Description: This splendidly written volume takes the reader on a magnificent chronological tour through the revolutions of thought that have forged the Western philosophical tradition from ancient times to the present. Throughout, the six contributors -- an internationally renowned team of philosophers including Roger Scruton, Anthony Quinton, and Anthony Kenny -- bring the astonishingly diverse, wide-ranging landscape of intellectual history into sharp focus, emphasizing how notions seen today as part of an inevitable march of ideas were in their own time often considered radical if not revolutionary. The authors also reveal the relationships between landmark thinkers, and the ways they drew on their intellectual heritage. We witness how, during the Renaissance, the profound empiricist ideas underlying Descartes's famous utterance -- "I think, therefore I exist" -- lived in a tense but complementary relationship with Locke's rationalist theories. The authors bring the story up to our own time, vividly recounting the existential trend from Nietzsche ("God is dead") to Sartre, along with other increasingly fractious schools of thought.

Engagingly written and astonishingly far-reaching, The Oxford History of Western Philosophy provides the consummate introduction to the intellectual bedrock upon which Western civilization is built.

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