The eighth volume of Copleston's History of Philosophy opens with an examination of the turn towards empiricism in 10th-century England, analyzing the significant work of utilitarian philosophers such as Bentham and Mill.

Frederick Copleston served as Professor of the History of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of London. This eleven-volume work is one of the most notable individual academic endeavors of the modern era.

Volume 8 covers Jeremy Bentham, Francis Herbert Bradley, John Dewey, William James, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, and Herbert Spencer. This volume describes the development of idealism both in Britain and America, as well as the revolution against it represented by the work of Moore and Russell in the twentieth century. There is also an invaluable section on the pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey.