Hi Austin,

Thank you for the appreciation! I have found Copleston’s multi-volume A History of Philosophy incredibly useful. Although it might seem dated, it is still a must-have for any student of philosophy and well worth the price. If you want to drill deep into the thought of a particular philosopher, there are obviously more specialized volumes, and Copleston does make some interpretive blunders every now and then. Nevertheless, Copleston’s volumes are unmatched in the lucid and comprehensive way they accurately address all the major philosophical movements in the west without overgeneralizing or neglecting the differences between thinkers in the same school.

Camden,

Writing this post was my pleasure.

What a find! I would love to see how Van Til interacted in the margins with Cunningham’s critique and commendation of other idealists. The way Van Til used Reformed theology to respond to idealism was just brilliant. I look forward to studying Van Til’s critique of idealism more at Westminster, and maybe getting my hands on some of those primary sources!

Thanks for the excellent post. I researched the British absolute idealists for some papers I wrote on Van Til in seminary. In the course of my studies, I checked out Gustavus Watts Cunningham’s The Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy from the library. To my surprise I found out that it was Van Til’s personal copy replete with marginalia! I hoped to learn more about the British Absolute Idealists, but I sure wasn’t expecting to unearth a primary source in the process.