Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
External
Introduction to Philosophy - Philosophy of Religion
Branson et al. · Rebus Publishing
In the contents: 1.01: The Intertwining of Philosophy and Religion in the Western Tradition · 1.06: From Philosophy of (Mono)theism to Philosophy of Religions
External
South and East Asian Philosophy Reader
Noah Levin · Golden West College
In the contents: 01: Foundations Of Chinese And Japanese Philosophy - Taoism Confucianism Shintoism · 1.01: Introduction to South and East Asian Philosophy · 02: Hindu-based Philosophy and Jainism
External
Classical Greek: Philosophy Reader
Edward Haven · Los Medanos College
LibreTexts
External
Ancient Philosophy Reader
Noah Levin · Golden West College
In the contents: 01: The Start of Western Philosophy and the Pre-Socratics · 1.01: Introduction to Philosophy and the Ship of Theseus · 2.02: The Socratic Method and the Role of Philosophy (Apology and Allegory of the Cave)
External
Words of Wisdom: Introduction to Philosophy
Jody Ondich · Lake Superior College
In the contents: 03: Spiritual Philosophy and Tales from Across the World
External
Philosophy and the Arts: A Textbook with Readings
Theodore Gracyk · Minnesota State Colleges and Universities · 2025
This book is an introduction to some influential theories in philosophy of art. It combines excerpts of historically important texts from European and American culture with explanations of the key ideas in those texts. The most recent of these texts dates from 1929.The overall organization is topical. Five topics have been selected. The chapters are relatively independent of one another and can be approached in any order.
External
Learning from Arguments: An Introduction to Philosophy
Daniel Korman · PhilPapers Foundation · 2022
Learning from Arguments is a novel approach to teaching Introduction to Philosophy. It advances accessible versions of key philosophical arguments, in a form that students can emulate in their own writing, and with the primary aim of cultivating an understanding of the dynamics of philosophical argumentation. The book contains ten core chapters, covering the problem of evil, Pascal’s wager, personal identity, the irrationality of fearing death, free will and determinism, Cartesian skepticism, the problem of induction, the problem of political authority, the violinist argument, the future-like-ours argument, the ethics of eating meat, utilitarianism (both act and rule), and the trolley problem. Additionally, there is an introductory chapter explaining what arguments are and surveying some common argumentative strategies, an appendix on logic explaining the mechanics and varieties of valid arguments, and an appendix providing detailed advice for writing philosophy papers. Each of the ten core chapters offers a sustained argument for some controversial thesis, specifically written for an audience of beginners. The aim is to introduce newcomers to the dynamics of philosophical argumentation, using some of the arguments standardly covered in an introductory philosophy course, but without the additional hurdles one encounters when reading the primary sources of the arguments: challenging writing, specialized jargon, and references to unfamiliar books, philosophers, or schools of thought.
External
Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics
George Matthews; Christina Hendricks · Rebus Community · 2019
We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others’ behavior and choices. This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition. It considers basic questions about moral and ethical judgment: Is there such a thing as something that is really right or really wrong independent of time, place and perspective? What is the relationship between religion and ethics? How can we reconcile self-interest and ethics? Is it ever acceptable to harm one person in order to help others? What do recent discussions in evolutionary biology or have to say about human moral systems? What is the relation between gender and ethics? The authors invite you to participate in their exploration of these and many other questions in philosophical ethics.
External
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind
Multiple Contributors · Rebus Community · 2019
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind surveys the central themes in philosophy of mind and places them in a historical and contemporary context intended to engage first-time readers in the field. It focuses on debates about the status and character of the mind and its seemingly subjective nature in an apparently more objective world.
External
Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy
Catherine Wilson · Open Book Publishers · 2016
Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual’s reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about ‘oughts’ and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming.Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest.
External
Introduction to Philosophy
Sondra Peron · ROTEL · 2025
This Introduction to Philosophy: An Anthology is a collection of essential readings from a wide variety of contemporary writers and philosophers designed to help students unfamiliar with philosophy understand that they know more than they think. This OER asks students to think about how they think and how they know what they know. Students will start by challenging assumptions and flexing those critical thinking skills we all have—not just in an abstract way but in a practical, everyday way. Students will explore the branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.
