Author Description

Weber's History of Philosophy has long been a standard work in which thoroughness of scholarship and vividness of style have been uniquely combined. The purpose of this edition is to make that text more useful without altering those essential features which have commended it to so many teachers of philosophy in English-speaking countries. The new material which I have added is designed to bring the account of modern philosophy down to the present. In writing these additional chapters (pages 458-594) I have been concerned fill to in the middle foreground rather than to deal with strictly contemporary thought. My aim has been to present only those recent philosophers whose doctrines have become a part of history. Among these are some who are still living, but whose earlier teachings are already a part of the European and American tradition. The omission or brief mention of contemporary thinkers does not imply an adverse estimate of their importance, but only the judgment that they are so much of the present that it is impossible to see them in historical perspective. - RALPH BARTON PERRY.