[2] The third volume in the trilogy—which will continue chronologically from Immanuel Kant—will complete the survey, that has been compared to Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy published in 1945.

[4] My aim...was to approach the story of philosophy as a journalist ought to: to rely only on primary sources, wherever they still existed; to question everything that had become conventional wisdom; and, above all, to try and explain it all as clearly as I could.

On the one hand, there were failures in attempting to push the boundaries of rational inquiry to its limits resulting, in a mere "mirage".

[5][3] The 2000 review in The Guardian said that Gottlieb handled "opaque and controversial issues" with skill, as would be expected of the author who was a senior editor at The Economist for many years.

[6] The New York Times review by Michael Wood said that Gottlieb had succeeded in achieving his aim in writing the series, which was to present philosophers—both old and new—to readers without turning the philosophers into "mouthpieces for what we already think we know.