A Brief History of Western Philosophy

Author: Zhao Dunhua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-08
Features: The philosophical problems we have chosen are eternal questions of human thought. Throughout history and in the present, philosophers have proposed one answer after another, only to have them overturned, modified, or rewritten one after another. The history of philosophy reveals the succession of noble minds and the clash of intellectual heroes. Although no conclusion of Western philosophers has withstood the test of history, and no philosophical truth has been universally accepted until now, the arguments and proofs proposed by philosophers to solve philosophical problems continue to inspire and remain a precious wealth of the human spirit. To maintain consistency in the writing style of this textbook, I have made some changes in wording when quoting reference materials and other translated works, without affecting the original meaning. The changes are not listed one by one. If readers need to cite materials from this book, please check the original text. In addition to extensively quoting existing translated materials, I have also focused on directly quoting foreign-language materials. These foreign-language materials can be roughly divided into three categories: first, philosophical historical materials frequently used in foreign textbooks but not yet translated into Chinese; second, newly discovered materials by foreign scholars; and the third category comes from my personal reading experiences, where I found some passages in the original texts very helpful for understanding certain viewpoints. The content of this book includes: the spirit and problems of Greek philosophy, early natural philosophy, the Sophists and Socrates, Platonic philosophy, Aristotelian philosophy, and more.