World Philos Historical Intro

This popular text has now been revised to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the growing number of people interested in all the main philosophical traditions of the world.

• Introduces all the main philosophical systems of the world, from ancient times to the present day.
• Now includes new sections on Indian and Persian thought and on feminist and environmental philosophy.
• The preface and bibliography have also been updated.
• Written by a highly successful textbook author.

This popular text has now been revised to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the growing number of people interested in all the main philosophical traditions of the world.

Library Journal

Cooper is an imaginative philosopherthe author of Metaphor (Blackwell, 1986), the best book on its subject. He has written one of the few histories of philosophy that gives nearly equal time to non-Western thought, and he has traced the main ideas without getting bogged down in detail or lapsing into vapid generalizations. Ultimately, Cooper's task is impossible. Concentration on canonical thinkers who seem to appear miraculously, the major sin of historians of philosophy, is inevitable. But he does put them into contexts that make sense, and he does try to provide some continuity. Inevitably, too, some figures are slighted. McTaggart does not even appear in the bibliography. Descartes still figures as the mad dualist attacked by British philosophers of the 1950s. But Cooper's treatment is generally sound, and his account of Eastern philosophies is particularly heartening because it recognizes recent Indian and Chinese philosophy and avoids the orientalist antiquarianism that mars so much good writing on these subjects. This is a good book for ordinary readers who want to get the drift of philosophy.Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa

David E. Cooper is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham and Director of the Durham Institute of Comparative Ethics'. He is the author of a number of books, including Metaphor (1986) and Existentialism (1990, second edition 1999). He is also editor of A Companion to Aesthetics (1992), and four volumes in the series Philosophy: The Classic Readings – Aesthetics (1997), Ethics (1997), Epistemology (1999) and Metaphysics (2000). These titles are all published by Blackwell Publishing.