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Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series

Brian Leiter

A graduate student writes:

Apropos this post on your blog about Peter Singer's Marx: A Very Short Introduction. I wonder which titles relevant in philosophy in the same series are the best ones to read? Or maybe which titles to avoid? (Maybe Simon Critchley's Continental Philosophy?) Perhaps you and the readers of the blog could suggest some?

The Critchley volume in that series is also weak and should be avoided.   The only other volume I know on a philosophical figure is the one on Nietzsche by Michael Tanner, which also cannot be recommended.  (This book will be the best competent and genuinely introductory book on Nietzsche, when it finally appears–the book was finished more than a year ago, but the publisher has been dragging its feet–I gather it will be out this year.)   I've read a number of books in the series, but not on philosophical topics:  some seem quite good, others a bit flaky.  Readers familiar with philosophy titles, please weigh in with volumes you would recommend as worth reading as introductions:  full name in the signature line please, and a valid e-mail address, which will not appear.  Submit your comment only one, it may take awhile to appear.

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20 responses to “Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series”

  1. Tyron Goldschmidt

    Jennifer Nagel’s ‘Knowledge’ book in the series is excellent.

    Reply
  2. Tyron Goldschmidt

    And another excellent book in the series is David DeGrazia's 'Animal Rights'. (Sorry for the separate comments. Those are the only ones I've read. So no more from me.)

    Reply
  3. Susanna Siegel

    Nagel's *Knowledge* is fantastic, and so is Hobson's *Dreaming*. The one on behavioral economics isn't bad either, useful for philosophers interested in that dimension of phil psych.

    Reply
  4. Bill Rapaport

    My favorite is Okasha's Philosophy of Science

    Reply
  5. Murray Gregorson

    Graham Priest's volume on Logic is, indeed, a very short but very good introduction. David Miller's on Political Philosophy also does what it's supposed to do.

    Reply
  6. Dylan Sims

    It seems to me that, when it comes to non-historical entries in philosophy, i.e. entries structured around a topic or area and not around a historical figure or movement, bad titles may be exceptions to the rule. In general, I’ve been fairly impressed by the entries like this in the series. I thought the following titles were all pretty well done and worth reading:

    Metaphysics by Stephen Mumford
    Causation by Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum
    Philosophy of Religion by Tim Bayne
    Thought by Tim Bayne
    The Philosophy of Science by Samir Okasha
    Miracles by Yujin Nagasawa
    Political Philosophy by David Miller
    Philosophy of Law by Raymond Wacks
    Utilitarianism by Lazari-Radek and Singer
    Happiness by Daniel M. Haybron
    Ethics by Simon Blackburn
    Knowledge by Jennifer Nagel
    Logic by Graham Priest

    (Note: I’m not claiming these books work really well as introductions. I was usually familiar with the topic before I read these and so it’s hard to judge how helpful they would be to a beginner. I’m just claiming they are worth reading at some point if you’re interested in the topic they treat.)

    I’d love to hear some opinions about the historical titles from historians.

    Reply
  7. Brian Leiter

    I'd forgotten that Gordon Finlayson's Habermas introduction is in this series: that is a good volume and can be recommended.

    Reply
  8. David Dudrick

    Gary Gutting's volume on Foucault is not only the best introduction to Foucault's work, but is also beautifully written. It's a gem.

    Reply
  9. Martin Lenz

    I'd recommend John Marenbon's introduction to medieval philosophy and Peter Adamson's introduction to philosophy in the Islamic world.

    Reply
  10. Matt Lister

    I also liked the Finlayson volume on Habermas and Gutting's volume on Foucault. With the Foucault volume, I used parts of it when teaching _Discipline and Punish_ to law students, most of whom had very little background in philosophy or social theory, and they, too, found is very helpful.

    Another one that I liked a lot is John Dunn's volume on Locke. (Like many of the older volumes on philosophy in the series, it's a re-packaged version of the text originally published as part of Oxford's _Past Masters_ series.) It's a fairly idiosyncratic approach to Locke, I think, but I found it interesting and useful to see all of Locke's philosophy approached via his moral and political thought, rather than taking his epistemology to be central. It's obviously not the only way one can think about Locke, but I found it to be pretty useful and interesting, bringing out aspects of his larger philosophy that often seem to me to be ignored or pushed into the background.

    Reply
  11. Blinn Combs

    I thoroughly enjoyed Andrew Clapham's short volume on Human Rights.

    Reply
  12. Russell Blackford

    I've found Julian Baggini's book on Atheism useful, and likewise Stephen Law's on Humanism. In both cases, though, I'm sympathetic to the approaches. By contrast, I thought Thomas Pink's volume on Free Will was weak and too quirky. That might be because I'm out of sympathy with the author's substantive views, but I also think that he misrepresents the state of the debate, so I couldn't recommend it to a beginner. The volume on Law by Raymond Wacks seems very good to me (he also did the Philosophy of Law volume, which also seems good). I recently read Jennifer Gidley's volume on The Future – this contains some useful information in the opening chapters but then becomes flaky.

