This work does not aim to present the development of philosophy as the realisation of a spiritual category, even less so as the supreme category or as a gradual conquest of rational thought; nor does it consider that philosophy is the more or less independent product of transformation of society or the expression of a deep structure of being. This book is based on the belief that philosophical doctrines are «facts» just as any other, unprivileged cultural expressions, which all together constitute a history of thought which is not necessarily constant and unchanging in its evolution. This means that the history of philosophy branches off and interlaces without a preordinate scheme. At times these branching and interlacing are obvious; in other cases it is necessary to make suppositions, more or less probable, just as in other fields of historical research. Rather than an organic tradition, history of philosophy is presented in this book as a complex of multiple tradition, meeting, contrasting, overlapping. In this way the reader is placed in a position to understand the variety of issues presented by the changing conditions of contemporary world.
A choral work which has employed over sixty experts of different specialities, divided into six volumes, from Antiquity to date.
The first tow volumes concern Ancient and Medieval thought, respectively, the third analyses modern philosophy from the 15th to the 17th century, and the last three volumes are each devoted to a single century: the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth. A general outlook on philosophy, which takes into account the progress of research in the last decades and reinterprets them with great clarity of style.