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A review by davidcalhoun
The History of Philosophy by A.C. Grayling
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.