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kaspervere's review against another edition
5.0
A masterful completion of a very ambitious project. Grayling manages to cover over two thousand years of western philosophy in a succinct and understandable way. As well as short but enlightening surveys of Indian, Chinese and Arabic philosophy.
mycaecillianatemyhomework's review against another edition
4.0
Now when I hear of see a philosopher's name I know where and when they were from and at least one of their main ideas. Philosophy seems a lot less mysterious now and the geographic and historical context that each philosopher and their ideas gets put into is very helpful.
davidcalhoun's review against another edition
4.0
Pretty nice overview of the subject for the length. For those wanting to go even deeper after this, I recommend the iconic Copleston History of Philosophy.
The good stuff:
-Pretty nice capsule-sized summaries of significant thinkers and movements.
-Some major sections that inevitably run out of space end up quickly listing the names of other related philosophers, which is the next best thing to a "full" inclusion in the tome, and provide more jumping-off points for folks to take their research further. My only complaint is that not all sections consistently include this list.
-Lots of ideas made pretty clear and succinct, using a lot of the original lingo and analogies from the original texts.
-The book is a nice reminder to re-educate those already somewhat familiar with philosophy, though the more unfamiliar sections are often too succinct to understand some concepts. Though with the space restraints, it does a pretty good job! The concepts should be enough to whet the appetite of anyone wanting to delve deeper into any particular area or thinker.
-A nice first attempt at giving some space to non-western traditions. I think western philosophy is now just starting to open up to this sort of approach, so I think future histories of philosophy will be able to draw out more points of comparison as more research is made.
The bad stuff:
-The hardcover tome is huge and a little uncomfortable (this is from someone who just read Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which is similar but actually a bit smaller!). When the paperback version of this book is released, I would love if it were split into two or more books. The size of the Oxford's Very Short Introductions book (many of which are listed in the footnotes) is a nice goal.
-Speaking of Kierkegaard, unfortunately he is omitted from the main text, but he's still mentioned three times in connection with later philosophy, as a sort of ripple effect (he also had a here-unmentioned affect on thinkers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein). I don't mind that so much, since intelligent readers can see Kierkegaard's effect like waves in a pond and not need to me explicitly told that something interesting was dropped into the middle of the waves, and readers who are interested can investigate further. But in one of these explicit later mentions, Grayling takes the time to again defend the exclusion of Kierkegaard and other thinkers, placing them squarely in the "religious camp" and thus safely being able to "bracket them out" (borrowing an expression from the Husserl section). The problem with this is that a lot of non-religious readers get a lot out of Kierkegaard, and though I agree that Christianity is inseparable from Kierkegaard as a thinker, a lot of his philosophy, particularly explained in his Postscript, is a reaction against objective/scientific thinking and how it leaves out the "single individual" and how one ought to live. At the very least, he is regarded as the first existentialist thinker, and so maybe deserved a few sentences to setup some of the discussion of existentialism in the 20th century..
-The constant railing against religion is tiring - I feel like Grayling should have issued a fatwa against religion early on and then dropped it. But railing against it is a repeated focus throughout the book, following in the footsteps of Russell, who has a clear axe to grind. It seems that he's either obsessed with attacking religion, or religion plays a bigger and more interesting part in the history of philosophy than he's wanting to admit. I suspect it's a bit of both. Of course a lot of this may just be my biases rubbing up against Graylin's biases. Maybe some folks are into it and I'm not, but it just got to feel like constant proselytizing. At the end of the book, Grayling boils philosophy down to two questions: 1) what is there and 2) what matters?. No surprise that religion butts head with philosophy, because it is also trying to answer these same overarching questions. But admittedly, Western philosophy really did start when the presocratics turned away from explaining these questions with religion, and instead turned toward reason. I could see how reintroducing religion seems like sneaking back in the gods from that pre-philosophic time - Zeus and the rest of the them.
-The section on Analytic Philosophy is disproportionately larger (~130 pages) than the other sections. It's no secret that this is Grayling's bread and butter, but for folks who aren't as enamored of analytic philosophy may find this section a bit of a slog. Another reason for the length is recency, and as Grayling himself implies, as time moves on some of the more recent thinkers will be winnowed out. I suppose some time in the future, Analytic Philosophy may take up the same space as Medieval Philosophy, at around 30 pages. But for now it is 130 pages.
The good stuff:
-Pretty nice capsule-sized summaries of significant thinkers and movements.
