The Columbia History Of Western Philosophy

by Richard H. Popkin (Editor)

Book by

Genres: Philosophy, Reference, History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1998

Reviews

[Stephie Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is an anthology edited by Richard H. Popkin. It covers a range of western philosophy from the antecedents of early Greek philosophy to the end of the twentieth century. A major theme of this history is to depict the connections between each period. Another theme that is discussed at times is the influences that comes from outside of western philosophy, such as eastern philosophy and religious influences.

Chapter one covers the beginnings of philosophy through early Christian philosophy. Starting from the pre-Socratic philosophers, it moves through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle into the Hellenistic period, which discusses the later development of Platonism, including the works of Plotinus, the most important of the neoplatonists, ending with the Jewish and Christian oriented philosophers.

Chapter two covers medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. These philosophers utilized their knowledge of both Plato and Aristotle and try to make them accord with their scriptures as best they can. You will find here Kalam cosmology, Moses Maimonides, and the kabbalah amongst things discussed in this chapter.

Chapter three covers medieval Christian philosophy. Bonaventure and Aquinas are featured in this chapter. There is also a discussion on the dispute between realists and nominalists amongst other topics.

Chapter four covers the Renaissance period. The emphasis in this chapter is on humanism and skepticism. The authors also points out the importance renaissance philosophy had for future philosophy into the modern period.

Chapter five covers the developments in the seventeenth-century. This period starts the modern period in philosophy. This chapter is packed with famous philosophers. You will find Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Spinoza, Locke, and Leibniz. Skepticism and the philosophers response is prominent. The chapter ends with outside of Europe influences, especially China.

Chapter six covers the eighteenth-century. It is the century of Newton, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. The French philosophes of the Enlightenment are discussed as well.

Chapter seven covers the nineteenth-century. Idealism flourishes, and pragmatism appears. Hegel looms large. You also see Kierkegaard and Marx.

Chapter eight covers twentieth-century analytic philosophy. It begins with symbolic logic with the prominence of Frege and Russell. Logical positivism is covered. A large section on Wittgenstein and his influence appears. Ordinary language philosophy becomes influential, and new directions are begun in such areas as the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science.

Chapter nine covers twentieth-century continental philosophy. Some of the more significant philosophers of this chapter are Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Foucault. Some of the themes touched on are phenomenology, philosophy of science, existentialism, hermeneutics, French feminist philosophy, and poststructuralism.

There is also an epilogue touching on the history of the history of philosophy, women philosophers, and the significance of the history of philosophy, especially for working philosophers.

I have found a number of interesting things for me sprinkled throughout the book:

In the section on Plato the author there claims that it is wrong to claim that Plato had a dogmatic philosophy. There the author posits that Plato was about exploration, not firm doctrine. Plato has never been high in my scale of esteem, mainly due to his realism (really idealism). I never cared for his political philosophy or his metaphysics either. But, painting Plato as an explorer is more in line with the way I think philosophy should be done. I feel that dogmatic philosophy is really a form of theology. This does not mean that I have no firm beliefs, only that they are open to change, some more than others.

Pyrrho’s subjectivism on whether something is good or bad, where he claims that since there is no good or bad in nature one can be release from anxiety by not being concerned with it. It had some interest due to my recent exploration subjectivism as far as moral facts are concerned. However, it is still up to the individual to make the determination, so the escape from choice does not seem to necessarily lead to Pyrrho’s advice. In morals we rely mainly on moral feeling to guide us in what is right or wrong, which we usually share with our culture, although there are differences even within a culture. I would ask Pyrrho how actually is one supposed to rid oneself from feelings.

Avicenna’s claim that “. . . an actual infinite leads to the consequence that there are unequal infinities-a contradiction.” This is now known to be false as Georg Cantor has shown that there are indeed unequal infinities, hence there is no contradiction here. The main example of this is that there are more real numbers than there are natural numbers. One cannot put them into a one-to-one relationship.

Occasionalism is discussed in the subsection on The Kalam in the section on Al-Ghazali. The idea of occasionalism is that there is no cause and effect. What looks like cause and effect is God causing both the first event and the second event, without having the first event causing the second event. This god seems to be a very busy god. Gook luck getting through with any kind of prayer.

With Leibniz’s difficulties with God’s foreknowledge and his metaphysical assumptions, I found that Leibniz might have been led to his monadism because humans consider themselves to be the director of their affairs, so why not all entities. I mean humans as a whole, because even the staunch determinist is saddle with the feeling of freewill, which I believe is all there is to freewill.

I thought that William James’ will to believe was explained to my satisfaction. According to the author of this chapter, James thought that such beliefs were justified given how they must be formed when one is not sure of all the facts and there is no time to go a looking. However, James does not claim truth for such beliefs, which makes his will to believe easier to accept because it not a truth claim, and it can be applied outside of any religious context.

The emotive theory of ethics from logical positivism says statements of ethics have no cognitive content, so that ethical statements are neither true or false. These statements have emotional content only. This is a strong form of subjectivism. I would limited it because there appears to be no exclusive cognitive or emotional content; these are only two components to any thought. First, emotions are cognitive interpretations of feelings, feelings being in a raw form. Second, neuroscience has shown the deep connections between the emotional centers (the limbic system) and higher thought centers (the prefrontal cortex). So, to say that ethical statements carry no cognitive content is overkill by the logical positivists.

Wittgenstein’s use theory of language has a ring of significance. Not because one cannot give an extensive definition of a word, but because it is important in a discussion to be sure the participants are using the word in the same manner. Also his theory is not so new because The Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions are totally use based. Its definitions are based on what people use the word for, not dictated from above like the French Académie française.

Gadamer points out that “. . . all explicit understandings presuppose prior, tacit understandings.” I only partially agree with this statement. Our presuppositions certainly influence the way we think, and I think it is important to be aware of them, especially in discussions where we do not share the same presuppositions. In these cases a full understanding of what others think is not fully possible.

I would also pretty much agree with Popkin’s assessment that philosophers would do well to know the history of philosophy. I can see this as especially true when a philosopher is criticizing another philosopher. It seems important to actually know what the other philosopher thought, and the history behind this philosopher’s work is practically a necessity. This is also true when a philosopher chooses to investigate a particular field. It seems quite important to know what has gone before him or her.

Overall I thought the book was pretty good, and I thought it was an accomplishment to have read it all (788 pages). As with most anthologies I did not like everything. Obviously it provided me with a number of thoughts or thinkings. The parts that I least liked where the nineteenth-century, accept for pragmatism and the twentieth-century continental philosophy, which is just to convoluted a form of thinking for me.

I would recommend the book for those interested in a broad, but for the most part, covering all major periods and fields of philosophy. It is a big book, so some may just want to tackle the parts that are of most interest in.

[Ulric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel as if this is a successful take on the history of western philosophy. It makes for a great reference book as well.

[Shinji007 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While it is dense in the sense of how much information it covers, I like the way each section is laid out. It lays out nine distinct chapter headings. Under each heading is presented a specific school of thought. For a lay reader such as myself, it is a book I know I will continually refer back to over and over. I would recommend this book to others.

[Erik C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly thorough encyclopedia of western philosophy's major schools and thinkers including the post-modernist.

When a primary source references a school of thought or a thinker that I'm not familiar or haven't grasped yet, this book helps me fill me in.

Tremendously useful.

[Scott Free · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoiler Alert: we can be said to exist for a finite time. Nothing in external nature or internal thought gives us much more information than that.

[Winnie Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful. Read sections of this while trying to make sense of Aristotle and the like.