Good Histories of Philosophy

[Lumpen Bourgeois]

Are there any decent “history of philosophy” books for a beginner that any of you kind folks here would recommend? They don't necessarily have to be leftist or marxist in perspective.

I was checking out Anthony Kenny's historical volumes (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Philosophy-New-History-Western/dp/0198752733/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0). Would anybody recommend them?







Any help would be appreciated.:)

[Queercommie Girl]

The best one on Chinese philosophy is The History of Chinese Philosophy written by Beijing University Press in the 1970s. Unfortunately there are no English editions for this book. :( Maybe one day I can translate it myself for an English audience.

I've translated a tiny bit of the book here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/rise-atheism-ancient-t141770/index.html

Kautsky has written some good materials about the rise of early Christianity from a Marxist perspective.

A People's History of the World written by Chris Harman is a very good book. It's not a history of philosophy book, just a general history book from a Marxist perspective, but it does touch on some philosophical topics too.

[Dick Van Guard]

I found A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell most helpful.

It goes from the pre-Socratics up to the early 20th century.

[noble brown]

for philosophy in general theres will durant's "the story of philosophy". covers all the more well known philosophers and their philosphies.

ethics, theres vernon bourke "history of ethics".

economic, robert heilbroner "the worldly philosophers" this covers the major economic phlosophers and their ideas.smith, marx, malthus, ricardo and schumpeter among others.

politiacl philosophy, "the great political theories" is a two part anthology of just about any political philsopher you could think of. selected works only, no interpretations. a good resource for them cats that actually do their own research but limited. difficult for me cause most of these cats are ancient and they just aint that accessable. then theres "arguing about political philosophy" basically the same format as the previous one but more focus on more contemporary thinkers.

a great book i think anyone here should read is "black flame" by michael schmidt and lucien van der wall. the subtitle is the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism. a history of anarchism, its various strands and their philosophies. even if youre not an anarchist.

[blake 3:17]

I'm not sure that a straight history is possible.

The Russell book mentioned above is good. A housemate has the Durrant books down the hall but I haven't read them...

There are some encyclopedias of philosophy which are quite good. I have an Oxford one from a few years ago which gives a quick boost in deontology or Ockham's Razor or the mind-body question. The pieces on the major Western philosophers and basic schools (empiricism, rationalism, etc) are pretty thorough.

[heiss93]

Several of the philosophy textbooks at leninist.biz give a brief survey of the history of philosophy particularly the struggle between idealism vs materialism. They also have some more specific books on Ancient and German philosophy.

The best Chinese history is An Intellectual History of China, which analyzes all historical ideologies from a class perspective.

Kautsky's ethics of Marxism gives a brief survey of the history of ethics. Thaelman wrote an entire history of philosophy as an introduction to dialectics.

If you want a fat book on philosophy, Bax wrote a pretty fat one. But it mixes his idiosyncratic idealism with 2nd international orthodoxy.

Except for the China one all of these books are availible on line at MIA or google books.

[Cirno(9)]

The Kenny series is quite good. It's interesting in that he breaks up chapters by the subject rather than individual philosophy. So instead of having a chapter (or a few) on Plato or Aristotle you have a chapter on Metaphysics where you go into their metaphysics and then a chapter on Ethics where you go into their ethics and etc
The Russell book has the advantage of being very well written and single volume. However it is also very biased toward's Russell's personal view, so philosophers he like are gone into more detail than others and philosophers he doesn't like (Marx is one of them, oh boy is he one of them) are given a disproportionately negative treatment. It's still a really good book, it's just something that should be read in that context.
The series from Frederick Copelstone is also very good. Copelstone was a Jesuit priest but he writes in a fairly objective style and the only thing that can really count as significant bias is that he has a greater affinity for medieval philosophy than most philosophers. However he is somewhat dry as a writer and the series is very very long with nine volumes for the American edition and eleven for the UK (interestingly the book on Russian philosophy is one of the ones excluded from the US edition..).

I've only heard good things about the Durant book. Interestingly it was originally written as a popular book aimed at workers.