Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy

Sir Anthony Kenny was formerly Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Oxford University, Master of Balliol College, Oxford and Warden of Rhodes House, Oxford. He was also President of the British Academy, Chairman of the Board of the British Library and a Trustee of Wittgenstein’s copyrights. He is the author or editor of more than 40 books, including Wittgenstein (Revised Edition, 2006), Frege: An Introduction to the Founder of Modern Analytic Philosophy (2000) and The Legacy of Wittgenstein (1984), all published by Blackwell.

• Preface xList of Illustrations xiiiAcknowledgements xviI Philosophy in its Infancy 1The Milesians 2Xenophanes 5Heraclitus 6The School of Parmenides 9Empedocles 14The Atomists 17II The Athens of Socrates 21The Athenian Empire 21Anaxagoras 23The Sophists 24Socrates 25The Euthyphro 28The Crito 31The Phaedo 31III The Philosophy of Plato 38Life and Works 38The Theory of Ideas 40Plato’s Republic 44The Theaetetus and the Sophist 54IV The System of Aristotle 61Plato’s Pupil, Alexander’s Teacher 61The Foundation of Logic 63The Theory of Drama 67Moral Philosophy: Virtue and Happiness 68Moral Philosophy: Wisdom and Understanding 72Politics 75Science and Explanation 77Words and Things 80Motion and Change 81Soul, Sense, and Intellect 83Metaphysics 86V Greek Philosophy after Aristotle 91The Hellenistic Era 91Epicureanism 93Stoicism 95Scepticism 97Rome and its Empire 99Jesus of Nazareth 100Christianity and Gnosticism 102Neo-Platonism 106VI Early Christian Philosophy 109Arianism and Orthodoxy 109The Theology of Incarnation 112The Life of Augustine 114The City of God and the Mystery of Grace 117Boethius and Philoponus 120VII Early Medieval Philosophy 125John the Scot 125Alkindi and Avicenna 128The Feudal System 130Saint Anselm 131Abelard and Héloïse 133Abelard’s Logic 135Abelard’s Ethics 137Averroes 139Maimonides 140VIII Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century 144An Age of Innovation 144Saint Bonaventure 147Thirteenth-Century Logic 149Aquinas’ Life and Works 150Aquinas’ Natural Theology 152Matter, Form, Substance, and Accident 154Aquinas on Essence and Existence 156Aquinas’ Philosophy of Mind 157Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy 159IX Oxford Philosophers 164The Fourteenth-Century University 164Duns Scotus 165Ockham’s Logic of Language 172Ockham’s Political Theory 174The Oxford Calculators 177John Wyclif 178X Renaissance Philosophy 182The Renaissance 182Free-will: Rome vs. Louvain 183Renaissance Platonism 186Machiavelli 188More’s Utopia 190The Reformation 193Post-Reformation Philosophy 197Bruno and Galileo 199Francis Bacon 201XI The Age of Descartes 206The Wars of Religion 206The Life of Descartes 207The Doubt and the Cogito 210The Essence of Mind 212God, Mind, and Body 214The Material World 217XII English Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century 221The Empiricism of Thomas Hobbes 221Hobbes’ Political Philosophy 223The Political Theory of John Locke 226Locke on Ideas and Qualities 228Substances and Persons 232XIII Continental Philosophy in the Age of Louis XIV 237Blaise Pascal 237Spinoza and Malebranche 240Leibniz 245XIV British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century 251Berkeley 251Hume’s Philosophy of Mind 256Hume on Causation 260Reid and Common Sense 263XV The Enlightenment 266The Philosophes 266Rousseau 267Revolution and Romanticism 271XVI The Critical Philosophy of Kant 275Kant’s Copernican Revolution 275The Transcendental Aesthetic 278The Transcendental Analytic: The Deduction of theCategories 280The Transcendental Analytic: The System of Principles 283The Transcendental Dialectic: The Paralogisms of Pure Reason 286The Transcendental Dialectic: The Antinomies of Pure Reason 289The Transcendental Dialectic: The Critique of Natural Theology 291Kant’s Moral Philosophy 295XVII German Idealism and Materialism 298Fichte 298Hegel 299Marx and the Young Hegelians 304Capitalism and its Discontents 306XVIII The Utilitarians 309Jeremy Bentham 309The Utilitarianism of J. S. Mill 314Mill’s Logic 316XIX Three Nineteenth-Century Philosophers 320Schopenhauer 320Kierkegaard 327Nietzsche 329XX Three Modern Masters 333Charles Darwin 333John Henry Newman 339Sigmund Freud 343XXI Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics 351Frege’s Logic 351Frege’s Logicism 353Frege’s Philosophy of Logic 356Russell’s Paradox 357Russell’s Theory of Descriptions 359Logical Analysis 362XXII The Philosophy of Wittgenstein 365Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 365Logical Positivism 368Philosophical Investigations 370Afterword 382Suggestions for Further Reading 386Index 392

Praise for the previous edition: “The 22 chapters of this history are lucidly written and with enough humour in them to cheer up the educated general reader even in the midst of the most arid of philosophical discussions.” Times Higher Education Supplement "This is simply a jolly good read, with pithy historical and biographical scene-setters, authoritative accounts of how successive philosophers have contributed to the development of Western thought, and often brilliant single-sentence summaries." Church Times "A richly detailed, critical look at philosophy, displaying both Kenny's love for philosophical engagement and for good history...Kenny's style is unpretentious, effective, and at times wonderfully informal and amiable." Review of Metaphysics