Book Review: An Introduction to Continental Philosophy by David West
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Before I start I have to mention why I wanted to read this book. It is important to read books exactly, but more important thing is that why you choose “the” book instead of another book. I will explain it. While I was planning to read this book, my aim was that I should know Continental Philosophy and what its philosophers cover roughly. Because I already study philosophy and psychology fields interconnectedly. Of course, there are also subfields that I study. However, I do not want to add unnecessary details to the text. I need to know what Continental Philosophers cover and which parts are related to my own subfields, and some other fields I planned to go over thereby I can see my way to study and I can draw a tree that represents my future plan in these topics. So the logic is to read this book basically like that. If you want to be informed, I highly recommend it.
Let’s start by looking at the book’s chapters. The book contains eight chapters. Roughly, you can find answers for these questions in the chapters: What are the differences between continental philosophy and analytic philosophy, how does enlightenment affect philosophy, what are the areas that contemporary philosophers are interested in and etc., also it involves commentaries about some notions and philosophers’ aspects in their own philosophies. I do not want to go into the topics that much, because in the contents part of the book you can see whole chapters clearly. The second feature of the book is that you can find a guider at the end of the chapters. It is a vital point for this kind of fragmental (not contains whole things but fragmans) books, because sometimes I can learn many things from these kinds of books but I cannot determine which way and which books should I follow to reach my own study fields. Therefore, these guiders are very beneficial to draw your own reading map. So go for it!
