The Eighth Edition of Steven M. Cahn's Classics of Western Philosophy offers the same exacting standard of editing and translation that made earlier editions of this anthology the most highly valued and widely used volume of its kind. But the Eighth Edition offers exciting new content as well: Plato's Laches (complete), new selections from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (on courage), Descartes' Discourse on Method (complete), all previously omitted sections of Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (complete).

These additions—with no offsetting deletion of content of the Seventh Edition—yield an anthology of unrivaled versatility, the only one to offer the complete texts of: both Descartes' Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, both Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and selections from the Critique of Pure Reason.