Medieval Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy

Anthony Kenny019875275X, 9780198752752

Sir Anthony Kenny here continues his fascinating account of the history of philosophy, focusing on the thousand-year-long medieval period. This is the second volume of a four-book set in which Kenny will unfold a magisterial new history of Western philosophy, the first major single-author history of philosophy to appear in decades. In this volume, Kenny takes us on a fascinating tour through more than a millennium of thought from 400 AD onwards, charting the story of philosophy from the founders of Christian and Islamic thought through to the Renaissance. The Middle Ages saw a great flourishing of philosophy, and the intellectual endeavor of the era reaches its climax in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with the systems of the great schoolmen such as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. With Kenny as guide, we see these major philosophers through the eyes of a man who has spent a lifetime contemplating their work. Thus we do not simply get an overview of philosophy, but also a penetrating and insightful critique of it. Kenny offers an illuminating account of various thinkers and schools of thought, from Augustine to Maimonides and from Grosseteste to Pomponazzi. And he offers much insight into medieval thinking about logic and language, knowledge, physics, metaphysics, the mind, the soul, and God. Vividly written, but serious and deep enough to offer a genuine understanding of the great philosophers, Kenny’s lucid and stimulating history will become the definitive work for anyone interested in the people and ideas that shaped the course of Western thought.