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

by Bryan Magee

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 philosophy, the great popularizer of the subject, and author of a major new introductory history, The Story of Philosophy. Confessions follows the course of Magee's life, exploring philosophers and ideas as he himself encountered them, introducing all the great figures and their ideas, from the pre-Socratics to Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, including Wittgenstein, Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, rationalism, utilitarianism, empiricism, and existentialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375750366
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/18/1999
Series:	Modern Library Paperbacks Series
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.99(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Bryan Magee has taught philosophy at Oxford and has also taught and lectured at several colleges and universities in the United States. His books include The Great Philosophers, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, and Aspects of Wagner. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

"A restless intellect and independent outlook characterize this candid autobiography, which will richly reward the serious reader."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

Magee has taught philosophy at Oxford, and in each of these volumes he attempts to make philosophy understandable to the lay reader. The DK book devotes just a few pages to each of the major thinkers and is lavishly illustrated. It would be suitable for high school, college, and public libraries. Great Philosophers is a series of conversations with important contemporary philosophers about the major historical figures, originally produced for the BBC. Confessions is an autobiographical excursion through Western philosophy. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A British popularizer of philosophy, Magee (coauthor, On Blindness, 1995, etc.), writes an overblown account of his lifelong interest in philosophical ideas. The book's title and subtitle capture its two interrelated aims: to confess the existential traumas that led the author to philosophy and to summarize the key ideas of Western metaphysics and epistemology. Magee, a former academic, wants to show that philosophy comes in answer to acutely felt problems about the nature of reality and human knowing. Magee's own angst over death, meaninglessness, and the limits of human knowledge would be more convincing if he showed less satisfaction in his previously published writings and more restraint in condemning strictly academic (especially British analytic) philosophy. The confessions include tantalizing hints of "exhilarating love affairs"; but, despite his insistence on the philosophic importance of sex, Magee provides no details about his affectional life. Was philosophy irrelevant to this side of his life, or does he forget that, for the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles, love was itself a metaphysical principle? But Empedocles apparently doesn't belong to the mere "half a dozen" philosophers in each century "whose work is of widespread and lasting interest." To this elite group, Kant, Schopenhauer, Bertrand Russell, and Karl Popper do clearly belong, in the author's judgment: Kant, for articulating so persuasively how much conceptions influence perceptions; Schopenhauer for his philosophy of art; Russell for his logic; Popper for his science. Magee is best at presenting the ideas of these, his favorites, but he could have done so in a much shorter book and without themelodramatic portrayals of his own intellectual suffering.

Kirkus Reviews