    Reply
  13. Dylan Sims

    No judgments about their quality, but here’s a list of the more historical philosophy titles:

    Pre-socratic Philosophy by Catherine Osborne
    Socrates by C.C.W. Taylor
    Plato by Julia Annas
    Aristotle by Jonathan Barnes
    Ancient Philosophy by Julia Annas
    Stoicism by Brad Inwood
    Epicureanism by Catherine Wilson

    Augustine by Henry Chadwick
    Aquinas by Fergus Kerr
    Medieval Philosophy by John Marenbon
    Islamic Philosophy by Peter Adamson

    Machiavelli by Quentin Skinner
    Hobbes by Richard Tuck
    Descartes by Tom Sorell
    John Locke by John Dunn
    Leibniz by Maria Rosa Antognassa
    Spinoza by Roger Scruton
    Adam Smith by Christopher J. Berry
    Hume by Ayer
    The Enlightenment by John Robertson
    Voltaire by Nicholas Cronk
    Rousseau by Robert Wokler
    Tocqueville by Harvey Mansfield
    Liberalism by Michael Freeden

    German Philosophy by Andrew Bowie
    Kant by Roger Scruton
    Hegel by Singer
    Marx by Singer
    Engels by Terrell Carver
    Schopenhauer by Christopher Janaway
    Nietzsche by Michael Tanner
    Kierkegaard by Patrick Gardiner

    Analytic Philosophy by Michael Beaney
    Russell by Ayer
    Wittgenstein by Grayling

    Continental Philosophy by Simon Critchley
    Existentialism by Thomas Flynn
    Hermeneutics by Jens Zimmermann
    Heidegger by Inwood
    Foucault by Gary Gutting
    Derrida by Simon Glenndenning
    Critical Theory by Stephen Eric Bronner
    Habermas by Gordon Finlayson

    Confucianism by Daniel Gardner
    Indian Philosophy by Sue Hamilton
    Buddhist Ethics by Damien Keown

    Reply
  14. Mona El-Ghobashy

    Quentin Skinner on Machiavelli and Julia Annas on Ancient Philosophy.

    Reply
  15. Prabhu Venkataraman

    Kierkegaard by Patrick Gardiner

    Reply
  16. Sam

    Speaking as an amateur:

    I liked John Marenbon's Medieval Philosophy VSI very much, and suspect it would pass anyone's muster as quite good.

    I also liked Scruton's introductions to Spinoza and Beauty.

    I did not enjoy Peter Adamson's one on Islamic Philosophy. It's probably a fine resource – just not, for me, fun to read – but honestly if you google History of Islamic Philosophy a bunch of good links come up.

    Reply
  17. Peter Wendt

    Another amateur, with about 130 VSI volumes. I've read many volumes listed or recommended here – some in full, some not. Generally, I love the series.

    If you scan a candidate volume for clarity, and look for good standard scholarly etiquette – acknowledgements, reference citations with primary sources, preface, etc. – you should be OK. Critchley and Tanner do not acknowledge any reviewers and avoid bibliographic citations for primary sources. This is a bad sign. I bought many a VSI because the author mentioned the difficulty of covering the subject completely, fairly, and clearly in a small book – this was such a good indicator of a good read that it was funny.

    Fortunately, the scope of the series is so large that there are workarounds for bad volumes. Socialism, Utopianism, and Anarchism instead of Marxism. Instead of Continental Philosophy, try the volumes Critical Theory, Existentialism, and Postmodernism.

    My amateur opinions correlate with the other recommendations here, so a grad student should feel comfortable with the volumes. I particularly liked the VSI's on Utilitarianism, Habermas, and Foucault, thought Logic was very good, and got partway through Metaphysics, thinking it was very well written.

    Reply
  18. N Krishna

    I agree with many of the recommendations above (in particular, the Gutting). Of the ones not yet mentioned, I think very highly of Edward Craig's Philosophy (!) — surely the hardest one of all to write. It manages to find room for both ahistorical discussions of problems and for detailed discussions of particular historical figures (Descartes and, improbably, Hegel) in their context. It also contains a discussion, far from tokenistic, of the Milinda Panha, an important but accessible text in Buddhist philosophy. The diversity of coverage makes it clearly superior, in my eyes, to the two (also good) books with which it's most readily compared: Thomas Nagel's What does it all mean, and Simon Blackburn's Think.

    Reply
  19. Jonny McIntosh

    Unlike Russell Blackford above, I really *do* like Tom Pink's Free Will. It takes a particular line, one to which one might not be sympathetic, but it's a lovely book. I think it functions all the better as an introduction for picking a side. Rowland Stout's Action – another wonderful introduction, though not a VSI – is similar in this respect. Sticking to the VSI range, I think Scruton's Kant and Priest's Logic are both marvellous, and Nagel's Knowledge stands out as one of the few good introductions to epistemology. I was also impressed recently by a quick read of Singer and de Lazari-Radek's Utilitarianism.

    Reply
  20. Alison Stone

    Bssed on Dylan's list above, it seems that amongst the more historical titles there are none on any women philosophers. Can that possibly be right?

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