LibGuides: Philosophy (General): Home

Introduction

The academic study of philosophy is not only a historic discipline, but can also be divided into a variety of fields including metaphysics, epistemology, politics, ethics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy of mind, and more. Given the depth and breadth of philosophy as a discipline, scholars of philosophy often study aspects of other disciplines and as such the collections and resources for fields such as Classics, Literature, Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Politics, and History may be of interest. Conversely, readers in other departments may often find themselves engaging with the philosophy collection and supporting resources.

Writing a philosophy paper

If you need help writing a philosophy paper, please take advantage of the following resources:

Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper
Guidelines on writing a philosophy paper compiled by Jim Pryor (UNC Chapel Hill)
Writing Center (Brown University)
Brown's Writing Center provides individual and group writing support free of charge to any member of the Brown community. Writing Center associates assist students with all stages of the writing process, from finding a topic through drafting, revising and final editing.

Using this Guide

This is by no means a comprehensive guide to all the resources available for the study of philosophy. However, this guide does contain many carefully curated resources that can serve as entry points to philosophical study. The menu on the left hand side of this guide can be used to navigate the resources available here. All these resources are grouped by the following:

Reference Sources: Background information generally comes from reference sources, which provide a scholarly discussion that summarizes and synthesizes secondary sources. These sources provide important background and contextual information on your subject. Reference sources include bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks. You can use this type of source to help narrow your research topic, find data to support your thesis, and identify keywords and main ideas to use as search terms.
Secondary sources - A secondary source is a scholarly discussion based on primary sources. Typically, a secondary source contains original research. Secondary sources include articles, blogs, books, lectures, podcasts, and scientific reports. Secondary sources are useful for in-depth analysis of your topic and for learning about scholarly perspectives on your topic.
Primary sources - A primary source is a document, image, artifact, or dataset that provides first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning the object of research. Primary sources may include, but are not limited to, artwork, correspondence, diaries, interviews, literary texts, material artifacts, newspapers, speeches, statistics, and videos. Primary sources are useful for providing evidence on your topic.