-Some major sections that inevitably run out of space end up quickly listing the names of other related philosophers, which is the next best thing to a "full" inclusion in the tome, and provide more jumping-off points for folks to take their research further. My only complaint is that not all sections consistently include this list.
-Lots of ideas made pretty clear and succinct, using a lot of the original lingo and analogies from the original texts.
-The book is a nice reminder to re-educate those already somewhat familiar with philosophy, though the more unfamiliar sections are often too succinct to understand some concepts. Though with the space restraints, it does a pretty good job! The concepts should be enough to whet the appetite of anyone wanting to delve deeper into any particular area or thinker.
-A nice first attempt at giving some space to non-western traditions. I think western philosophy is now just starting to open up to this sort of approach, so I think future histories of philosophy will be able to draw out more points of comparison as more research is made.
The bad stuff:
-The hardcover tome is huge and a little uncomfortable (this is from someone who just read Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which is similar but actually a bit smaller!). When the paperback version of this book is released, I would love if it were split into two or more books. The size of the Oxford's Very Short Introductions book (many of which are listed in the footnotes) is a nice goal.
-Speaking of Kierkegaard, unfortunately he is omitted from the main text, but he's still mentioned three times in connection with later philosophy, as a sort of ripple effect (he also had a here-unmentioned affect on thinkers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein). I don't mind that so much, since intelligent readers can see Kierkegaard's effect like waves in a pond and not need to me explicitly told that something interesting was dropped into the middle of the waves, and readers who are interested can investigate further. But in one of these explicit later mentions, Grayling takes the time to again defend the exclusion of Kierkegaard and other thinkers, placing them squarely in the "religious camp" and thus safely being able to "bracket them out" (borrowing an expression from the Husserl section). The problem with this is that a lot of non-religious readers get a lot out of Kierkegaard, and though I agree that Christianity is inseparable from Kierkegaard as a thinker, a lot of his philosophy, particularly explained in his Postscript, is a reaction against objective/scientific thinking and how it leaves out the "single individual" and how one ought to live. At the very least, he is regarded as the first existentialist thinker, and so maybe deserved a few sentences to setup some of the discussion of existentialism in the 20th century..
-The constant railing against religion is tiring - I feel like Grayling should have issued a fatwa against religion early on and then dropped it. But railing against it is a repeated focus throughout the book, following in the footsteps of Russell, who has a clear axe to grind. It seems that he's either obsessed with attacking religion, or religion plays a bigger and more interesting part in the history of philosophy than he's wanting to admit. I suspect it's a bit of both. Of course a lot of this may just be my biases rubbing up against Graylin's biases. Maybe some folks are into it and I'm not, but it just got to feel like constant proselytizing. At the end of the book, Grayling boils philosophy down to two questions: 1) what is there and 2) what matters?. No surprise that religion butts head with philosophy, because it is also trying to answer these same overarching questions. But admittedly, Western philosophy really did start when the presocratics turned away from explaining these questions with religion, and instead turned toward reason. I could see how reintroducing religion seems like sneaking back in the gods from that pre-philosophic time - Zeus and the rest of the them.
-The section on Analytic Philosophy is disproportionately larger (~130 pages) than the other sections. It's no secret that this is Grayling's bread and butter, but for folks who aren't as enamored of analytic philosophy may find this section a bit of a slog. Another reason for the length is recency, and as Grayling himself implies, as time moves on some of the more recent thinkers will be winnowed out. I suppose some time in the future, Analytic Philosophy may take up the same space as Medieval Philosophy, at around 30 pages. But for now it is 130 pages.
sofer_mahir's review against another edition
3.0
I wrote a very long review of this book and then lost it. I will never get that hour back, and I don't have the energy to put in another hour of work to rewrite it. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed this book, even though (as I see it) there are glaring and fundamental problems with it.
sarsaparillo's review
4.0
I can heartily recommend this to the curious layperson (I am one) looking for a summary of the rich history of philosophical thought. This is the third I've read, after Will Durant's Story of Philosophy (in my early 20s) and Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy (a couple of years ago). I consumed them all in audiobook form because life.
The history of philosophy is one of those subjects that is such of flood of ideas that after such a book you end up only clinging to a few scraps of insight while most of flows over the rim of your overwhelmed mind... it's just too much to file neatly away. And so I think it's worth wading through it repeatedly over the course of your life, hopefully accumulating a little more wisdom each time.