External
Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art: Towards Theory and Practice
Peggy Karpouzou; Nikoleta Zampaki · Peter Lang · 2023
Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, this edition examines the changing conception of human subjectivity, agency, and citizenship as shaped by the dynamic interplays between nature, technology, science, and culture. The proposed ‘symbiotic turn’, (the awareness of the multitude of interactions and mutual interdependencies among humans, non-humans and their environment) aspires to explore the complex recompositions of the “human” in the 21st century. By organizing and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue at multiple levels, both in theory and practice, Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies is suggested as a new narrative about the biosphere and technosphere, which is embodied literarily, philosophically, and artistically.
External
Introduction to Philosophy: Aesthetic Theory and Practice
Yuriko Saito ; Ruth Sonderegger ; Ines Kleesattel · Rebus Community · 2021
Aesthetic Theory and Practice offers fresh perspectives on canonical and emerging topics in aesthetics, and also brings attention to a number of culturally sensitive topics that are customarily silenced in introductions to philosophical aesthetics. The papers are heterogeneous in terms of length and degrees of difficulty, inviting the reader into the study of contemporary aesthetics, which spans a lifetime.
External
Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology
Brian Barnett; Christina Hendricks · Rebus Community · 2021
Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. The book progresses systematically while placing key ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. Central topics include the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies.
External
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion
Beau Branson; Christina Hendricks · Rebus Community · 2020
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.
External
Introduction to Philosophy: Logic
Ben Martin; Christina Hendricks · Rebus Community · 2020
Introduction to Philosophy: Logic provides students with the concepts and skills necessary to identify and evaluate arguments effectively. The chapters, all written by experts in the field, provide an overview of what arguments are, the different types of arguments one can expect to encounter in both philosophy and everyday life, and how to recognise common argumentative mistakes.
External
An Introduction to Philosophy
Russ Payne · BCcampus · 2023
The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, the goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. Traditional theories of right action is covered in a third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one's community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity. Over the course of the text, the author has tried to outline the continuity of thought that leads from the historical roots of philosophy to a few of the diverse areas of inquiry that continue to make significant contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
External
Words of Wisdom: Intro to Philosophy
Jody Ondich · Jody Ondich · 2018
Words of Wisdom can come from anyone. In this text we discuss topics ranging from "Are Humans good by nature?" to "Is there a God?" to "Do I have the right to my own opinion?" Philosophy is the study of wisdom, and can emerge in our conversations in social media, in school, around the family dinner table, and even in the car. The text uses materials that are 2,500 years old, and materials that were in the news this year. Wise people come in all shapes and types, and from every culture on earth. We have poetry and folktales, sacred writings and letters. Dialogues and interviews, news columns, Ted Talks, You Tube recordings and even comedy are all a part of the content in this text.You will be most successful reading this on line. The formatting in the downloadable versions is not wonderful. There is work being done by the software, but in the meantime, you will want to use it by clicking here on "read book:".
External
Modern Philosophy
Walter Ott · BCcampus · 2013
This is a textbook in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. And I have added an introductory chapter (Chapter 0 – Minilogic and Glossary), designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions. The immediate goal is to encourage students to grapple with the ideas rather than passing their eyes over the texts. This makes for a better classroom experience and permits higher-level discussions. Another goal is to encourage collaboration among instructors, as they revise and post their own versions of the book.
External
Introduction to Philosophy
Nathan Smith; Gregory Browne; Parish Conkling; Naomi Friedman · OpenStax, Rice University
Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, Introduction to Philosophy surveys logic, metaphysics, epistemology, theories of value, and history of philosophy thematically. To provide a strong foundation in global philosophical discourse, diverse primary sources and examples are central to the design, and the text emphasizes engaged reading, critical thinking, research, and analytical skill-building through guided activities.