Selecting course materials has become much a much more challenging problem in recent years.  As your bookstore manager will tell you, the cost of books has risen dramatically. Textbooks in other subjects frequently cost hundreds of dollars, and the most popular introductory anthologies in philosophy are almost that much.  As a result, students are refusing to buy the assigned books, and with the rise of LLMs may think they don't need to. In this selection we talk primarily about more mainstream course materials.  See also our collection of Non-traditional Resources  (films, novels, etc.).

 

• Trade paperbacks. Most of the classic texts used in intro courses are available in (relatively) inexpensive editions from publishers such as Hackett, MacMillan and Penguin.

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• Course Management Software. With the cost of textbooks going sky high, many faculty members are teaching textless classes, putting all of the material on the classroom management system (such as BlackBoard). There is a great deal of material that is either public domain, on a website, or that can be used under existing copyright laws (which you need to understand). The advantage is that the material is there as the students need it.  The disadvantage is that students often have to print out material, so they may not have the material available during class time.  Or they need to read the document over their laptop or phone, which can cause other problems.

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• Create your own homegrown anthology/Open Educational Resources. Many experienced instructors simply create their own anthologies using materials that are either public domain or covered under fair use and combining it with material they have written themselves. Although it can be a great exercise to create your own customized book for your course, many people have already created Open Educational Resource-based text books for a variety of courses. Open Educational Resource based textbooks are completely free for uses, and can often be modified by the user. Here are some OER resources:

  • BC Press OER materials in philosophy

  • OER resources for philosophy collected by the Open Educational Resources Initiative

  • Iowa State University has a nice collection of OER materials for philosophy

  • ​Lander University publishes a solid web-based introductory anthology using historical sources

  • MERLOT is another repository that houses OER-based textbooks in a variety of disciplines, including philosophy

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• Free Logic Software

One reason to have students purchase a logic text book is so that they (and you) can take advantage of the accompanying logic software. There are a couple free logic softwares that TP101 is aware of. If you know of more, please email us.

 

​Logicola: The software logicola, developed by Harry Gensler, is free to download, although it is meant to accompany his Introduction to Logic text book. Gensler's textbook is relatively cheap, however an instructor could use the software without the textbook. The system is great for teaching categorical logic and this can be down without any specific text book. His propositional inference system is somewhat idiosyncratic, but again, it could be taught without relying directly on his textbook. Although Gensler has passed away, a student of Gensler has created a web-based version of Logicola here. There is also a free downloadable version of the software that must be installed on one's computer here.

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Carnap: This is a system for teaching propositional logic developed by folks at University of Kansas. It is an open source software, meaning it is modifiable, and overall it's a good system. It takes a bit to learn to type to get the formatting just write for typing in well formed formulas, but overall it's a nice system. 

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• Anthologies. Many instructors use commercial anthologies, we list some of the more popular ones below. 

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• Latin American Philosophy. With more and more Latin American students enrolled in our courses and with the growing importance of the Spanish speaking world, it is worthwhile looking at Latin American materials. This Latin American Philosophy Homepage is a good place to start.

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• Jonathan Bennett's EarlyModernTexts.  TΦ101 strongly recommends all intro instructors to seriously consider Bennett's internet source for classical early modern texts including Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Mill.  Our detailed discussion below makes clear some of the pros and cons of this site. 

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• Contemporary Plato translations.  Many of the on-line translations of Plato are outdated (e.g., Jowett's translations).  Cathal Woods has published contemporary Internet open-source translations of Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, and the Death Scene from Phaedo.  Woods also has a translation of selections from Republic. Students can use these at no cost. The Foundation for Platonic Studies provides new, freely available English versions of Plato translated by David Horan. Horan is the first since Jowett to translate Plato's complete corpus, which is freely available on the website. Regarding Horan's translation of the Republic, Richard Polt says that "On the whole, Horan’s translation holds its own in this now-crowded field. It should work very well for the typical college classroom, presenting a Republic that is clear and accessible, but that still challenges readers to transform their souls". See Horan's review in Teaching Philosophy here.​​

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• Web sources.  There is now a great deal of excellent contemporary material that is available on the Internet.  Unfortunately, there is a great deal of pirated material on the Internet.  This raises an ethical dilemma for instructors who ask their students to read this material.   TΦ101 has discussed this with an intellectual property attorney, and as TΦ101 understands it, the obligation to obtain permission for reproducing the material lies with the person who creates the website.  The professor who requires students to consult such a website is not legally liable. At the same time, we should respect intellectual property. TΦ101 is not your lawyer and does not give any legal advice, so you should confirm this with your own institution's general counsel. 

