A History of Western Philosophy

Last year I had the wonderful opportunity of reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. It's a great (and entertaining) book, especially for filling in those areas and people you've never had the chance to study.

It's also interesting to get some perspective on how some philosophers are really people of their times. Amusingly, Russell spends a fair amount of time talking about how various philosophers led to the state of Germany at the time of writing (it was first published in 1946). I don't know enough history to know how compelling his statements on this are, but I found it deeply ironic that a book on history and how philosophers might be affected by (and affect) their social world should itself be so clearly affected by Russell's own social world. If you were to write a book on the history of philosophy now, German philosophy and nationalism might get a mention, but I don't think it would feature so heavily as it does in Russell's work.

Of course, now I being to think about how my own philosophical views might be affected by our current social climate..