Abstract

"How is this history of philosophy different from all others? 1. It's neighter very long nor very short just long enough. 2. It's available in separate volumes but eventually in one complete work. 3. It focuses on the "big ideas" that have influenced present people and present times. 4. It includes relevant biographical data, proportionate to its importance for each thinker. 5. It is not just history but philosophy. Its aim is not merely to record facts but to stimulate philosophizing, controversy, argument. 6. It aims above all at understanding, at what the old logic called the "first act of the mind" rather than the third: the thing computers and many "analytic philosophers" cannot understand. 7. It uses ordinary language and logic, not academic jargon or symbolic logic. 8. It is commonsensical. 9. It is "existential" in that it sees philosophy as something to be lived and tested"--