Even though it hasn't been long since I read Russell's work, much of it had already faded from memory. But that book is the most obvious one to compare this one to. The two primary differences with that book are Grayling's deliberate exclusion of purely theological thought, and the inclusion of the not insignificant work done in the 20th century since Russell's publication (not least Russell himself!). Additionally in this new book Grayling includes worthwhile sketches of Indian, Chinese and Arabic/Persian philosophy.
Despite those additions, I also found Grayling's treatment of the classic philosophers common to all these histories to be fresh and engaging - such that I still felt I was almost always learning something new. So if you've read Russell's book and are wondering whether this one will be redundant: I would say no.
For the most part Grayling's approach is to write a chapter on each major thinker in chronological order. Each chapter starts with a short summary of the place of their ideas in the context of adjacent thinkers, followed by an often entertaining biographical sketch, then taking a deeper dive into their ideas, contributions and legacy. I really liked the rhythm of this template, which was a gentle switching back and forth between biography and technical philosophy - each playing usually off the other. This history of philosophy is full of compelling and strange characters.
There are of course deviations from the plan where necessary. Some chapters are named after schools of thought or groups of related thinkers, containing smaller portraits of the associated philosophers or summaries of ideas with no reference to a particular thinker. This becomes more frequent later in the book, especially as the number of active philosophers multiply in the 20th century.
Grayling makes it clear from the outset what he has decided falls within his definition of philosophy. In particular he chooses to exclude religiously-influenced thought, which he thesaurusily describes (multiple times!) as "theology, theodicy, exegesis, casuistry, apologetics or hermeneutics, but ... not philosophy". As someone not religiously inclined myself, this was a great relief and a selling point.
This meant that the section on the middle ages with mercifully short compared to Russell's book, although certainly not devoid of content! Regrettably I felt that while sparing the reader these angels-on-pins debates, we are served an oversized portion when it comes to Grayling's own area of study: the philosophy of language in 20th century Analytical philosophy. This section seemed to get much more into the weeds compared to the other sections and I found myself unable to keep up with the jargon here and tuning out as a result. (And for the record I find the philosophy of language and its neighbouring pursuits - like computer science - particularly interesting). This was happily the exception rather than the rule for the book, which for the most part seemed to keep things at a reasonable difficult level for a motivated layperson.
Grayling spends a considerable amount of time musing on what is fair to include and apologising for leaving people out. A few times - particularly during 20th century continental philosophy - he takes on a quick tour of a "salon des refusés", giving quick sketches of important thinkers who don't meet the criteria as philosophers but who remain influential writers or critics nonetheless. For some, like Hannah Arendt, who refused the title of philosopher, he seems positively regretful.
Grayling is conscious that he is writing a history of western philosophy, which is an integrated flow or web of ideas and influences. But there are other philosophical traditions in the world which have developed mostly (though not entirely) independently. He spends the last few chapters on these, but it would be a mistake to dismiss these as optional appendices. Grayling has put a worthy amount of effort into wonderfully distilled summaries of Chinese, Indian and Arabic/Persian philosophy (the latter his name for what has otherwise been called "Philosophy in the Islamic world").
Grayling blames language barriers as the reason for the relative shallowness of these summaries, although I'm sure there are many deeper dives into each to be found in English. That said, these work very well as "short histories" of the traditions in each of these cultures. As to the quality and accuracy of these depictions, I'll have to leave criticism to the experts, of which I am certainly not one.
He also makes an attempt at covering "African" philosophy but spends most of that chapter explaining why he can't - having painted himself into a corner with his earlier definitions of what does and doesn't count as philosophy. And what comes from Africa, as he sees it, while of enormous value, counts more as folk wisdom, myth, religion etc. Or simply western philosophy being done in by Africans in post-colonial times. Again, I'll leave the experts to judge the fairness of his assessment, and I'm sure they will.
Overall, this book is a massive achievement. I have no idea how one person can do all the reading required to distill so much into one volume. There are some fascinating people and mind-bending ideas to be found in this book. It's a well-written, engaging ode to one of humanity's most important endeavours: trying to understand who we are, what on Earth is going on, how we could possibly know any of this, and what we should be doing about it.
The history of philosophy is one of those subjects that is such of flood of ideas that after such a book you end up only clinging to a few scraps of insight while most of flows over the rim of your overwhelmed mind... it's just too much to file neatly away. And so I think it's worth wading through it repeatedly over the course of your life, hopefully accumulating a little more wisdom each time.
Even though it hasn't been long since I read Russell's work, much of it had already faded from memory. But that book is the most obvious one to compare this one to. The two primary differences with that book are Grayling's deliberate exclusion of purely theological thought, and the inclusion of the not insignificant work done in the 20th century since Russell's publication (not least Russell himself!). Additionally in this new book Grayling includes worthwhile sketches of Indian, Chinese and Arabic/Persian philosophy.
