- A History of Philosophy (Copleston)
A History of Philosophy is an eleven-volume
history ofWestern philosophy , written by EnglishJesuit priest Frederick Charles Copleston, SJ.Copleston's History provides extensive coverage of Western philosophy from the Pre-Socratics through Dewey, Russell, Moore, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. The first nine volumes, originally published between
1946 and1974 , were written for Catholicseminary students with the goal "of supplying Catholicecclesiastical seminaries with a work that should be somewhat more detailed and of wider scope than the textbooks, commonly in use, and which at the same time should endeavor to exhibit the logical development and interconnection of philosophical systems." A tenth volume was added in1986 , and the eleventh is actually a collection of essays, which appeared in1956 as "Contemporary Philosophy".Throughout the eleven volumes, Copleston'sRoman Catholic (Thomist ) point of view is never hidden. All the same, it seems generally accepted that Copleston's treatment is fair and complete, even for philosophical positions that he does not support. Copleston's work has arguably come to represent the finest and most complete summary of Western philosophy now available. Onecaveat for readers of a lesser erudition than Copleston himself is that most quotes from original works (in Greek, Latin, German, and French) are left untranslated.ummary of contents
The following is a summary of contents (not a full table of contents) for the eleven volumes:
Volume 1: Greece and Rome
*
Pre-Socratic philosophy
* The Socratic period
*Plato
*Aristotle
* Post-Aristotelian philosophyVolume 2: Augustine to Scotus
* Pre-mediaeval Influences (including St. Augustine)
* TheCarolingian Renaissance
* The Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Centuries
* Islamic and Jewish Philosophy
* TheThirteenth Century (including St. Thomas Aquinas andDuns Scotus )Volume 3: Ockham to Suarez
* The
Fourteenth Century (includingWilliam of Ockham )
* Philosophy of theRenaissance (includingFrancis Bacon )
*Scholasticism of the Renaissance (includingFrancisco Suárez )Volume 4: Descartes to Leibniz
*
René Descartes
*Blaise Pascal
*Baruch Spinoza
*Gottfried Leibniz Volume 5: Hobbes to Hume
*
Thomas Hobbes
*John Locke
*Isaac Newton
*George Berkeley
*David Hume Volume 6: Wolff to Kant
* The French Enlightenment (including
Jean-Jacques Rousseau )
* The German Enlightenment
* The Rise of the History of Philosophy (includingGiambattista Vico andVoltaire )
*Immanuel Kant Volume 7: Fichte to Nietzsche
*
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
*Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
*Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
*Arthur Schopenhauer
*Karl Marx
*Søren Kierkegaard
*Friedrich Nietzsche Volume 8: Bentham to Russell
* British
Empiricism (includingJohn Stuart Mill andHerbert Spencer )
* The Idealist Movement inGreat Britain (including Francis Herbert Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet)
*Idealism in America (includingJosiah Royce )
* The Pragmatist Movement (including Charles Sanders Peirce,William James , andJohn Dewey )
* The Revolt Against Idealism (includingGeorge Edward Moore andBertrand Russell )Volume 9: Maine de Biran to Sartre
* From the
French Revolution toAuguste Comte (includingMaine de Biran )
* From August Comte toHenri Bergson
* From Henri Bergson toJean-Paul Sartre (includingMaurice Merleau-Ponty )Volume 10: Russian Philosophy
*
Ivan Kireevsky , Peter Lavrov, and other Russian philosophers
* Philosophy in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
* Religion and Philosophy: Vladimir Solovyov
* Plekhanov, Bogdanov, Lenin andMarxism
*Nikolai Berdyaev and other philosophers in exileVolume 11: Logical Positivism and Existentialism
Included as Volume 11 in the Continuum edition, this is actually a collection of essays, which appeared in 1956 as "Contemporary Philosophy". It covers
Logical Positivism andExistentialism .References
cite book
last = Copleston
first = Frederick
authorlink = Frederick Copleston
coauthors =
title = A History of Philosophy
publisher =Continuum
date = 1946-1975
location = Great Britain
url =
doi =
isbn = 0-8264-6948-5
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