Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (November 2005)

How ought we to live?

What really exists?

How do we know?

This lively and engaging book is the ideal introduction for anyone who has ever been puzzled by what philosophy is or what it is for. Edward Craig argues that philosophy is not an activity born from another planet: learning about it is just a matter of broadening and deepening what most of us do already. He shows that philosophy is no mere intellectual pastime: thinkers such as Plato, Buddhist writers, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Hegel, Darwin, Mill and de Beauvoir were responding to real needs and events — much of their work shapes our lives today and many of their concerns are still ours.

About the Narrator: Maurice West was born in Croydon (a borough of London, England), attended John Ruskin Grammar School and won an Open Scholarship to Cambridge University where he read English. After graduating, he toyed with the idea of becoming an actor and even gained a place at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art. But unable to secure another grant, and wary of the precarious nature of the acting profession, he eventually found himself involved with local amateur theatre. For most of his adult life he has taught English to foreign students His first recording for Naxos AudioBooks was Fielding's Tom Jones which won the Voice of the Year competition organized by Naxos AudioBooks and The Times.