Despite those additions, I also found Grayling's treatment of the classic philosophers common to all these histories to be fresh and engaging - such that I still felt I was almost always learning something new. So if you've read Russell's book and are wondering whether this one will be redundant: I would say no.
For the most part Grayling's approach is to write a chapter on each major thinker in chronological order. Each chapter starts with a short summary of the place of their ideas in the context of adjacent thinkers, followed by an often entertaining biographical sketch, then taking a deeper dive into their ideas, contributions and legacy. I really liked the rhythm of this template, which was a gentle switching back and forth between biography and technical philosophy - each playing usually off the other. This history of philosophy is full of compelling and strange characters.
There are of course deviations from the plan where necessary. Some chapters are named after schools of thought or groups of related thinkers, containing smaller portraits of the associated philosophers or summaries of ideas with no reference to a particular thinker. This becomes more frequent later in the book, especially as the number of active philosophers multiply in the 20th century.
Grayling makes it clear from the outset what he has decided falls within his definition of philosophy. In particular he chooses to exclude religiously-influenced thought, which he thesaurusily describes (multiple times!) as "theology, theodicy, exegesis, casuistry, apologetics or hermeneutics, but ... not philosophy". As someone not religiously inclined myself, this was a great relief and a selling point.
This meant that the section on the middle ages with mercifully short compared to Russell's book, although certainly not devoid of content! Regrettably I felt that while sparing the reader these angels-on-pins debates, we are served an oversized portion when it comes to Grayling's own area of study: the philosophy of language in 20th century Analytical philosophy. This section seemed to get much more into the weeds compared to the other sections and I found myself unable to keep up with the jargon here and tuning out as a result. (And for the record I find the philosophy of language and its neighbouring pursuits - like computer science - particularly interesting). This was happily the exception rather than the rule for the book, which for the most part seemed to keep things at a reasonable difficult level for a motivated layperson.
Grayling spends a considerable amount of time musing on what is fair to include and apologising for leaving people out. A few times - particularly during 20th century continental philosophy - he takes on a quick tour of a "salon des refusés", giving quick sketches of important thinkers who don't meet the criteria as philosophers but who remain influential writers or critics nonetheless. For some, like Hannah Arendt, who refused the title of philosopher, he seems positively regretful.
Grayling is conscious that he is writing a history of western philosophy, which is an integrated flow or web of ideas and influences. But there are other philosophical traditions in the world which have developed mostly (though not entirely) independently. He spends the last few chapters on these, but it would be a mistake to dismiss these as optional appendices. Grayling has put a worthy amount of effort into wonderfully distilled summaries of Chinese, Indian and Arabic/Persian philosophy (the latter his name for what has otherwise been called "Philosophy in the Islamic world").
Grayling blames language barriers as the reason for the relative shallowness of these summaries, although I'm sure there are many deeper dives into each to be found in English. That said, these work very well as "short histories" of the traditions in each of these cultures. As to the quality and accuracy of these depictions, I'll have to leave criticism to the experts, of which I am certainly not one.
He also makes an attempt at covering "African" philosophy but spends most of that chapter explaining why he can't - having painted himself into a corner with his earlier definitions of what does and doesn't count as philosophy. And what comes from Africa, as he sees it, while of enormous value, counts more as folk wisdom, myth, religion etc. Or simply western philosophy being done in by Africans in post-colonial times. Again, I'll leave the experts to judge the fairness of his assessment, and I'm sure they will.
Overall, this book is a massive achievement. I have no idea how one person can do all the reading required to distill so much into one volume. There are some fascinating people and mind-bending ideas to be found in this book. It's a well-written, engaging ode to one of humanity's most important endeavours: trying to understand who we are, what on Earth is going on, how we could possibly know any of this, and what we should be doing about it.
tajeip's review against another edition
5.0
"The main reason that so little attention is paid to Continental philosophy by Analytic philosophers has to be frankly acknowledged. It is that the latter are impatient with (at best; at worst, contemptuous of) — and here I will illustrate the point — what they see as the ab/uses and con/fusions of language, which, in its unexplained neologising, its deliberate ambiguity and its overloading, attenuating or deflating of meanings (the use of the virgule is a common device, as above; a form of 'phallus/y'?) seems impressionistic and slippery, the unclarity a mask for unclarity of thought, or worse, a pretence of profundity."