conceived originally as a serious presentation of the development of philosophy for Catholic seminary students , Frederick Copleston's nine - volume A History of Philosophy has journeyed far beyond the modest purpose of its author to universal acclaim as the best history of philosophy in English . Copleston , an Oxford Jesuit of immense erudition who once tangled with A. J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics , knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs , and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic carica tures . Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete his tory of Western philosophy , one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement and one that gives full place to each thinker , presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who went before and to those who came after him . The result of Copleston's prodigious labors is a history of philoso phy that is unlikely ever to be surpassed . Thought magazine summed up the general agreement among scholars and students alike when it reviewed Copleston's A History of Philosophy as " broad - minded and objective , comprehensive and scholarly , unified and well propor tioned ... We cannot recommend [ it ] too highly . "