A New History of Western Philosophy by Anthony Kenny (PDF)

Description

The individual volumes of Sir Anthony Kenny’s acclaimed History of Western Philosophy have been hailed as “wonderfulauthoritativehugely rewarding” (Times Higher Education Supplement) and “genial and highly accessible” (London Review of Books). Now these four splendid books have been combined into one magnificent volume, providing a continuous sweeping account of the great thought of the Western world. Here readers will find not only an authoritative guide to the history of philosophy, but also a compelling introduction to every major area of philosophical inquiry. Kenny tells the story of philosophy chronologically, his lively narrative bringing the great philosophers to life and filling in the historical and intellectual background to their work. Kenny also looks closely at each of the main areas of philosophical exploration: knowledge and understanding; science; metaphysics; mind and soul; the nature and content of morality; political philosophy; and God. A New History ofWestern Philosophy is a stimulating chronicle of the intellectual development of Western civilization, allowing readers to trace the birth and growth of philosophy from antiquity to the present day.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Kenny’s authoritative work, compiling four volumes, is the finest single-author history of Western philosophy since Frederick Copleston- a Herculean task executed with erudition and entertainment. From the dream of the ancient Greeks to the deconstruction of postmodernists, he accessibly treats the major branches of philosophy: ethics, politics, religion, epistemology, language, metaphysics, aesthetics, and logic. Christopher, Benson First Things About the Author Sir Anthony Kenny is one of Britain’s most distinguished academic figures. He has been Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Master of Balliol College, Chairman of the Board of the British Library, and President of the British Academy. He has published more than forty books on philosophy and history.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I have the highest regard for this history, or I would not have both hardcover and Kindle versions of it. These notes concern the transition to the Kindle format, as experienced on the original Paperwhite.Navigation is mostly excellent, as it should be for a work which will be used as a work of reference as well as one of which substantial portions will be read from beginning to end: there is a table of contents with the major divisions of each of the Four Parts (originally published separately), and at the start of each Part there is its own more detailed contents section. Cross-references and footnotes are hyperlinked. The only improvement to navigation would be if the page references in the Index were hyperlinked too.The smaller typeface used in my printed volumes for whole paragraphs of quotation is missing, except in Part Four. Thankfully, in the other Parts there is extra white space before and (usually) after the quoted passage. This white space, plus the almost inevitable reference to the cited work, ensures that in practice one can work out where the quotation ends. However, the conventional layout is there for a reason, and we should not have to deduce where a quotation begins and ends.Some “tabular” textual layouts (which occur infrequently) are not really satisfactory. So two columns of text (e.g. parallel syllogisms, or the square showing “Intellect, Will, Sensation, Desire” at about location 4670) get run together in a way that is frankly meaningless.There are some strange and arbitrary changes to the printed text: at one point the transliteration of the Greek for “the now” (an italicised “to nun”) loses the italics for the article “to”. At another, on motion, there are apostrophes representing the primes in p’ and p”, which is not pretty but suffices. Then suddenly they disappear and what should read « p’ to p” » now reads on the Kindle « p to p ». Again, for some reason on the Kindle a space is introduced into the term “not-p” so that it becomes “not -p” and the reader stumbles briefly over whether the hyphen represents the ¬ sign for negation (location about 3138).There are no illustrations in the Kindle version. The map, as usual on my Paperwhite, is useless.The page numbers are continuous, doubtless representing those of the one-volume edition of the work rather than of the separately published volumes. The frequent headings (hyperlinked as already mentioned), rather than the page numbers, allow one quite easily to relate the Kindle text to one of the printed editions.Greek letters get very uneven treatment in the Kindle version: sometimes a proper, scalable Greek letter is used; sometimes a Roman letter equivalent based on the letter’s appearance (e.g. Zeta and Zed/Zee); sometimes a Roman letter equivalent based on the letter’s position the respective alphabets (e.g. Zeta and F); and sometimes a non-scalable graphic. (A lower-case Greek Phi given the latter treatment looks rather like a smudge on the screen.) Examples follow – all from Volume One, where there are frequent references to Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”:Book Delta of the “Metaphysics” is referred to in the print version using the Greek capital letter (Δ), but in the Kindle it appears as book “D”. You would expect Book Zeta to cause no problems (capital Zeta (Ζ) and the modern equivalent (Z) being effectively identical) – but sometimes it becomes the capital letter F.In “Aristotle on Science and Illusion”, references to book Gamma use a proper Greek letter Γ (capital Gamma).In “Essence and Quiddity”, references to Book Zeta are to Book F (e.g. location 4112 approx); those to Delta start out by being to D, which then revert to a genuine scalable character Δ (Delta) for the reference to 7.1017a22.In “Being and Existence”, references to book Delta are given as if to book D, and references to book Zeta are to book F. Beta becomes B, and Eta correctly looks like our H. Book Gamma is referred to with mini-picture Γ (capital Gamma) (location 4286 approx).There is a Kindle typo in the Bibliography for Aristotle (Chapter 2), where the edition of what is called “Metaphysics M and H” should refer to “Metaphysics M and N”.Readers wanting to follow up references to Aristotle will have to be guided by prior knowledge or by the print edition.As noticed already, footnotes are hyperlinked. The question is whether the links are accurate. A few soundings suggest that mostly they take you perfectly to the required place. In one place (Part 4, Ch 8, n 1) the print version directs you, correctly, to some sections on medieval ethics, while the Kindle hyperlink takes you to one section earlier (to Abelard rather than Aquinas); in another, (Part 4, Ch 11, n 4), the print version directs you to the starting page of the section on “Aristotle’s Political Theory”, while the Kindle takes you to a more precise location within that section, a few physical pages on.Reading these pages on the Kindle is generally a delight, but it would be good to see the noticed imperfections corrected.

