No comments about David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature Volume 2: Editorial Material (Clarendon Hume Edition Series).

No comments about Recovering the Icon: The Life and Works of Leonid Ouspensky.

5 comments about The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy.

1. I enjoyed reading this from the standpoint of finding out what it might be like to teach and write in the field of philosophy. McGinn was honest about the tedious and rewarding parts of such a career. The author's writing style is clear and unpretentious.



2. I thought the story about how the author became a professional philosopher was fascinating and inspiring. Just about every male from his recent family lineage had become a coal miner. He relates that he grew up in a dreary working class environment in which he showed hardly any promise at all, at least in his early years. What got him started toward a life of the mind was really one teacher, and from that point there was no stopping him. But it wasn't as though everything was carefully laid out for him to follow. Just going to college was a big step, without any family precedent. Then, there were a several remarkable twists of fate that promoted him to positions and places that not long before would have been considered unattainable.
   
   He describes the three main influences of his undergraduate life. Bertrand Russell was a hero and role model of his youth. For a time, Sartre had an influence, especially in regard to a personal need for self-determination and freedom. The other influence was Noam Chomsky, who struck a blow to behaviorism and laid the ground for modern cognitive science. Later in the book, he comes to know a number of well known figures in contemporary philosophy, and the books that he writes grow out of these associations and experiences teaching. I was much less interested in the line of thought concerning language and meaning than in his thoughts about perception, the mind and consciousness. Questions concerning what we can know and not know about reality seem to me to be not merely academic but to be questions that are healthy for anyone to ask.
   
   He makes no bones about the ego-driven aspect of academia. Along the way there were incidences that stick out as sore spots from a bruising here or there. But beyond personality, the author brings a very clear and refreshing view to a profession that looks to many on the outside as a domain in the clouds of jargon and obscure logic.



3. This book is both a memoir and yet another introduction to philosophy. McGinn tries to come at introducing philosophy in a different way: through his autobiography and through the issues that prompted his interests in philosophy, the ideas he found interesting as a young man studying philosophy, and what he has thought about at particular times in his career as an academic.

   The results are rather mixed. You don't get much of substance here, and so you should look somewhere else if you're searching for a serious and comprehensive introduction to philosophy. But this book does cover enough ground to give you a taste of what current academic philosophizing is like. It includes a breezy, straightforward picture of the life of an academic along with brief sketches of lots of interesting philosophical issues. Furthermore, there's not a lot of history covered here; the emphasis is on a few historically important philosophical issues and the more striking arguments and positions that have been defended in contemporary analytic philosophy. So this really gives you an account of what professional life is like for people working in contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, the tradition in which McGinn works.

   It appears McGinn intends the reader to come to philosophy in the same way he did. We go from the vague, somewhat confused ideas and concerns that first led McGinn to philosophy to immersion in ideas and concerns of current-day professional philosophers. Now, this emphasis on the intellectual development might seem too limited a perspective from which to introduce a subject. But this isn't such a problem here since specialization isn't as extreme in philosophy as it is in other parts of the academy. Since the division of intellectual labor here isn't as extreme as it is in the sciences, all philosophers tend to know a lot of the same stuff.

   The book is quite interesting at the beginning, and I think the first couple of chapters would be a good introduction to just what philosophical thinking is like. Here there are very few details about McGinn's early life, and he concentrates on only those elements of his autobiography that are relevant to his intellectual development and his eventual interest in philosophical questions. So these chapters are concerned with the kinds of philosophical problems that are likely to be of interest to those without much, or any, background in the subject. Skepticism, free will, the existence of God--these are the sorts of issues that are introduced in this chapter. McGinn doesn't say a great deal about these issues here, though he says enough to reveal how philosophers attempt to answer them and how they criticize or defend the answers given by others.

   The latter chapters come to focus more on the nature of life in academia and the issues that get discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy along with McGinn's own intellectual development as an academic. So we really get two stories here. The first story is the one of McGinn's rise to prominence in academia, and the other is the story of major issues in U.S. and U.K. philosophy from the sixties to the present. And these stories are interconnected since McGinn is a prolific thinker who has published on nearly everything of central importance in contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Some of the highlights he mentions are Davidson and Quine on meaning, Wittgenstein and Kripke on rule-following, Kripke and Putnam on reference, David Lewis on possible worlds, Dummett's anti-realism, Nagel's views about the mind and its relation to the body. And whenever McGinn discusses someone's ideas, he attempts to provide a brief portrait of them.

