Abstract

This is a delightful book, a lively and thoroughly engaging survey of what some of the great Western philosophers have said about the nature, aims, and proper conduct of thought. Its intended audience is the general educated reader and the novice philosopher. Among Govier's selections are some obvious choices—Socrates, Descartes, Kant, and Wittgenstein—and some less obvious ones, such as Wollstonecraft and Beauvoir. Her concluding chapter takes up what she calls "contemporary voices": artificial intelligence research, the critical thinking-informal logic movement, deconstruction, and feminist epistemology.