Customer Reviews

History of Philosophy, Volume I: Greece and Rome

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Amazon advertizes and depicts this book with a dust cover. The book arrived without the dustcover, which for a bibliophile is akin to a painting sold without the frame...or something like that. Anyway, Coppleston's 15 volume tome has been regarded and accepted as the (definitive) discourse on the History of Western 'thought' since the late 1940's, and a re-reading of Vol. 1 (after nearly 30 years) has done nothing to diminish my sense of its stature or worth. The History is not 'easy' reading, but IS worth every minute of the time you can devote to it, especially in a world that seems to treat THINKING as passe.
The only reason I reserved the fifth star is I'm still ticked about the missing dust cover.

One of the best introductions to ancient Greek philosophy out there. My only two complaints about it are: 1. Like many texts published a half century or longer ago Coplestone consistently leaves Greek and Latin phrases that he quotes (even at some considerable length) untranslated. For modern readers like myself, this only serves as a reminder of how far downhill our educational standards have gone -- we don't know ancient Greek and/or Latin anymore! 2. Coplestone's choice of verbiage is often far more dense and complicated than it has to be. I've never seen such a difficult explanation of Plato's theory of the Forms. Those two criticisms aside, the book is a great over all and well laid out in its presentation. I read this alongside the opening chapters of Bertrand Russell's much lengthier "History of Western Philosophy" and the combination of the two, I think, served me well as I was able to receive the same information from two very different perspectives. Great learning experience!