Book review: The story of philosophy (Bryan Magee)

Information: A review of Bryan Magee's excellent book The Story of Philosophy.

Although I have several 'introducing' and 'history of' type philosophy books in my library, I still find myself wondering if they are useful in the long run. I mean, it's nice to get a bird's-eye view of various philosophical topics or the life and work of a philosopher, but I have found that nothing really beats reading the original texts themselves. However, with that in mind sometimes it is good to get an overview of a topic or the work of a philosopher before reading the original texts (especially as philosophy itself is notoriously inaccessible at times) and as such I would recommend Brian Magee's book The Story of Philosophy as a useful and necessary addition to any student of philosophy's library.

The thing I liked most about this book was that it always felt as if the main intention was to help the reader learn understand and something. Unlike other books of this type, Magee is clearly interested in presenting more than just a superficial browsing of subjects. For instance, care was taken to explain the historical context in which a philosopher lived and worked, or into which a particular philosophical school evolved. Yes this book is still nothing more than an overview of the life and work of philosophers, philosphical topics and themes, but real efforts have been made to give the reader more than just a brief taster of things.

In terms of the content of the book, this is set out as follows:

• Introduction (An invitation to philosophy)
• The Greeks and their world (Before Socrates, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, The Cynics, The Sceptics, The Epicureans, The Stoics)
• Christianity and philosophy (Saint Augustine, Medieval philosophy)
• The beginnings of modern science (Copernicus, Newton, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, Hobbes)
• The great Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz)
• The great Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Burke)
• Revolutionary French thinkers (Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau)
• A golden century of German philosophy (Kant, Schopenhauer, Some comparisons of East and West, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche)
• Democracy and philosophy (The Utilitarians, The American Pragmatists)
• 20th-Century philosophy (Frege and modern logic, Russell and analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein and linguistic philosophy, Existentialism, Bergson and recent French philosophy, Popper, The future of philosophy)

I would really recommend that teacher's of philosophy buy a couple of copies of this book for their school library. It is definitely the best 'introduction to philosophy' book I have seen for helping new students coming to the subject for the first time. Of course, teachers are going to want to move their students onto meatier tombs fairly quickly, but setting them the task of reading selected articles from Magee's book will be great preparation for adding to the quality of discussion in lessons, and building confidence in the subject.

My only real criticisms of the book are that some of the pictures used to illustrate philosophical points are a little obscure in what they are meant to refer to, and there are no female philosophers represented. I would also have liked to have seen articles on non-western philosophical perspectives too, particularly as this is meant to be the story of philosophy and not just the story of western philosophy, but maybe this is something that can be addressed in future editions of this book.

Recommended for teachers to use in lessons? Hardcover 240 pages Published This book was first published by Dorling Kindersley on 22nd Oct 1998. The cover on this page is of the 2001 edition, and this review is based on the 2006 Barnes and Noble edition.

 

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