A History of Philosophy (Copleston)
 Cover of volume I | |
| Author | Frederick Copleston, S.J. |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Western philosophy |
| Publisher | Continuum (Worldwide), Doubleday (US & Canada), Paulist Press (US & Canada) |
Publication date | 1946–1974 (volumes 1–9), 1956 (volume 11), 1986 (volume 10) |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 5,344 (volumes 1–11) (2003 Continuum editions) |
A History of Philosophy is an eleven-volume history of Western philosophy written by the English Jesuit priest Frederick Charles Copleston.
The work provides extensive coverage of Western philosophy from the Pre-Socratics through John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, George Edward Moore, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The first nine volumes, originally published between 1946 and 1974, were written for Catholic seminary students with the goal "of supplying Catholic ecclesiastical 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 endeavour to exhibit the logical development and interconnection of philosophical systems." A tenth volume was added in 1986, and the eleventh is actually a collection of essays which appeared in 1956 as Contemporary Philosophy.
Throughout the eleven volumes Copleston's Roman Catholic (Thomist) point of view is never hidden.
Summary 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 philosophy
Volume 2: Augustine to Scotus
- Pre-mediaeval Influences (including St. Augustine)
- The Carolingian Renaissance
- The Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Centuries
- Islamic and Jewish Philosophy
- The Thirteenth Century (including St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus)
Volume 3: Ockham to Suarez
- The Fourteenth Century (including William of Ockham)
- Philosophy of the Renaissance (including Francis Bacon)
- Scholasticism of the Renaissance (including Francisco Suárez)
Volume 4: Descartes to Leibniz
Volume 5: Hobbes to Hume
Volume 6: Wolff to Kant
- The French Enlightenment (including Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
- The German Enlightenment
- The Rise of the Philosophy of History (including Giambattista Vico and Voltaire)
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
Volume 7: Fichte to Nietzsche
Volume 8: Bentham to Russell
- British Empiricism (including John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer)
- The Idealist Movement in Great Britain (including Francis Herbert Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet)
- Idealism in America (including Josiah Royce)
- The Pragmatist Movement (including Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey)
- The Revolt Against Idealism (including George Edward Moore and Bertrand Russell)
Volume 9: Maine de Biran to Sartre
- From the French Revolution to Auguste Comte (including Maine de Biran)
- From Auguste Comte to Henri Bergson
- From Henri Bergson to Jean-Paul Sartre (including Maurice Merleau-Ponty)
Volume 10: Russian Philosophy
This and the following book are only included in the Continuum edition. The Doubleday edition only contains the original nine volumes.
- Ivan Kireevsky, Peter Lavrov, and other Russian philosophers
- Philosophy in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
- Religion and Philosophy: Vladimir Solovyov
- Plekhanov, Bogdanov, Lenin and Marxism
- Nikolai Berdyaev and other philosophers in exile
Volume 11: Logical Positivism and Existentialism
Included as Volume 11 in the Continuum edition, Logical Positivism and Existentialism is actually a collection of essays, which appeared in 1956 as Contemporary Philosophy. It covers Logical positivism and Existentialism.
Editions
- Copleston, Frederick (1946–1975). A History of Philosophy. Great Britain: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-6948-5.