|
| Login | Sign up | Settings | My Wish List |
![]() | A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell ISBN-10: 9780671201586 ISBN-10: 0-671-20158-1 ISBN-13: 9780671201586 ISBN-13: 978-0-671-20158-6 Paperback 1967 Touchstone Find Lowest Price | |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Since its first publication in 1945? Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica. | ||
Reviews | ||
Russell is not for the beginning philiosophical enquirer... No seriously. If new to the study, stay away from Russell. And if your past the novice choose something more lighthearted as well as enlightening rather than grotesque academia. Two stars only becuase the detail in it. | ||
One of the all-time greats Finally, over 20 years after college, I got around to taking a summer and reading this, by far the book I most wish I'd been required to read in college. The writing style is lively and easy to follow: it doesn't read like a philosophy book. (As Mencken observed, "Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on Earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.") One reason for Bertrand's writing style being lively is that he doesn't hesitate to inject his opinion. Some philosophers and historians complain about this "editorializing," but I like it. It's fun to watch him rip into Plato or Aristotle or Aquinas or Nietzsche, because he was smarter than they were! | ||
One of the 20 Best Books Ever Written I am not exactly sure what led me to read this book. In high school and college, I avoided history and western philosophy as much as I could. They seemed like really dry topics to me. My interests and talents were scientific and mathematical. However, I am glad that I read this book, because, to me, it is one of the 20 best books ever written. Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was an accomplished philosopher, mathematician, and a very clear rational thinker. Russell provides a tour de force of philosophical history from ancient times into the twentieth century. He interweaves, remarkably, events in world history and how philosophers helped to shape those events. This book is quite long, but my interest in it never flagged. I highly recommend this book. It is an incredible achievement. | ||
Absolutely Loved It I've read A History of Western Philosophy more than a few times, and even gave it as a gift to a few friends. Russell has accomplished a lot with this, having created a page-turner that you just can't put down, while at the same time providing one of the most lucid histories of philosophy ever written. He also editorialized a good amount, commenting and interpreting the concepts of others in a honest manner. Fives stars but it deserves ten. | ||
A brief comment I read this book almost 30 years ago as a young philosophy student, and found it one of the best intros to the subject that was available back then. The coverage of some topics is a little uneven (Russell was, after all, more a mathematical logician rather than a philosophical historian like Copleston), but overall, it's a readable, enjoyable, and even-handed introduction to the subject. I eventually went on to read graduate level works in the area (although I was by training mostly a biologist, but I felt it important to know some philosophy), and this was one of the books that was invaluable to my early education in the subject. | ||