When the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus
declared “Everything changes!” he could have been
speaking of our own era. What word could characterize our time better than the world “change”?
New fashions, fads, styles, technologies, and philosophies now supplant each other in ever shorter periods of time. Many believe that the increasing pace
of change has profound implications for philosophy. Whether or not this is so, rapid change forces
revisions of a more mundane kind in textbooks on
philosophy such as this. So although Philosophy: A
Text with Readings continues to excite readers about
philosophy, changes in philosophy and in the world
we inhabit necessitate revising the text.