A review by rhys_thomas_sparey
The History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective by Alan Woods

informative inspiring slow-paced

4.0

Woods guides the reader through nearly three millenia of the evolution of human philosophy until it, in his view, culminates in the pratical, materialist thinking of Marx and Engels. It is an accessible, honest polemic that wears its positionality on its sleeve, which is more than can be said of Hegel or Russell. What is perhaps most fascinating is the focus on the historically located material conditions that influenced different stages in the development of the history of philosophy, be it economic turmoil, war, revolution, the spread of a new religion, developments in trade and technology, and so forth. It builds on Hegel's History of Philosophy, which places idealism and materialism in a long dialectic but adds "real life" to it. However, some of those stages are unfairly glossed over. Although, this is partly due to the point of the book, which is to focus specifically on those philosophies which directly influenced Marxism, it would bolster Woods' arguments regarding the value of Marx and Engels' philosophy if he deliberated in more depth those Christian and Postmodernist thinkers whom he characterises as a detriment to human intellectual development. Moreover, the importance of Classical Islamic Philosophy to the European Renaissance should not be understated, as it is in this volume. For all of Woods' praise, it is afforded an unfairly limited number of pages. He also mentions in the introduction that he has written elsewhere on Indian philosophy, which I believe should have been included here. Nor do I agree with Woods' conclusion that philosophy is now redundant. Nevertheless, this book is a wonderfully enjoyable and highly informative read that uniquely places the idea in reality, in space as well as time, and anybody interested in the history of philosophy will benefit greatly from reading it.