LibGuides: Philosophy and Political Theory: Get Started in Philosophy

Featured Books

These are a few good books to get you started in Philosophy. There are further recommendations and resources throughout the rest of the guide!

Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Donald M. Borchert
Call Number: B51.E53 (REFERENCE)
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy by Ted Honderich (Editor)
ISBN: 9780199264797
Publication Date: 2005
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Sunzi)
A classic of Eastern Philosophy.
The Republic by Plato
A classic of Greek Philosophy.
Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
A classic of Continental philosophy.

Philosophy Reference Websites

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy website: "The purpose of the IEP is to provide detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. The Encyclopedia’s articles are written with the intention that most of the article can be understood by advanced undergraduates majoring in philosophy and by other scholars who are not working in the field covered by that article. The IEP articles are written by experts but not for experts in analogy to the way the Scientific American magazine is written by scientific experts but not primarily for scientific experts."
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Searchable and browseable encyclopedia for ideas, works, and philosophers. Each entry on the site is reviewed by editors before being made public, and edits are made to the content as needed.
Ask Philosophers
From the Ask Philosophers website: "This site puts the talents and knowledge of philosophers at the service of the general public. Send in a question that you think might be related to philosophy and we will do our best to respond to it. To date, there have been 4878 questions posted and 6129 responses."

Philosophy in the Public Domain

Much of studying philosophy is reading Philosophers in their own words. Most of the original works by Philosophers are in the public domain (pre-1923). Generally, reprintings after that date have a new translation, or new introduction, that gives them a new copyright.

You can get access to a number of public domain books online through a few different sources:

Alaska Digital Library provides access to thousands of titles in the public domain. These are e-publications you can download and they will never expire.
Project Gutenberg also offers free e-books, both from self-publishing authors, and from the public domain. These books can also be downloaded without expiring.

For help with either of these last two resources, check out our UAS e-books guide.

Google Books has had its ups and downs, and many books within copyright are partially available, with pages missing. Public domain books tend to be more fully available. You can use this Google Books search box to find some results right now!