Abstract

Father Copleston is nearing the end of what has become a monumental History of European Philosophy, whose single-handed composition and urbane scholarship rival any grand history of the nineteenth century. After Volumes III and IV, which dealt respectively with modern rationalism from Descartes to Leibniz and British empiricism from Hobbes to Hume, Volume VI expounded the French and German philosophies of the Enlightenment before analysing Kant in some 200 pages - possibly the most masterful and succinct introduction to Kant in English. Volume VII now enters the author’s speciality, the study of post-Kantian German philosophy in the nineteenth century, including a chapter on the Socratic Dane, Kierkegaard and looking forward to contemporary Heidegger. The series, daunting enough to any one man’s industry, will be completed in two further volumes as the author modestly announces