Philosophy: History & Problems

This text brings together Stumpf's and Fieser's SOCRATES TO SARTRE AND BEYOND, Seventh Edition (2003) and PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS, Fifth Edition (2003) in one hardcover volume. It offers an accessible historical survey of philosophical ideas and a wealth of primary source readings at an excellent value.

Samuel Enoch Stumpf was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Emeritus Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University prior to his death in 1998, at the age of eighty. He earned a B.S. in Business and Finance from the University of California at Los Angeles, a B.D. in Theology from Andover Newton Theological School, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. He joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1948 and served as Chair of the Philosophy Department from 1952 to 1967. After a five-year term as President of Cornell College, Professor Stumpf returned to Vanderbilt, where he remained until his retirement in 1984. Professor Stumpf’s publications include Democratic Manifesto (1954), Morality and the Law (1966), and four McGraw-Hill textbooks: Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy (1966; 6th ed., posthumous, 1999); Philosophical Readings: Selected Problems (1971; 4th ed., 1994); Philosophy: History and Problems (1971; 5th ed., 1994); and Elements of Philosophy: An Introduction (1979; 3rd ed., 1993).

James Fieser is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University’s Department of Philosophy (1983, 1986). He has published articles on the topics of the philosophy of religion, rights theory, environmental ethics, moral skepticism, David Hume, and Thomas Aquinas. He has created several World Wide Web sites in philosophy, including the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.