Abstract

A history of the history of philosophy. Smart deals with representative thinkers in short chapters, expounding and criticizing their doctrines and methods. All of them are found inadequate, though perhaps Bergson and Jaspers less so than the others. In his concluding chapter Smart outlines a view of his own which seems to incorporate the major stresses of the criticized views. He views philosophy as a continuing dialectical play of sometimes antithetical ideas of the past and present: a dialectic which makes the history of philosophy an integral part of philosophy but not the whole of the enterprise. Every philosophy makes its contribution and all reveal their short-comings in the trans-historical dialectic of philosophy itself.--W. G. E.