A History of Philosophy (Copleston)

A History of Philosophy is an eleven-volume history of Western philosophy written by English Jesuit priest Frederick Charles Copleston.

Contents

• Summary of contents
• Volume 1 Greece and Rome
• Volume 2 Augustine to Scotus
• Volume 3 Ockham to Suarez
• Volume 4 Descartes to Leibniz
• Volume 5 Hobbes to Hume
• Volume 6 Wolff to Kant
• Volume 7 Fichte to Nietzsche
• Volume 8 Bentham to Russell
• Volume 9 Maine de Biran to Sartre
• Volume 10 Russian Philosophy
• Volume 11 Logical Positivism and Existentialism
• Editions
• References

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 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. All the same, it seems generally accepted that Copleston's treatment is fair and complete, even for philosophical positions that he does not support.