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What are your thoughts on Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy? It's an approach to summarize all of the philosophical thought from the ancient greeks up to his lifetime along with the historical context into a single book. He later received a nobel prize for this and other works, but many argue that his description of many philosophers is far too biased to be useful. Are there any similar books that give an introductory overview of the entire history of philosophy? What are your thoughts on it?

I >>6683 I read this years ago. You'd have a lot more detailed and probably correct summary by reading the Wikipedia articles on the philosophers and schools listed in the TOC. The book is pretty biased and overlooks a lot of important people. The chapters Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are actually pretty funny because of how bad they are.

>>6685 Do you know of any better books with a similar approach? Reading all the wikipedia articles is less practical although of course possible

>>6683 I really like Russell's other works, but History of Western Philosophy is not very good. Read his Problems of Philosophy instead and research whatever topic you find interesting. >>6685 I disagree, Wikipedia is completely useless for anything related to philosophy.

>>6683 He could of titled it as a "History" as a joke. >>6685 >>6688 Wikipedia is trash use online stanford encyclopedia instead. Also it's probably a mistake to read about the history of philosophy written by a philosopher considering they are all trying to oneup each other

>>6688 >Do you know of any better books with a similar approach? Some people praise Anthony Kenny's New History of Western Philosophy but he can be pretty biased as well. I particularly dislike how he makes fun of Russell's criticism when it comes to Thomas Aquinas. Russell says Aquinas wasn't a true philosopher because he had foregone conclusions to prove (i.e., everything the Bible says, especially God's existence) while a true philosopher is "willing to go wherever an argument takes him", as Socrates put it. Kenny mocks Russell's criticism by saying that Russell himself spent a great deal of time to prove that "2 + 2 = 4" in his Principia Mathematica even though the statement "2 + 2 = 4" is clearly a foregone conclusion of which he was persuaded before attempting to prove it. Kenny is a retard for saying this (in my opinion) because probably nobody has a theological commitment to "2 + 2 = 4" and there is a lot of empirical evidence in our everyday life to suggest that this is a true statement. On the other hand, the statement "God exists" is a statement towards which churchmen (like Aquinas) are committed; they have an interest in propping up their religion (even a financial interest) while mathematicians would not care even if it turned out that "2 + 2 = 5". Mathematicians may be surprised if it ever turned out that "2 + 2 = 5", but they would quickly adapt to the new arithmetic and go on with life as if nothing were (just as mathematicians have quickly adapted to non-Euclidean geometry after the initial shock), while churchmen could never adapt to the statement "God does not exist": it would destroy them; they would have to stop being churchmen if that statement turned out to be true and they were willing to honestly accept its truth. Kenny was trained as a Catholic philosopher and later became agnostic, but the dogma is still strong with him, which is why he unjustly criticizes an atheist like Russell.