Product Description

If you think philosophy is irrelevant to your daily life, think again. You need only observe the world around you to discover how substantially the ideas of history's thinkers affect us still. You can hear it in the beliefs of your non-Christian friends. In the media, your music, your children's classrooms. You can see it in our public policies, on every bookstore shelf, in the way we understand our very existence--even in the church.

We like to believe that we create our little worlds from scratch and then live in them. But the reality is, we step into an environment that already exists, and we learn to interact with it. The game has been conceived long before us; the rules and boundaries already decided.

We may be amused when René Descartes labors so long in order to conclude that he exists, or puzzled by Immanuel Kant spending his life analyzing how we know anything. Yet these men were not simply contemplating minutiae. The foundational thinking of philosophy tries to lay bare all of our assumptions, revealing our false and sometimes dangerous beliefs so that we may arrive at a coherent worldview.

The greater our familiarity with the ideas that have shaped our culture over the centuries, the greater our ability to understand--and influence--that culture for Christ. From ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle to Christian philosophers like Augustine and Aquinas to the molders of modern thought such as Kant and Nietszche, R. C. Sproul traces the contours of Western philosophy throughout history and demonstrates the massive consequences these ideas have had on world events, theology, the arts, and culture--as well as in our everyday lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374981 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781581341720
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author

R. C. SPROUL is the founder and president of Ligonier Ministries and is featured daily on Renewing Your Mind, an international radio broadcast with an estimated two million listeners per week. Sproul has written over sixty books and has taught at various colleges and seminaries. Currently he serves as senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Work for the Beginning Philosopher
This is a great work for the person who is wanting a little better understanding of philosophy and its history. Sproul covers the major philosophers throughout history and describes what they taught/espoused. This book is an excellent beginning text. I also appreciate the fact that Sproul covers Aquinas (Sproul being a Thomist of sorts) especially since Aquinas is often forgotten or merely overlooked in the History of Philosophy. This is a pity since Aquinas had such a strong impact on the "Christianizing" of Aristotle's metaphysics/philosophy. Another wonderful aspect to this book is the very last section where Sproul delineates the problems that are occurring in the twentieth century in the area of metaphysics. This section is aptly called "Gilson's Choice." Here Sproul describes the metaphysical trends (and their demise so to speak) and then tells how Etienne Gilson attempted to correct these metaphysical ailments and describe how metaphysics has derailed over the centuries (beginning especially with Rene Descartes). Sproul also includes a nice bibliography for the reader to branch out into further study. Overall, this is a neat little book that is very informative and wonderful for the student who wants to gain a better understanding of the study of philosophy. Thank you Dr. Sproul!!!!!!

Excellcent overview of Western philosophy!
This book covers roughly 2,500 years of Western philosophy from Plato to Jean-Paul Sartre. Sproul's sections on Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and the section on the influence of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud (even though they cannot properly be called philosophers) were the most insightful sections in the book. The conclusion was excellent as well.

Sproul opens the book with an introduction to what philosophy is and why he is interested in it. I think his definition that philosophy is foundational thinking is simple and very accurate. His attention to epistemology (The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity) throughout the book was a good to choice. Sproul's explanation of the various philosophers was accessible; the use of diagrams (e.g. his illustration of Kierkegaard and Hegel's synthesis) will help those who are totally unfamiliar with philosophy.

Many readers will probably say that the book is far too short (at 203 pages), but I think Sproul's objective was to provide a concise introduction. I think the book could be twice the length and still be concise (then he could have included Pragmatism and perhaps even an Eastern philosopher or two). I think that the book failed to do accomplish its title. What do I mean? I think except for a few places (e.g. Marx), he failed to show the consequences of these ideas. Examples of how these ideas have impacted society would make philosophy more relevant. At the same time, I recognize that perhaps Sproul wanted to reader to reflect on these ideas and then realize when these ideas have influenced the arts, politics etc but I think he failed to show how these ideas have worked themselves out (again, there are a few exceptions) in our world. Also, he rarely mentioned the Christian response to these philosophers; I think perhaps an annotated bibliography of Christian books responding to each philosophical movement (i.e. rationalism, empiricism, Marxism or existentialism) would have been helpful. One book I can recommend that evaluates some of these philosophers (e.g. Kant, Hume, Plato and others) is Norman Geisler's, "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics."

I would recommend this book for Christians who want to learn about philosophy but don't know where to begin.

Well written, but lacks influences of last 50 years.
_Consequences_ covers great philosophers from Thales of Miletus, to the philosophers of modernism. The penultimate chapter before the conclusion covers Darwin and Freud. Sproul discussed how these 19th century thinkers have had great influence on the current secular worldview. As others have noted, the book ends rather abruptly after 200 pages.

Throughout this book R. C. Sproul does not hide his biases. He clearly states he is a Christian and a dedicated supporter of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. He agrees with Roman Catholic philosopher Etienne Gilson, and concludes, "our choice is not between Immanuel Kant and René Descartes or between G. W. F. Hegel and Søren Kierkegaard. We must choose instead between Kant and Thomas Aquinas. Gilson insists that all other positions are mere halfway houses on the road to either absolute religious agnosticism or the natural theology of Christian metaphysics."

R. C. Sproul is a very good writer. He is both easy to read, and communicates many ideas in a few words. I gave _Consequences_ four stars because it is a very good introduction to ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy. Some of the discussions of how philosophies interacted with each other were very nice. Sproul also has an excellent skill in explaining such concepts as epistemology (knowledge), ontology (being), and teleology (purpose).

This book includes the best short introduction to the medieval scholastics I have ever read. The inclusion of proofs for the existence of God was very nicely done. Kierkegaard is also very good, although Sproul does not seem to go as far as he might to meet him on his own terms. As a fideist Kierkegaard has a different philosophical emphasis than Sproul. To judge Kierkegaard in purely rational way seems unfair; he was more concerned about matters of faith and heart and saw philosophy as a means to expression, rather than a way to find absolute truth. I respectfully disagree with Sproul who feels that fideism is one of the "mere byproducts born of the decomposition of the Christian living God." R. C. Sproul certainly is not as friendly to his philosophy as Calvin College's C. Stephen Evans is in _Faith Beyond Reason_.

The book claims to help the reader understand "the concepts that shaped our world." I felt that the book fell short of its purpose because it seems to ignore the influences to our culture in the last fifty years. There was little, if any, mention of postmodernism and eastern philosophy. I found myself checking the copyright date to make sure it wasn't written in the nineteen-fifties. In recent years, the influence of postmodernism has had a profound affect on our culture, and I see the omission as a flaw. In the introduction, Sproul states, "Philosophy forces us to think foundationally." The current voices of postmodern philosophers reject the foundationalism, and much of the rationalism of the modern era. Some people today go as far as saying "What is true for you, is true for you. What is true for me is true for me." That being said, this book and another such as Stanley J. Grentz's _A Primer on Postmodernism_ make a great pair.

The fact that R. C. Sproul is a Reformed Christian, and seems to be quite partial to Thomas Aquinas, does not detract from the fact that he is also a very competent historian of philosophy. I appreciate his ministry to promote thinking among evangelical Christians. After reading _Consequences_, I would highly recommend the highly acclaimed nine-volume series _A History of Philosophy_ by Thomist philosopher Frederick C. Copleston.