PHI 1301-Philosophy and the Ethical Life: Home

This guide is tailored to help you find resources for Philosophy 1301: Philosophy and the Ethical Life. Each tab highlights different resources to help you research the works studied in this class. 

Utilize the Boolean operators detailed in the graph on the right in your searches to optimize results. Tipasa Interlibrary Loan, linked below, can be used to access any books not in our collections. Also linked below is the homepage to RefWorks, where you can create a free account with your UD credentials. RefWorks will create citations for you, and keep them organized in one place. 

Boolean operators are a handy tool that can widen or narrow the range of your results. These can be used in any database or catalog with an Advanced Search, and multiple operators can be utilized in one search.

Using AND in between two or more keywords in a search will produce results that have both terms in their titles, authors, abstracts, or subject. For example, searching "Plato" AND "The Republic" will only give you results that have mentions of both Plato and The Republic in their details. This is helpful for doing focused searches.

Using OR in between keywords in a search will produce results that have either term in their titles, authors, abstracts, or subjects. For example, searching "Aristotle" OR "Nicomachean Ethics" will return results of items that have either of those terms. This is handy for doing wide range searches at the beginning of your research.

Using NOT in an advanced search in between two or more keywords will exclude the keyword following NOT. NOT is also great to use in conjunction with other Boolean operators. For example, if you are searching for The Republic by Plato and do not want results on Allegory of the Cave, you can use advanced search for "Plato" AND "The Republic" NOT "Allegory of the Cave." This will produce results that are specifically about The Republic and Plato, and will filter out all mentions of Allegory of the Cave.