⭐If any person is looking for just one book to give them an overview of every major western philosophical notion of the last 2500 years this is it. It does not go into as much detail on some specifics as other great classics such as Russell’s not so new version of the same title, or Durant’s beautiful Story of Philosophy, but it does cover far more ground than any other work in the sense of understanding the big picture of western philosophy.In reading this book one will gain the best initial understanding of how a certain philosopher connects to another, or how a certain school of thought leads to the next. This book, it is true, does not go into great detail on any particular philosopher. But that is not what scaping histories are for. If that is what is being sought after, buy individual books on individual philosophers or philosophies.As far as the authorship goes, it is highly readable. It is not quit as beautiful as Will Durant’s prose scholarship (though of course no one’s is) but it was about as close as a page-turner comes to non-fiction. I found myself highly fascinated and growing deeper in my understanding of overall philosophy – often going through dozens of pages without even noticing. Each chapter flows logically into the next and makes perfect sense. Kenny certainly mastered the art of high quality scholarship without being pedantic.Basically, if one is anything less than an expert on western philosophy this book holds value. If one has absolutely no, or at least very little, understanding of philosophy then this book will open a whole new world to their mind. Even if said reader is well educated in philosophy this book will increase one’s overall understanding so that they may go on to, through other books, better learn of the great many philosophical specifics. I will both gladly and hastily recommend this book as the first for anyone to gain knowledge in philosophy. Surely this will become the standard survey into western philosophy for the next half-century.

⭐From the reviews of its individual volumes, there’s little I can add here. The biggest complaints are Kenny’s cutoff date of 1975 (30 years to the first volume’s publication), that “he didn’t give enough pages to Philosopher X!,” and that he downplayed the contributions of 20th century Continental philosophers. It’s easy to think that our favorite (and recent or current) philosopher is not just a fad but so important that his greatness just isn’t appreciated! Yet this is the same complaint with EVERY history of philosophy. Yes, with every single one. Better it would been to have added a fifth volume for 20th century philosophy. At least Kenny recognizes that many philosophies do not survive far beyond their own day and looking back, seem faddish. Thus his short-shrift of postmodernism (Have we really learned much beyond the original writings up to 1981?).Kenny does something rare, which is to credit the influence that Marx, Darwin, and Freud had on philosophy, even though they rarely can be counted as philosophers. Intended as an introductory undergraduate text, it’s really good as such. Don’t ask it to be comprehensive and don’t ask Kenny to give your favorite philosopher more pages than another in the same period. As is, it’s pretty fantastic and a welcome history.

