Is the "a very short introduction" series good for learning philosophy?

No he is not.

They are great if you want to familiarize yourself with stuff, but don't think you can be a philosopher without reading the underlying text. They are like turbo wiki pages. If you like it then you can dive in deeper. There's nothing wrong with familiarizing yourself with someone new but be humble and know you don't 'Know' it.

Thanks for the honest answer. So should I just think of secondary material as ancillary? It's a bit unfortunate, because you reach a certain point and every philosopher becomes hard to read.

Don’t listen to what anyone tells you about this kinda thing. Unless you’re writing academic essays on the topic, a short intro book will more than cover any conversations you have on Kant or any other philosopher. People that say otherwise are just gatekeeping snobs.

Depends on the author. The Kant and Hegel ones are more biographical than philosophical. But I liked the Heidegger one.

Simon Blackburn’s one on ethics is amazing, I teach philosophy and would use it as a textbook for an intro class for sure. It’s informative but also super well written

Depends on the author. Look at reviews for each book and try to find contents. Approaches and the areas actually covered vary greatly, some can't be accurately described as introductions.

Ive heard good things about Scrutons intro to Kant, but his intro to Spinoza is not extremely good. I cant speak on other books in the series, theres a bunch of different authors.

These pseuds say theyre no good, but theyre not supposed to replace actually reading a thinkers works, theyre just primers. Probably worth looking at if youre not familiar with the tradition

Because philosophy is hard. Engage directly with the texts, starting with Plato you fucking faggot.

Reading secondary texts is fine as long as it doesnt replace reading the works themselves. Also you should really start with the presocratics

Completely this. Especially with somebody like Kant whose writing is known for being overly verbose (he admitted as much himself).

I think they're great for refamiliarising yourself rather than as your first intro to them. I generally read the primary texts then secondary then intros whenever I need a refresher.

The Jung and Augustine ones are great, Hume and Nietzsche not so much.

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They're hit or miss depending on the author but more hit than miss.

Gary Gutting is a Foucault expert so his was a good overview.
One of the founders of 'history of emotions' did one on Pain, which I'm reading right now, and it's great as well.
The Critical Theory one was pretty shit from what I remember.
Singer did one on Marx and, say what you want about Singer's own philosophy, he's a great explainer.

They're a tier above wiki articles, however they're typically much more readable. You obviously shouldn't use them as a substitute if you want comprehensive knowledge, but they're great introductions. Make sure to check out the citations and suggested reading too.

The Hegel one by Singer is fantastic, one of the few commentaries that succeeds into translating the clusterfuck that is Hegelian thought into something cogent. Much better than just jumping into Hegel with no context.

As everyone else pointed out, these books are like Wikipedia articles for people with slightly above average intelligence. I haven't read any of the philosophy ones, but the four that I read ranged from mediocre to great. I highly recommend the mathematics one by Gowers.

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>but his intro to Spinoza is not extremely good
I’m not sure I agree with you there, trying to understand the convolutions of the Ethics of Spinoza and then making a clear and concise introduction for someone like me who finds him incomprehensible at times is worthy of some praise. But I don't claim to be an expert.

i got the one for psychoanalysis and i mean its really not useful. it didnt cover anything and i cant remember a single thing from it

I've read the Heidegger one, was good at explaining his terminology and made reading B&T easier.

>not starting with mythology

This

I've read the ones on Descartes, Kant, Locke, Hegel, Russell, and Heidegger. VSI's are great for establishing context of the philosopher's thought, but obviously don't give you the meat of the thought itself.

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