of Master and Servant")
    Lectures on the History of Philosophy ("The Final Result")

    John Stuart Mill
    Utilitarianism

    Søren Kierkegaard
    Fear and Trembling (Problema I: "Teleological Suspension of the Ethical")
    Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Section II, Chapter 2, "Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth Is Subjectivity")

    Karl Marx
    Theses on Feuerbach
    Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
    ("Alienated Labor")
    Manifesto of the Communist Party (Chapters 1 and 2)
    A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Preface)
    Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anarchy (selections)

    William James
    Pragmatism (Lecture II: What Pragmatism Means)

    Friedrich Nietzsche
    The Birth of Tragedy (Chapters 1–3)
    The Gay Science (selections)
    Twilight of the Idols (selections)
    The Anti-Christ (First Book, 2–7, 62)

    PART VI: TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
    Edited by Hans Bynagle

    Edmund Husserl
    Phenomenology (Encyclopaedia Brittanica article)

    W.E.B. Du Bois
    The Souls of Black Folk (Chapter 1)

    Bertrand Russell
    The Problems of Philosophy (Chapters 1 & 15)

    Martin Heidegger
    Introduction to Metaphysics (Chapter 1: "The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics") 1101

    Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Preface Sections 1–3.1431,4, 4.06, 4.1, 5, 5.6, 6.4–7) 1131
    Philosophical Investigations (Paragraphs 1–47, 65–71, 241, 257–258, 305, 309) 1139

    A.J. Ayer
    Language, Truth and Logic (Preface and Chapter 1: "Elimination of Metaphysics")

    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Existentialism Is a Humanism

    Simone De Beauvoir
    The Second Sex (Introduction)

    Willard Van Orman Quine
    Two Dogmas of Empiricism

    Jacques Derrida
    Of Grammatology ("The Written Being/The Being Written")

    Biography

    Forrest E. Baird was Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA from 1978 until he retired in 2021. He taught a wide range of courses focusing on the history of Western intellectual thought as well as logic and philosophy of religion. Baird has a B.A. from Westmont College, an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University. His most recent publication is How Do We Reason: An Introduction to Logic (IVP, 2021). His other works include Human Thought and Action: Readings in Western Intellectual History (UPA, 1992) and Introduction to Philosophy: A Case Study Approach (Harper & Row, 1981, co-authored with Jack Rogers).