In our age of increasing specialization, most histories of philosophy are written by many hands, by specialists in a variety of fields and periods. Oxford University Press commissioned me to write a history of philosophy as a stand-alone work. in the belief that I could address connected topics by linking ancient, medieval, early modern, and contemporary philosophy together as a single narrative and presenting the development of philosophy from a single perspective.
Readers focused on historical interests would focus on the chronology and refer to the thematic sections as needed to deepen their understanding. Readers interested in philosophical issues will rather concentrate on the thematic sections of each volume, referring to the chronology to place specific issues in context.
About the Book
This book is the second of four volumes. Volume I dealt with the early centuries of philosophy in classical Greece and Rome. This volume takes up the story from the conversion of St. Augustine to the humanistic Renaissance.
Sir Anthony Kenny continues to write a major new history of Western philosophy, a fascinating guide to more than a thousand years of thought, drawing on the story of philosophy from the founders of Christian and Islamic thought to the Renaissance after 400 AD.
Philosophy flourished greatly during the Middle Ages, and the intellectual endeavors of the period reached their climax in the13th and 14th centuries with the great school systems of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Written specifically for a wide general readership and sufficient for a serious and in-depth understanding of the great philosophers, Kenny’s lucid and stimulating history will be the definitive work for anyone interested in the figures and ideas that shaped the course of Western thought.