⭐Like me, I imagine most readers of this book want to understand how human thought has evolved over time. They want to know the questions philosophers have posed throughout the ages, how these questions overlap, and importantly why these questions were asked in the first place. What actually needs or needed explaining? And why have different questions appeared relevant do different thinkers at different times. Readers want to understand the answers provided to these questions, the precise and relevant differences between the answers, and why these answers have changed dramatically over time, particularly as human understanding through the sciences has progressed rapidly in the modern age.This book fails to provide an accessible and satisfactory account of this evolution. The author focuses too much on the individual works and beliefs of each philosopher, without explaining clearly enough how these ideas link together. One element of this is the author’s insistence on using the jargon and technic terms of each philosopher, rather than developing a common set of terms and sticking to this.In particular, the author fails to explain why philosophers posed certain questions in the first place, and how gaps in human knowledge and understanding have changed over time with the advance of science.Not to mention the author’s obvious bias in favour of theism and philosophers who argue for the existence of God. His chapters touching on evolutionary biology are embarassingly brief and show he lacks even basic understanding of modern science.

⭐This was originally four separate books but is now a single 1000 page volume, very nicely priced on Amazon. It is, as other reviewers state, very nicely laid out. For me the problem is not the difficulty of certain chapters, which was what I found, but the the sense that you have to wade through a lot of old philosophical rubbish to get an idea of where modern philosophy came from.How useful this book is, depends on what you want to get out of it. Some say it is ideal for students but it might actually be too complex – I saw one university which only recommended the brief introduction guides. Equally you could choose a philosophy which attracts you and read around the subject and pick up info about its rivals and enemies – philosophers are like explorers, forever falling out, jealous of others work and backbiting too. The book itself covers Medieval theological philosophy and then one wrong assertion could get you burned or forced to literally be silent for the rest of your life.I can see why some would skip the Medieval part but I was surprised at how modern some of the theory on thought and language turned out. Other chapters I didn’t take in or was bored or just plain overwhelmed.Whatever, the great thing about the book is it is a resource, to which you can return as necessary. It probably deserves five stars but I dropped one because of the above comments.

⭐My U3A Philosophy Group uses this as our basis for study and it sparks a great deal of discussion. The first few chapters of each volume provide a chronological overview of each period but we really like the following chapters that are based on the main areas of philosophy (e.g. Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics). This enables us to see the development of particular ideas for the period in question, and the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments. It also enables us to pick and choose, which we did for the Ancients, skipped the Medievals and are now started the 16th and 17th century (volume 3). I think we will study all the chapters in this volume as the period is fundamental for the 20th century onwards. It can be hard at times, being able to discuss it in a group helps us to get to grips (and philosophy is a discipline that benefits from discussion). The group comes from mixed backgrounds; two of us studied philosophy at university (either as single or dual honours degrees) but the others haven’t. It takes us a long time to get through as the group likes to take its time and discuss fully.More up-to-date and less polemical than Bertrand Russell’s History.

⭐This book is more for the student of philosophy than the general reader. I think, to be honest, I was expecting an updated version of Bertrand Russell’s popular history on the subject. But this was not the case. It is however a monumental piece of work containing much to be admired, but unfortunately it was too difficult for me to enjoy.

⭐This is an amazing book. It might just be the way i like to learn, but when the history is divided out so that you can read the history of the philosophers, and then the history of their thought, it makes for an amazingly well written and well edited book. I have only been able to get through less that 20% of the book, but I know that it is a book I will read over and over again as I get older.

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