This introduction for the beginning philosophy student has a historical approach and provides a working knowledge of the development of western philosophy. The text covers all periods, with four chapters on medieval philosophers and problems and includes women philosophers.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The ancient period: the shaping of the philosophic mind; Socrates' predecessors - philosophy and the natural order; Socrates and the Sophists - the problems of truth and goodness; Plato; Aristotle; classical philosophy after Aristotle. Part 2 The mediaeval period: the confluence of philosophy and theology - St. Augustine's Christian philosophy; philosophy in the Dark Ages -Boethius, pseudo-Dionysius, Erigena; early statements of major problems; the apex of mediaeval philosophy - the scholastic system of St. Thomas Aquinas. Part 3 The modern period: philosophy and the unfolding world of science - the Renaissance interlude; advocates of the method of science - Bacon and Hobbes; rationalism on the continent - Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz; empiricism in Britain - Locke, Berkeley and Hume; Roussseau - a romantic in the age of reason; Kant - critical mediator between dogmatism and skepticism; Hegel - absolute idealism; Schopenhauer - prophet of pessimism; Comte - the rise of positivism in France; utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill. Part 4 The contemporary period: the reshaping of the philosophic mind - pragmatism; Karl Marx - dialectical materialism; Nietzsche; two 20th-century metaphysicians - Bergson and Whitehead; analytic philosophy; existentialism.