Confessions of a Philosopher:: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosphy from Plato to Popper

by Bryan Magee

Book Overview

In this infectiously exciting book, Bryan Magee tells the story of his own discovery of philosophy and not only makes it come alive but shows its relevance to daily life. Magee is the Carl Sagan of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375500286
• ISBN13: 9780375500282
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Great variety of topics, good for Philosophy 101 student

I read Magee out of casual curiosity rather than to survey the breadth of western philosophy. His book really is a memoir of his intellectual development filled with frank, simple reasons for his satisfaction or dissatisfaction with numerous philosophical responses to basic questions about the world. I have been out of college or a formal learning environment for close to 20 years. Yet Magee clarified the meaning and significance of Kant's "synthetic a priori" concept in a way my college philosophy course did not. He writes on dozens of issues: Platonism, Aristo- telianism, Logical Positivism, violent revolution, Kant, Hegel, the advantage of reading primary works, the importance of open discourse with others however critical they may be, romantic love, Jesus Christ. Throughout the memoir Magee's guiding principles remains clear: be true to your own experience always demanding satisfying answers to your questions but permit others to criticize your arguments, and steer clear of dead, unfruitful philosophical traditions.

A search for meaning

Confessions can be of two kinds: confessions of faith and confessions of failure. Bryan Magee's vividly written intellectual autobiography has the character of both. His convictions make for exhilarating reading; but his failure to find in philosophy a reliable answer to his deepest concerns casts a shadow over the book, which darkens in the last chapter to a tormented despondency. Magee's basic conviction is that philosophy is hugely important, in that it deals - or should deal - with all our ultimate questions about what the world, and therefore our existence in this world, is really like. His most trenchant attacks are on the Logical Positivists who dominated the Oxford scene at the time when he was an undergraduate there, and for many years afterwards. They ruled out as "non-philosophical" any discussion which was carried on in language that did not meet their narrow criteria of meaningfulness. The Linguistic Philosophers, who gradually took over from the Logical Positivists, were even less concerned with the truth or verifiability of a proposition. Instead, they thought that the principal task of philosophy was to elucidate the way words were used in practice, by examining, for example, the way in which the same word might mean different things to different people. They believed that it was not the business of philosophers to go beyond that and to produce any theories: as Gilbert Ryle defined it, philosophy was merely "talk about talk". Magee describes these Oxford philosophers as having all the characteristics of a narrow and intolerant sect. They considered that Kant and Schopenhauer, who showed up the limits of empiricism, had so little to say that seemed to them "meaningful" that no acquaintance with them was required of undergraduates. Neither Kant nor Schopenhauer were part of the philosophy courses at Oxford, which jumped straight from Hume to Wittgenstein. Magee had the strong conviction that the empirical world cannot be all there is: empirical and linguistic theories had nothing to say about those experiences we have, and have very intensely, which are therefore profoundly meaningful, but whose source we can hardly explain adequately: these include the arts (and especially Magee's great love of music) and intimate personal relationships. After Oxford, Magee took a post-graduate course at Yale. He draws a vivid contrast between the cliquish atmosphere among Oxford philosophers and the broad and generous interest in the whole field of philosophy at Yale. There Magee discovered Kant, and at last he had found a thinker who spoke to his intuition that there was more to philosophy than the dry, narrow and limited fare that was dished out at Oxford. For it was Kant who explained that there must be a reality (the noumenal world) beyond the phenomenal world of which we have experience; that the noumenal world is something we cannot ever know because we are forced to perceive the world in terms of the concepts and