   Whatever one thinks about McGinn's personality--and some aspects of it can be off-putting--his discussions of issues here is pretty even-handed. While he occasionally says unflattering things about other philosophers, but he's more even-handed when it comes to their ideas--even those ideas with which he isn't sympathetic. He doesn't ridicule the ideas of others; nor does he use the book to push his own ideas on the topics he discusses.




4. This is a great book but I felt something cold inside of me while reading it. I don't know if it is cultural (the modern English philosopher's fear of displaying passion) but I had the feeling to talk to a plumber who developed expertise in abstract concepts and their relationships just as if they were small plumbing problems fitting together under a generalized plumbing theory. Perhaps philosophy needs to be treated like that, just like engineering --but not for me. At least I give myself the illusion of doing something more...literary.
   Colin McGINN teaches us that we need nevertheless to master the art of clarity of both thought and exposition. He write with perfect clarity: a clear, unburdened, unaffected, UnFrench UnGerman philosophical prose.
   The book has a presentation of the Kripke idea of naming as necessity of such clarity that I felt actually smart reading it.
   Other than that there is the feeling of drabness in part of the book of the type I got once at a conference in an industrial city West of London.



5. The only thing I learned from this book was how great the author thinks he is.

No comments about Logic and Ontology in the Syllogistic of Robert Kilwardby (Studien Und Texte Zur Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters).

No comments about Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance.

No comments about Two Roads to Ignorance: A Quasi Biography.

4 comments about Peter Abelard.

1. This book was recommended to me by an utterly fascinating, extremely well read man I met in India. Just the fact that it is his favorite book convinced me to read it. The beauty of the prose is breathtaking, haunting. Even as someone who is decidedly not a Catholic, or even religious (making it an opportunity to learn about medieval Catholicism), I found Abelard's spiritual journey profoundly moving, particularly in the end when his faith is restored. It is one of those books, like most of Nabokov's and many of Turgenev's, that is so beautiful it cannot be absorbed in one reading. A note on the story: as the title implies, this book is first and foremost about Abelard. His famous love affair with Heloise is treated as but one aspect of his remarkable life. Even so, it is well worth it, even for those with little interest in the man himself.



2. A well-written tale of two historical characters. Lovers of romance fiction and of great fiction in general should not miss reading this book of the tragic and enduring love between abelard and heloise. Sublime.



3. As a PhD student in theology with a background in medieval French history and literature, I've long been a fan of both Abelard and Heloise. Waddell's treatment of their tragic lives is nearly as timeless as they are. I like the fact that Waddell knows what she's talking about--her grasp of Abelard's revolutionary theological ideas (especially at the very moving close of the book, when he's working out his theory of atonement) is the furthest thing from superficial. It's precisely because of her scholar's knowledge that she's able to create a richly-woven setting for her two protagonists. This is something I've not found in any other treatment (especially *Stealing Heaven*, which is ghastly). She doesn't attempt to sensationalize the love story, and there's nothing in the way she presents things that's either anachronistic on the one hand or stilted (in that self-conscious, I'm-writing-medieval-dialogue way) on the other.

   I didn't find her Heloise at all bloodless; in fact, quite the opposite. I was pleased that Waddell lets us see Heloise's brilliant intelligence and intellectual fervor. (Abelard fell in love with her mind as much as anything). It's a shame this book is out of print here in the States. For anyone with an interest in the story of Abelard and Heloise (or even for anyone who simply likes good prose and well-done fictionalized history), this is a book that sould not be missed. It's a lovely, sometimes stunning read.




4. I've always been an admirer of the philosopher Abelard, and like everyone else, I found the story of his love affair with Heloise very touching. So naturally, I jumped at the chance to read a book like this. And I was not disappointed. This book was very well written. Rather than painting Abelard as an egotistical, condescending, self-absorbed brute as some writers have (I'm pointing a finger at the author of "Stealing Heaven"), this book portrays him in a more sympathetic light. In this book, he is more accurately depicted as a deep and insightful man. Helen Waddell builds on what we know about Abelard, rather than making a bunch of wild guesses. Her writing style, too, is vivid and eloquent. "Peter Abelard" is a must for anyone who is into the story of Heloise and Abelard or anyone who likes a good book. I highly recommend it.

   (But whatever you do, DON'T blow your hard earned money by buying "Stealing Heaven") :)

No comments about Socrates (Life & Times) (Life&Times).

No comments about William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572-84 (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History).

No comments about Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption (Weimar and Now : German Cultural Criticism, No 7).