A History of Western Philosophy: The Twentieth Century to Quine and Derrida, Volume V [Paperback]

W.T. Jones (Author), Robert J. Fogelin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0155003798 | ISBN-13: 978-0155003798 | Edition: 3

A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY examines the nature of philosophical enterprise and philosophy's role in Western culture. Jones and Fogelin weave key passages from classic philosophy works into their comments and criticisms, giving A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY the combined advantages of a source book and textbook. The text concentrates on major figures in each historical period, combining exposition with direct quotations from the philosophers themselves. The text places philosophers in appropriate cultural context and shows how their theories reflect the concerns of their times.

Product Details

• Paperback: 581 pages
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; 3 edition (November 22, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0155003798
• ISBN-13: 978-0155003798
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #843,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even more modern..., December 29, 2003

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FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Western Philosophy: The Twentieth Century to Quine and Derrida, Volume V (Paperback)

This book, 'The Twentieth Century to Quine and Derrida', is the revised fifth volume of a five-volume series on the history of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones, professor of philosophy in California. For this edition of the fifth volume, Robert Fogelin helped in the recent revision. This series is a very strong, thorough introduction to the course of Western Philosophy, beginning at the dawn of the philosophical enterprise with the pre-Socratics in ancient Greece to the modern thinkers such as Wittgenstein and Sartre. It has grown, over the three decades or so of its publication, from one to four then to five volumes. It has remained a popular text, and could serve as the basis of a one-year survey of philosophy for undergraduates or a one-semester survey for graduate students. Even advanced students in philosophy will find this valuable, all major topics and most minor topics in the course of philosophy are covered in these volumes.

Jones states that there are two possible ways for a writer to organise a history of philosophy -- either by addressing everyone who ever participated in philosophy (which could become rather cumbersome if one accepts the premise that anyone could be a philosopher), or to address the major topics and currents of thought, drawing in the key figures who address them, but leaving out the lesser thinkers for students to pursue on their own. Jones has chosen the latter tactic, making sure to provide bibliographic information for this task.

This volume, 'The Twentieth Century to Quine and Derrida', starts where the last volume leaves off, as philosophy enters the turbulent twentieth century. The first major philosophical school Jones looks at is the idea of Process philosophy, which tends to take a nod from science and modern ideas of how we know things, and a realistic idea of what we do not, and perhaps cannot, know. Process philosophy often tends to get ignored now, save in theological circles, where the work of Whitehead have been taken on board.

Other philosophers covered in this volume on the twentieth century include Dewey, Bergson, Moore, Frege, Russell, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Quine and Derrida. One of the primary fields of philosophy is epistemology -- how we know what we know, and do we know anything? All major philosophers have dealt with this, as metaphysics tended to take a back seat, and fields such as politics, ethics, and religion retreated to the background, at least as far as philosophy is concerned (the fields of political theory, etc., gained much ground in the twentieth century as separate from philosophy).

Wittgenstein is the point at which Jones opted to end the series originally, as it becomes difficult, from an historical standpoint, to decide what of the past few decades should be incorporated. Philosophy is a slow-moving enterprise, and the 'hot' publications and thinkers today may fade quickly tomorrow, so predicting who will stand the test of time is difficult. Wittgenstein is also an appropriate philosopher to end with, given that when he wrote his magnum opus, the Tractatus, he thought he had finally resolved all major philosophical problems; reflecting later in life, he realised he was not correct, and this in and of itself may represent the embodiment of the philosophical project. However, as this volume shows, enough time has passed to make the explorations of language itself as a medium of philosophy an important part of the philosophical discipline, necessitating the addition of chapters on language and the philosophers Quine and Derrida (others who might have been included are Paul Ricoeur, among others).

Each volume ends with a glossary of terms, and a worthwhile index. The glossary warns against short, dictionary-style definitions and answers to broad terms and questions, and thus indicates the pages index-style to the discussion within the text for further context. The one wish I would have would be a comprehesive glossary and index that covers the several volumes; as it is, each volume has only its own referents.

This is minor criticism in a generally exceptional series. It is not easy text, but it is not needlessly difficult. The print size on the direct quotes, which are sometimes lengthy, can be a strain at times, but the reading is worthwhile.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent synthesis of philosophy and history, December 5, 2001

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Michael Strassberg - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Western Philosophy: The Twentieth Century to Quine and Derrida, Volume V (Paperback)

This book is wonderful, as are all in the series by Jones. He makes philosophy come alive by placing it in the context of it's contemporaneous civilization. The great questions asked by humanity, to which philosophy addresses itself, do not come out of thin air (please excuse the cliche.) These questions are born of the search for meaning, whether it be metaphysical, epistemological, ontological, ethical, political, or so forth. The sociocultural and political milieu beg questions of meaning and truth to each generation and individual, and each must answer for themselves. Jones places twentieth century philosophy in perspective. He scrutinizes, defines and explains the great philosophical movements of our century in the context of the times. The trauma of two world wars, the challenges of scientific discovery, the alienation of the individual, the seeming futility to grasp ultimate reality are inherent in our culture, and our great philosophers have attempted to formulate theories to make sense of these phenomena. A great book which puts flesh and breath into philosophy.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat Incomplete, February 16, 2011

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K. Connally - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Western Philosophy: The Twentieth Century to Quine and Derrida, Volume V (Paperback)

This book is a very helpful and necessary introduction to this topic. With some authors (Dewey, the positivists) you can go ahead and read them if you have a mind to; but many of the twentieth century's most well-known philosophers (Heidegger, Derrida) are virtually impossible to understand in their own writings so it's quite nice to have a compact introduction to their thought. Also, it's nice that with the addition of Fogelin's input the masculinist language ("a man" for "a person," etc.) present in the rest of the series has been corrected in this volume--though don't expect any mention of female philosophers or women's issues despite the rise of feminist theory in the 20th c. This omission is however somewhat more justified than in previous volumes since the scope of ideas under consideration has in the final volume been almost totally reduced to epistemology. Sartre and Russell are the exceptions, but their sections are still mostly about epistemological concerns.

My main complaint about this volume, in its current revised edition, is that it seems unfinished. At the end of a 5-volume history one might expect something in the way of a conclusion, reviewing the trends in philosophical thought over the period described, and perhaps even giving a brief survey of the state of the field at the time of writing or some hunches as to where it may be going in the future. There is not even a sentence of conclusion in the book as it stands. It ends with a chapter on Derrida which is, as a note indicates, a mostly unaltered critical essay on some inconsistencies in his thought, previously published in an academic journal. Unlike the other chapters in this book and the other volumes, which serve as introductions to the various writers, this chapter takes for granted a working knowledge of Derridean theory and, rather than summarizing his beliefs, the arguments he made to support them, and various counter-arguments that have been or could be made against them, this chapter focuses on one particular aspect of his thought and makes an argument that it involves Derrida in an inconsistency. Now I have no doubt that this chapter is, nonetheless, a great deal more readable and enlightening for a lay reader than anything Derrida himself ever wrote. But it is not an ideal introduction to the entirety of his thought and has nothing at all to say about his influence on other thinkers or his place in contemporary philosophical discussions.

Anyway, I did get a lot out of reading this book, but I thought I'd kvetch a bit as I think this edition seems to have been published with the ending still unfinished by its authors and a new, finished version is in order.