First Class Personal Introduction to Philosophy

Bryan Magee, well known for his previous works and popularisations, gives in this account an 'insider's look' into not just into how philosophy was practised in the 20th century, but also gives key insights into some of the greatest thinkers in the history of philosophy: St Augustine, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, the Greek philosophers, but most notably, Kant and Schopenhauer. Like his other book 'The Story of Philosophy', 'Confessions of a Philosopher' outlines the historical development of philosophy from the time of the Greeks too the present. Magee brilliantly expounds the incredible influence this has had on civilisation and on the immense importance of the great thinkers. But most importantly, in my view, he recongises the tremendous importance of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose ideas were as revolutionary to philosophy as those of Plato and Aristotle before him.Magee clearly understands the importance of Kant, but goes one step further and explains the most difficult yet important aspects of Kant's philosophy, such as his distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', his view we can only understand what we can percieve and 'order' according to our minds, the fact that God's existence (or nonexistence) can no longer be proved rationally, and so on, in beautifully clear and vivid prose. Magee is not just a acute philosopher, but is also a first class writer and populariser; something that is rare in philosophy.Magee utterly destroys the old stereotype of philosophy as being either pointless pedantry over words (something he correctly attributes to the excessive focus on linguistics by many contemporary analytic philosophers) or as air-headed speculative metaphysics with no connection to the real world.Magee argues, quite convincingly, that like science, philosophy is not merely about clarifying concepts or analysing our language, but about understanding our world, our place in it, and indeed, the universe as a whole. He pulls no punches, blasting postmodernism, some aspects of continental philosophy, and the Anglo-American tradition of 'analytic philosophy' as being utterly useless, and as giving philosophy a bad reputation.The other interesting facet of Magee presentes in his book is the fascinating autobiographical material, including his encounters with great thinkers such as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, his views on Wittgenstein, his deep thoughts about the nature of time, and his immense reverence for Kant and Schopenhauer. Especially interesting is his recognition of the importance of Schopenhauer, one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century whose extremely important work was overlooked because of the popularity of Hegel. Magee's book is also refreshingly sprinkled with positive references to science. It seems fashionable these days in the humanities to either denounce science as either some 'social construction' designed to enforce some ideaology, or to ignore it altogether. Magee rightly demolis

Join The Great Discussion

Finishing this book, I more deeply understood a quote from Bertrand Russell --"There is a communion of philosophers as well as saints and it is largely that that keeps me from feeling lonely." I strongly recommend this excellent book if you just feel like kicking your shoes off in the privacy of your own house, and informally enjoy what Plato termed 'that dear delight' of philosophy with one of the keenest and most erudite philosophical minds of whom I am aware. Magee shares in lucid and at times beautiful prose his life of struggle with the enduring existential problems, and in so doing summons the reader to join him and the countless other great minds who have spent a lifetime in the sustained and systematic attempt to understand the world through Reason. Reading it, I felt a deep, spiritual-like pleasure as if I myself were taking part in a gab session with Magee, Kant, Schopenhauer, Popper, Wittgenstein et. al. Is there a more compelling reason to read than to achieve this sort of communion?The major theme running throughout is an assault on the unbounded arrogance of Analytic Philosophy. Magee hammers home page after page how the fundamental 'raison d'etre' of Philosophy was betrayed by the contented gameplayers of Oxford and Cambridge during the 20th century. Although not as elevating as other parts of the book (and also conspicuously causing Magee to depart from the dispassionate and wise philosopher/narrator role), nonetheless this theme should find sympathetic ears from all those who think And feel that there are in fact 'real' problems that run deeper than just grammar and language; and moreover who think that it is somehow around the grappling with these problems that we are to ultimately gain our humanity.Mr. Magee, thank you for sharing your life. You have helped me to better understand myself.

A great mixture of philosophy and biography

After reading Bryan Magee's The Story of Philosophy I got the itch to read some of his other books. This is the first one I picked up. It is a great read. It tells the story of his own journey through philosophy, how he became interested in philosophy and the intellectual journey he took to get from his childhood curiosity about philosophy to the point he is at today. As one digests each chapter one gets exposed to many of the philosophers who have shaped the content and direction of philosophy over the centuries. Magee not only summarizes the main ideas of the philosophers who have influenced him but also gives his opinion as to where they were right, where they were wrong and how they fit into the total picture. His explanation of how we can still learn from a philosopher even when he is wrong is especially good. I recommend the book highly for anyone who has some background in philosophy.