How good is Copleston's series on the history of philosophy...

How good is Copleston's series on the history of philosophy? And why do almost all printings of this series use absolutely garish covers?

The best out there. Only real flaws occur towards the end, since Copleston was a contemporary of late 20th century philosophy. If you can't stand the length, then Anthony Kenny's book is a good substitute.

The last book should never have been written. He simply cannot grasp any philosophy of the 20th century. The rest is great as introducing core concepts and ideas. Especially the medieval books on the development of the scholastic tradition.

It's the gold standard except the last book which doesn't hold up that well.

I read it last year and it served as a great introduction to philosophy. It's incredibly scholarly and not too hard to follow, though it can be dense in parts. As others anons have noted, the last book is bad, but everything else is good. I particularly enjoyed volume 10.

how long is it all together?

About 6000 pages.
It was published posthumously I believe, it wasn't properly finished.

Copleston is a religious moron. Just watch his debate on youtube with Bertrand Russell.

is it a dense 6k or what? how long did it take you

Would you recommend his book of aquinas?
Or is it already contained in the history?
Are his objections or 'review' on the philosophy discussed in each volume based upon catholic doctrine?

do surveys like this ever mention stirnbitch

Just looking at the entire volume set posted by OP makes me believe that that last book is trash. How is it even possible to fit 20th century philosophy into a flimsy, thin book like that?

I wonder if there are any other attempts to write a history of philosophy for the 20th century that aren't garbage. It would be nice to have a collection of Copleston up to the 20th century, and then something else to fill the niche.

Yes in the German idealism section, a few pages are dedicated to Stirner. He was an important Young Hegelian, and it would be foolish not to include him. In fact, when I first heard about it, I was impressed that he had included Brentano, Feuerbach, Stirner, etc., since I knew that this wouldn't be a meme history.

>whole book on russians
wat

>Title Descriptor not capitalized

Dropped.

Let's see you do any better?

Yea just skip over those guys who brought algebra and modern medicine and the ancient greeks in general

Russell got btfo in that debate.
>Muh it means nothing, even after long explanations that even a child could understand
Read 4 volumes so far. It's dense, but not too dense. Reading the fifth now. No need to read all the volumes one after the other.

How do you guys get around all the Greek words in the first book?

I'm not a brainlet.

Nice joke

Anthony Kenny's history is more accessible. If you go with Copleston you better know some Greek and Latin.

...

PC revisionist history

I can never find a full set in at Barnes and Nobles so that always annoys me.

Why the fuck would something that compiles and summarizes other peoples' works use untranslated Greek and Latin? If I was able to read Greek i'd go straight to the primary sources.

An 11 volume history of philosophy is too niche and would take up too much shelf space to ever justify sitting in stock at an walk-in retailer. That's the sort of thing that you would have to special order.

He actually explains why in the introduction in volume 1, It's a product of its time when. The intended audience for these books are university level philosophy students and back then philosophy students were expected to also start learning Greek and Latin. These days for whatever reason it's not a requirement. Blame the falling standards.

>Bertrand Russell

You mean that guy who let an American impregnate his wife? The guy who later raised that other mans kids knowing full well that they weren't his? The guy that misunderstood and got Nietzsche wrong? The guy that perpetuated the "dark ages" myth?

I think I know him. Yeah he totally wrecked that stupid religious moron.

I'm not that guy, but can you elaborate on the "dark age" myth?
I'm skeptical myself, because I can't imagine any age being so one-sided (in this case negative), but on the other hand, I don't see any reasons why it isn't the dark age, seeing how the Church did restrict a lot of things. I know that priests saved certain books by copying them, but that's not enough to convince me, not to mention they've saved books of their choosing, the ones that are most important for the Church.

I'm being a little hyperbolic on that but generally Bertrand is very biased against medieval philosophy. It's partly a product of the time where we didn't actually know a lot of medieval philosophy when Bertrand was alive and kicking so it was popular to think the Europeans of the time were backwards or lost without the Greeks. Another part of it is his atheism. If he were alive today he would be one of those "chartist" atheists like to go around the internet with that picture lamenting the "Christian dark ages" that set humanity back a thousand years. Consequently he has a very rosy and I would say juvenile view of the renaissance and enlightenment and this bias is not subtle in his history at all.

If you believe similar things as him then I would recommend reading some Rodney Stark to help clear up some misconceptions about Christian history. He just happens to be a historian that I like, I'm sure you could read any other serious contemporary historian to the same effect. The church didn't restrict science, that's silliness.

To give an example, Newton, Gauss and Euler and Leibniz to name some, the dudes actually advancing maths and sciences instead of jerking each other off like the illuminists, were fervorously religious.

They didn't live in the dark age, though.

I don't agree with Russell almost at all as he's pretty biased, but I will check out Stark, thanks.

It wasn't a dark age because, if you set aside the plague, was a prosperous age. Agriculture advanced significantly, architecture surpassed anything from cultures before, the disdain for the natural sciences became extinct with the influence of Aristote, Aquinas and Bacon, philosophy had dozens of names of high quality such as Scotus, Bonaventure, Bacon, Aquinas, Ockham.
What things did the Church restrict, in a decentralized continent where news travel slow, where power was split between numerous rulers, where there was no hegemony and where the only universal unity was that of deep faith of the people?

>a lot of things

I'm curious if you elaborate on what you mean by "things." What exactly was restricted? The marginalia of classical & theological texts can be lewd, sarcastic, funny, cruel &c. These were men who devoted their lives to the study and reproduction of literature. Who cares if they were doing it because of a faith in a god that you have no personal understanding of. Even if you want to think of "The Church" as some unrivaled definite power, individuals still find ways to incorporate their own lives into the texts they recreate.

>He simply cannot grasp any philosophy of the 20th century

that's because it's entirely incoherent

You've got a point, thanks for the response.

I'm still just curious what you mean by "things." The Church allowed investigation into and dialogue with viewpoints that differed from their own. Why do you think Plato's works are still (mostly) extant? He was the prime enemy of the early church, but they found value in discovering conversation with him. I hate the Catholic Church, for perspective, but I still appreciate that for most of their history they were able to keep the dialectic alive and found value in converse opinions.

Plato wasn't the enemy of the early Church, Platonic influence is openly stated in 130 ad by Justin Martyr and almost every other subsequent father.