Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Leibnitz (A History of Philosophy, Vol. 4)

Conceived originally as a serious presentation of the development of philosophy for Catholic seminary students, Frederick Copleston's nine-volume A History Of Philosophy has journeyed far beyond the modest purpose of  its author to universal acclaimas the best history of philosophy in English.

Copleston, an Oxford Jesuit of immense erudition who once tangled with A.J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic caricatures.  Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete history of Western philosophy, one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement - and one that gives full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who came after him.

Conceived originally as a serious presentation of the development of philosophy for Catholic seminary students, Frederick Copleston's nine-volume A History Of Philosophy has journeyed far beyond the modest purpose ofits author to universal acclaimas the best history of philosophy in English. Copleston, an Oxford Jesuit of immense erudition who once tangled with A.J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic caricatures.Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete history of Western philosophy, one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement - and one that gives full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who came after him. Continuity and novelty: the early phase of modern philosophy in its relation to mediaeval and Renaissance thought-Continental rationalism: its nature, its relation to scepticism and to neo-Stoicism, its development-British empiricism: its nature and its development-The seventeenth century-The eighteenth century-Political philosophy-The rise of the philosophy of history-Immanuel Kant. Conceived originally as a serious presentation of the development of philosophy for Catholic seminary students, Frederick Copleston's nine-volume "A History of Philosophy" has journeyed far beyond the modest purpose of its author to universal acclaim as the best history of philosophy in English. -- From publisher's description