An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy

by Anthony Kenny

Now in its third anniversary edition, world-renowned philosopher Anthony Kenny’s highly acclaimed survey of Western philosophy has been updated to provide essential coverage of contemporary Anglophone analytic and continental philosophy, and features a brand-new introduction on the history of philosophical sub-disciplines.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Reference

464 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 15, 2018

About the author

Sir Anthony Kenny is an English philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and the philosophy of religion.

Reviews

[K.A.L.M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A romp through the ideas and thinking of a vast array of Philosophers. I would say, overall, it presents their work fairly - outlining their key works and how they were received. There seemed to be a more personal approach to the summary of Rorty at the end of the book but it hasn't put me off exploring Rorty's work myself. The book also sparked an interest in Marcuse and Habermas whose works I hope to explore.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this book from a historical perspective, its explanations of various philosophers' thinking often left me wondering what in the world I'd just read. I was surprised, in particular, to find that so much of philosophy seems to be concerned with questions about such minutea as the predicates and subjects of seemingly simple sentences.

Whether my frustrations with this book were due to authorial incompetence is something I can only determine by reading other authors in this field. While I'm still hopeful that there's value to be gained from reading philosophy, this book unfortunately dampened my optimism.

[Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kenny does well at distilling the key ideas of philosophers from the pre-socratic era to the twentieth century. As someone only moderately familiar with philosophy, I found everything (except the chapter on Kant) very easy to understand. I found it very helpful, and will probably revisit it in the future.

[SophieJaneK · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit I skimmed through this in order to see how accessible and suitable it would be as a course book for my philosophy students.
It does present a reasonably clear background to the main philosophers as a good general background to philosophy. It is divided into manageable sections but still requires alot of concentration to understand the concepts.