Notes on Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Edward Craig: Reading Philosophy, #1

By Apprentice Philosopher

Philosophy is hard. Reading, that is, reading actively in order to truly expand one's understanding and then building this process into a lifelong reading habit is hard. Philosophy demands this kind of reading. Reading philosophy, therefore, is a difficult undertaking, but one that is eminently perfectible and enjoyable with the right kind of help. This book and books in this series aim to provide you with that help. This book is for you if you are deeply interested in philosophy and want to read systematically, but do not know where to begin. It is for you if you are looking for or will benefit from study materials to support and guide your reading process. It is for you if you are reading, have read, intend to read, or are curious and considering reading Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Edward Craig. This book is the first in a short reading course on the theme of "Survey of Modern Western Philosophy" that is part of our series, Reading Philosophy.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Reading Philosophy is designed to present study materials in a sequential fashion as short reading courses while also leaving room for the reader to follow their own interests and preferences. Taken as a whole, it will put the reader on a firm foundation of an introductory-level understanding of philosophy.

ABOUT APPRENTICE PHILOSOPHER: Apprentice Philosopher is the creator of original, engaging, and enriching educational content in philosophy. We aim to publish a wide range of meticulously researched and compiled and impeccably crafted study companions, research aids, and reference works for readers, students, teachers, scholars, and lovers of philosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apprentice Philosopher Books
• Release date: Mar 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224132898

Book preview

Introduction

A. Who this book is for.

This book is for you if you are deeply interested in philosophy and want to read systematically, but do not know where to begin. It is for you if you are looking for or will benefit from study materials to support and guide your reading process. It is for you if you are reading, have read, intend to read, or are curious and considering reading Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Edward Craig (henceforth, "Philosophy VSI or original book, and EC", respectively).

Can it be read without Philosophy VSI at hand? Absolutely. There is nothing preventing you from doing so. However, in that case, you are bound to realize for yourself that this book serves as a strong recommendation to go grab a copy or download an eBook edition of the original book and read it alongside this book. This book is not intended to supplant Philosophy VSI. It is intended to provide additional resources from a reader’s standpoint to get the most out of it, as well as to make it part of a longer systematic guided reading course (see About the Series, Reading Philosophy below). This book is best used if used in tandem with Philosophy VSI – more on this below.

Regardless of whether you have Philosophy VSI at hand, however, this book will be very useful for all students of philosophy at all levels of higher education. Beyond students, it will be valuable for all lovers of philosophy and autodidacts who have or want to develop a serious and sustainable active reading habit in this field.

B. Reading Philosophy.

Philosophy demands an active reading habit for it to yield any benefit at all, but both philosophy and active reading are difficult to get a grip on. Philosophy is inherently difficult because of its abstraction and distance from the mundane affairs of life. It is also inherently difficult because, as a rhetorical genre, philosophy has a non-narrative form. Now, saying philosophy is abstract and removed from quotidian life is absolutely not saying that it is irrelevant to life. On the contrary, nothing could be more fundamental and more big-picture than philosophy, especially for those with an abiding need to think and reflect for themselves. But it requires one to inhabit a certain frame of mind that takes one far away from the daily concerns of problem-solving and living.

It also takes one away from the kind of reading that most people do. As mentioned above, philosophy is non-narrative in terms of literary style and form. It does not tell a story but rather proceeds in terms of abstract conceptual and propositional reasoning and arguing. Of course, there are exceptions to this statement. Many classic works of philosophy, especially ancient philosophy, tell stories and parables and have a dramatic dialogic form with memorable characters. This is true of some early-modern scientific literature as well, notably Galileo’s writings. And the dialogic form occurs not only in ancient philosophy but also in early-modern philosophy, for instance, in Berkeley’s writings. But philosophical works quickly became predominantly non-narrative treatises even in ancient times, and modern and contemporary philosophy is overwhelmingly non-narrative.

All of this brings us to the question, why read philosophy? This question is best addressed through actually stepping into the process of reading philosophy and finding it out for oneself. That, after all, is the purpose of introductions, such as Philosophy VSI.

And then there are the questions, what kind of reading is philosophy in substantive and purposive terms, and how is it best read, what kind of reading process does it call for? You most likely have your own more or less tentative ideas in response to these questions. And so does every reader who is at this very moment browsing through or settled into making use of this book. There are a few irrefutable things, however, that we will all agree on. Philosophy is not easy reading. It demands active reading. It is not obviously pleasurable reading, though it is most certainly the kind of pleasure, an intellectual and spiritual pleasure, that grows and deepens with cultivation. It is theoretical reading, not directly applied, useful, practical, problem-solving, actionable advice, self-help, or therapy, even though some philosophers did think it could be turned and reduced in that direction, and even though there is a huge amount of philosophy that is the foundation and fount for all practical discourses.

Let us put aside these perennial open questions with this thought: Philosophy is the root of all things, and reading philosophy is about stepping back and trying to take in and grapple with the root of all things. It is, in this very essential sense, radical.

C. Active reading.

Most people who read and especially those who read for pleasure tend to quickly forget what they have read after the reading encounter is over. A quick and easy reading for pleasure is also quickly and easily forgotten, and this is just how it is intended to be. Those who read for information might retain it for a little while, especially if that information is to be of some practical use or implementation, but then it too is forgotten once the need is fulfilled or the implementation realized, although one could say it is remembered, figuratively speaking, in the form of that fulfilled need, habituation, or implementation.

It is commonly believed that the ease or difficulty of a text determines how well one remembers it. Easy to read is easy to remember, according to this common notion. We truly remember something, however, and especially works of philosophy and intellectual thought more broadly construed, when we truly understand them in the first place. They become easy in the sense of smoothly and solidly settled in our understanding: well-understood is easy.

Philosophical works lay out ideas and concepts, logical and conceptual arguments, not primarily facts, even though, of course, they present all sorts of historical and biographical information in the course of presenting their key ideas and arguments. The best way to engage and work with them and the lasting valuable takeaways from them are all in terms of increased proficient understanding of the ideas they present. For instance, superficially talking about how Hume is the one who wrote a greatly influential tract against belief in miracles will help one gather and regale a group at a cocktail party, but truly understanding and critically reflecting on his arguments against irrational belief is bound to change one as a person and that change will then be evident in one’s way of being and one’s life in a small or large measure. That is the true promise of philosophy, and humanistic thought more broadly construed.

But only if one does the work.

Active reading, that is, reading that actively engages our faculties of thinking, reasoning, learning, gaining proficiency, and so forth, as opposed to passively going along with a narrative plot or the progression of words on a page and fleetingly imbibing the information therein, is indispensable to reading works of philosophy, even basic introductory works such as Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. It is indispensable for building a lasting reading habit in philosophy.

But for both full-time students and lovers of philosophy, an active reading habit turns out to be a difficult problem to solve and taxing on their time and energy. Most people go through their whole lives without fully figuring it out and without having a truly rewarding reading life. Unfortunately, this is the case even for most full-time students and lovers of philosophy who are past their formal education.

It is not only challenging to create the time and space for active reading, it is also not obvious to the average person, student, or lover of reading what an active reading habit actually entails, despite the wealth of information available on the topic. This is because there is no one clearly defined method and process for reading that fulfills all aspects of active reading and works for all people at all times and in all fields, least of all philosophy, which is inherently difficult as mentioned above and the most challenging of all humanities subjects. Most people either do not develop any type of active reading method and go from book to book in a series of transient encounters, or are hobbled by a method that is suboptimal for them.

The ultimate goal of active reading can be clearly stated: to retain what you have read in the long term through having understood it wholly and thoroughly, and to gain a critical purchase on it and begin to develop your own ideas on the subject matter. The goal and test of active reading is proficiency in critical understanding of the contents, the thoughts, the ideas, the intellectual matter, of the book being read, in their discrete detail as well as in their integrated wholeness.

D. What this book provides.

This book does not promise to do that work for you. That would be a necessarily false promise. The indispensable component in active reading is the reader’s own mind and engaged attention. This book does provide you with multiple valuable handles on the original book in the form of a wealth of additional resources to aid deep understanding and long-term retention and recall.

It provides you with an analytical table of contents that clarifies the structure of the original book and provides a detailed multi-level outline and summary notes, a set of review questions, and a set of reflection questions that serve as writing prompts. These resources demonstrate in practice how much more you can glean from even a relatively easy introductory book about philosophy, such as Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, with the proper additional study resources.