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• Coursepacks and custom anthologies.  There are a number of sources, such as XanEdu, that will take your material, obtain copyright permission, and produce a custom coursepack or book.  Proteus produces custom anthologies primary source texts. Check with your bookstore or local copy centers for details.   

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• Obtain permission.  Obtaining permission to reprint material is actually rather easy, and the Copyright Clearance Center will also do this for you.  Sometimes permission is available at no cost, but often there will be a fee. It is probably not a good idea to be selling materials in your classroom, but your bookstore will sell the materials for you and handle all of the paperwork. 

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• Audio philosophy texts.  Librivox is a source for audio recordings of public domain material. They have recordings of Plato, Hume, Kant, etc. We understand that the recording and reading quality is uneven; those who wish to make recordings may also do so on a volunteer basis.

 

Detailed Discussion:

 

Early Modern Texts by Jonathan Bennett

 

As you will see, Bennett's site offers versions of classic early modern texts, including many used in typical intro courses. Bennett's theory is that these materials are intellectually difficult enough for students, without also asking intro students to wrestle with such obstacles as "difficulties of syntax, length and complexity of sentences, words that are no longer current, still-familiar words used in meanings that they now do not have, [and] arcane references to other philosophers which today’s students will seldom understand or be required to follow up."  In the case of the English texts, he has modernized the originals while attempting to preserve their meaning and philosophical complexity, and he has produced free translations of the non-English texts.  Obviously Bennett's project raises serious pedagogic and methodological questions, and only a scholar of Bennett's reputation would have dared to do this. Some critics say that a text cannot be divorced from its original language, and a student who reads Bennett's Hobbes, for example, is reading Bennett rather than Hobbes.  Others agree with Bennett that much of the language and style is a distraction and students will learn more if they can read a modernized version.  Bennett's translations of non-English texts are particularly worth considering. The English language classics are, after all, available on the Internet, but the non-English texts are only available in antiquated translations.

 

Several faculty members have attempted to do some informal experiments to see how students react to Bennett's texts.  John Immerwahr gave his intro students a passage of philosophy that they had never seen as an extra credit question on their final examination, and asked them to rewrite it in their own words.  Half received the original version (from Hobbes) and the other half received Bennett's version.  Without having an opportunity to compare versions, the students were more likely to say that the Hobbes original was difficult to read.  However, they did equally well in understanding it.  Another faculty member in an e course on early modern philosophy gave one section the original text, and another section the Bennett version and found much higher comprehension among those who worked with Bennett.  This implies that, under ideal conditions (plenty of time, and high motivation), students can understand the original without the benefit of Bennett's rewriting.  But given the distractions and pressures of students' daily lives, they may do better if their text is more readable. Below we offer some a comparative passage to give a sense of how Bennett works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Popular Anthologies.   This list was generated from Amazon.   TΦ101 searched for books under the keywords "philosophy, introduction, textbook," and then sorted the results by "bestseller."  These were drawn from the top 100 responses to that search (most of which were not intro philosophy texts), adding one or two others that didn't come up for some reason or other.  They are listed here alphabetically by title.  If  you have an anthology that you like, or if you have something useful to say about one of these, please send us the name and author with a few sentences about your views. 

 

• Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy by Douglas J. Soccio

• Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughan

• Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings by John Perry and Michael Bratman

• Logic and Philosophy: A Modern Introduction by Alan Hausman, Howard Kahane, and Paul Tidman

• Classics of Western Philosophy, ed. Stephen M. Cahn

• Philosophic Classics: From Plato to Derrida (5th Edition) (Philosophic Classics) by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann

• Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering by James L. Christian

• Philosophy: The Quest for Truth by Louis P. Pojman

• Questions that Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy by Ed L. Miller, and Jon Jensen

• Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy  by Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau

• Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy by G. Lee Bowie, Meredith W. Michaels, and Robert C. Solomon

• The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy by Norman Melchert

• Voyage of Discovery: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy by William F. Lawhead

 

Author: John Immerwahr
Update: 10/31/2025--David Sackris