{"id":4,"date":"2021-11-15T21:38:32","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T21:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/?p=4"},"modified":"2021-11-23T17:30:05","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T17:30:05","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"front-matter","link":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/front-matter\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"raw":"

This is not a textbook. It does not explicitly introduce an academic discipline. It does not systematically describe subfields, theories, schools of thought, particular thinkers, or intellectual history. There are no biographical notes; there is no attention to historical context. There is no jargon. The style is breezy and conversational. If you are seeking \u201cinformation\u201d about philosophy, you will be disappointed.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

This is not a textbook; it might be a guidebook, or a handbook, but really it\u2019s a storybook. It introduces the idea of philosophy as a \u201cway of life,\u201d a way of living into a story <\/i>that unfolds through a sequence of questions: where are you, what\u2019s keeping you here, how to you get out, where are you going. The sequence repeats, and with each iteration, new layers may added to the story. There are variations on a theme. But the theme is simple, and the point of the repetition is not really to complicate the story: it is to burn the story into your brain. The point is to give you a narrative framework broad and strong enough to support the weight you will add if and when you start building a real knowledge of philosophy as a discipline. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

In a later course you might study \u201cutilitarianism,\u201d for example. You will have a place in your narrative framework to put \u201cutilitarianism.\u201d You will be better equipped to recognize where ideas go, to explain how they relate to one another. But you are not really trying to do that now. Think of this guidebook as a map to a territory full of features that you are not going to label yet. You\u2019ll encounter a few labels, here and there. But but your goal now is not to label things. Your goal is just to get your bearings, to get a basic sense for what is really at stake if and when you start to really<\/i> study philosophy. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

The questions have all kinds of technical formulations, as do their many competing answers. A traditional textbook might introduce those formulations. Here they are given simple, stylized forms, and they are organized into a structure that may, or may not, be the potential structure of a human life. The sequence of questions challenges you by offering choices. <\/i>It is a map of roads that lead in very different directions. Maybe the story of a human life does not have a true form; but the form of each life is the story of roads taken, and roads not taken.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The questions are posed and explored through an idiosyncratic and eclectic collection of material. The collection includes excerpts from great works of philosophy, like Plato\u2019s Republic, <\/i>but it also includes short stories and essays, and you\u2019ll watch a popular film (The Matrix<\/i>). <\/span><\/p>\r\n

Most of the actual work of \u201cdoing philosophy\u201d will take place not when you\u2019re reading the textbook, but when you\u2019re sitting in class, with your professor and your peers. That\u2019s as it should be. Socrates thought philosophy didn\u2019t even work if you wrote it down. He thought it only worked if it was a real-time conversation. The textbook is about<\/i> \u201cdoing philosophy.\u201d It can point you in a direction. But you\u2019re not really doing philosophy if you\u2019re just reading the textbook.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Chapters work like this: <\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n