This text provides an introduction to philosophy as it is studied in the English spoken language. It is intended both for the interested lay reader and for anyone faced with the realities of academic philosophy and in need of guidance, reassurance, and a sense of why the subject matters. The authors guide the reader through the most central and important questions of philosophy; the nature of existence, knowledge, freedom, God, morality, politics, science, reason and human purpose. This edition includes two new chapters on Life and Death and Marx and Marxism. Jenny Teichman is the author of The Mind and the Soul, Illegitimacy, Pacificsm and the Just War and Philosophy of the Mind