Abstract

Not a conventional history, this work is organized in terms of the author's understanding of the developing ideas of philosophy from the Italian Renaissance to the twentieth century. The first part of the work is developed along the tensions between the empiricist and Platonic traditions; thus Berkeley is seen in relation to Locke and Hume but also to the Cambridge Platonists. A novel facet of the middle part of the work is the large section separating Leibniz and Kant, devoted to the developing critical spirit in Les Philosophes from Bayle to the Encyclopedia and to Rousseau and Condillac, as well as Thomas Reid and the Scottish school of common sense. After the Hegelians the work closes with a brief discussion of the philosophies of action and process and existentialism. Boas gives to many of his subjects interesting and valuable reinterpretations within the perspective of a concern for the development of ideas.--R. P.