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Books

Exploring Philosophy

Jerry Goodenough reviews a book for beginners by Brenda Almond.

Whatever other crises British philosophy may be going through, lack of interest amongst the young does not seem to be one of them. Those universities which still maintain philosophy departments continue to find bright-eyed young people queuing up, eager to dip a toe in the waters of wisdom despite the fact that philosophy is taught in hardly any of Britain’s schools and has a pretty minimal presence in our general cultural life (Philosophy Now excepted!). A regular stream of introductions and guides to philosophy for the new undergraduate/intelligent sixth-former continues to appear on the shelves of our bookshops. And, as if this wasn’t enough, a surprise bestseller of last year, both in Britain and in many other European countries, was a philosophical novel aimed at teenagers. Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World was a serious and apparently popular attempt to cater to what Gaarder regards as children’s natural interest in philosophical questions.

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