Introductions are meant to provide the reader with illuminating bird’s eye views of the field or subject matter. When it comes to introductions to philosophy, however, they can at best only shine a few spotlights over a vast terrain. Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, written by Edward Craig, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, does this and more with great competence and charm that makes for informative and delightful reading. It is, however, the sort of reading that you are most likely to forget in the long run without a proper process of deep retention and understanding. The valuable study resources created and presented in this book will aid you with proper and proficient long-term critical comprehension of Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction.

This book is divided into three parts.

The first part is the Analytical Table of Contents for Philosophy VSI. Analytical tables of contents used to be a common feature of books in previous centuries. They provided additional annotations such as detailed articulations of the logical structure and content of a book, or summaries of each chapter, and so on. The Analytical Table of Contents for Philosophy VSI provides you with a wealth of annotations and summarizations that serve as a memory aid as well as an aid to understanding.

First, it gives you brief overviews of the main parts, the nine chapters, in the form of the key topic question addressed in each chapter and a brief statement of its approach and content. Second, it gives you a more refined and detailed articulation of the logical structure and content of the book in terms of sections inserted into the text. The original text contains twenty-one sections, six in Chapter 5, four in Chapter 7, four in Chapter 8, and seven in Chapter 9. In addition to these, we have inserted sixty-three new sections at clearly identifiable signposts and transition points, for a total of eighty-four sections. Each section is annotated with an informative heading and its key topic question (the headings of the sections in original text are repeated verbatim). Third, the Analytical Table of Contents provides illuminating annotations down at the paragraph level. Each paragraph is annotated with an informative heading or topic statement, which tells you what the paragraph is about, its essential idea.

Each paragraph is also summarized in simple terms. Rephrasing and summarizing is crucial for solidifying one’s understanding and gaining a firm grasp of the given content, which then enables a deeper reflective and critical engagement. It also has an aspect of repetition, which is a major principle of memorization, retention, and recall in the long run. These thumbnail summaries are the second part of the Analytical Table of Contents, with the first part being the annotated outline containing chapter and section annotations and paragraph headings or topic statements.

The Analytical Table of Contents gives a concise overview and map of Philosophy VSI as a whole, and enables the reader to see the whole contents at a glance along with its thematic and logical interconnectedness. It also a gives a detailed summarization to enable complete and solid comprehension and retention.

The second part of this book, Review Questions, provides a comprehensive list of questions for testing your understanding and recall during and after the reading. Review is another form of repetition and a crucial tool for solidifying one’s comprehension. The Review Questions aim at being exhaustive without being repetitive or simplistic.

The final part of this book is a list of Reflection Questions, which are designed to help you in stepping back and taking in the book as a whole and then reflecting on its key ideas and the interplay between them, and gaining some critical purchase on what Philosophy VSI has to say about philosophy, the questions it leaves you with, and so on. The reflection questions are designed to aid you in engaging reflectively and critically with the text material as a whole, so that you can deepen and widen your thinking further along the lines of thought and inquiry opened up by the reading. They are designed to aid you in seeing the interconnections and cross references throughout the original book and to begin to reflect independently on the themes and insights gleaned from the reading. Such critical reflection is best done in the form of writing assignments, so the reflection questions also serve as writing prompts for micro essays.

All the material in this book is organized and presented entirely sequentially in terms of chapters, sections, and paragraphs as per the layout of the original book. Note that the sequential numbering of the sections and paragraphs is continuous, that is, it does not reset with each chapter. In all, there are nine chapters, eighty-four sections, and three hundred and four paragraphs in Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Edward Craig.

The study materials in this book and others to follow in this series (see About the Series, Reading Philosophy below) will help you build a solid introductory-level understanding of philosophy and will become the indispensable material, tools, and scaffolding with which you can build your active reading habit in philosophy, and works of intellectual thought more broadly construed, whether you are a full-time student or a lifelong lover of philosophy and reading.

If you are one of the select few who do have a well-honed active reading habit, then this book will be a valuable resource and companion for you by doing the legwork, providing the building blocks, and serving