num_pages: 384
description: 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.
language: English
title: A History of Philosophy, Vol. 4: Modern Philosophy, from Descartes to Leibnitz
titlecomplete: A History of Philosophy, Vol. 4: Modern Philosophy, from Descartes to Leibnitz
characters: Pascal, Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, René Descartes
genres: History, Philosophy, Reference, Nonfiction, Humanities, Academic
ratings_count: 466
series: Historia de la filosofía de Copleston., A History of Philosophy
publisher: Image