Covering over 1000 years of classical philosophy from Homer to Saint Augustine, this accessible, comprehensive study details the major philosophies and philosophers of the period--the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Neoplatonism. Though the emphasis is on questions of philosophical interest, particularly ethics, the theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind, and philosophical theology, Irwin includes discussions of the literary and historical background to classical philosophy as well as the work of other important thinkers--Greek tragedians, historians,...

"One of the great historic controversies in philosophy," according to Bertrand Russell, is that between empiricists--"best represented by the British philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume"--and rationalists. This book sets the empiricists in their contemporary and cultural context, examines their various approaches to philosophy, and highlights the significance of their ideas to 20th-century thinking. By focusing on what the "empiricists" actually have to say, rather than on their classification as such, Woolhouse incidentally shows how unreliable these conventional labels can be.