What's the Point of Philosophy?

Many of the topics are great and what is to be expected for an intro book into classical philosophy aimed at kids. Unfortunately, the book is also marred by the recent wokeism. Examples include: a non-traditional family (pic on p. 27), "eating meat is bad", implied Malthusianism, a timeline of philosophers that incorporates, along with the philosophy greats, a number of contemporary never-heard-of individuals with no real legacy. I used this book to read together with my 9-year old and explaining things as we went along, including pointing out the weirdness and wokeism as encountered.

I’m an 11-year-old kid using my dad’s Amazon account to write this review. I got “What’s the Point of Philosophy? at the library.Have you ever wondered why we study philosophy in the first place? Do you like to ask challenging questions? This fun and educational book is full of challenging questions and what philosophers through history have thought about these same questions and how they looked for better answers.The organization, layout, bright colors and illustrations make this book very approachable for people of all ages. This book helps you learn just enough about philosophy from some of the main philosophers from around the world to figure out which ones you want to study. The questions in this book are often left unanswered because this book is encouraging readers to learn how to think more clearly and learn from philosophers who might come to conclusions that the reader may agree or disagree with. Some readers might wish the book included more conclusions and results. This book also doesn’t include a a step-by-step way to do philosophy. The author’s main goal seems to be to get beginners interested in philosophy and I think the book accomplished that.After reading this book I walked away with a few fun conversational questions such as, “Is a chair still a chair if you use it as a hat?” or “Since a river is constantly changing, can you ever stand in the same river twice?”This is my first book that I’ve read about philosophy and since it was really useful and easy to understand I’m going to give it 4 out of 5 stars.We study philosophy so that we can ask better questions, think more clearly and try to solve some of life’s impossible questions and I think this book covers all three.

I studied philosophy in college and have an undergrad in it. I homeschool now and was trying to get a sense of if this book would fit into our educational needs. The layout of the book is really attractive, and it covers Eastern and Western philosophies. If you’re looking for a resource that presents the ideas of those philosophies, I think this would work really well. If you’re looking for a resource to walk kids through how to do philosophy and discern truth, I don’t think this will fit your needs.