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Confessions is a somewhat misleading term in this context: you won't find any lurid tales between these covers. Bryan Magee's memoirs-cum-histories of philosophy aren't even "confessions" in the self-flagellating tradition of St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. So what is Confessions...(more) of a Philosopher, then? It's a fascinating excursion through 2,000 years of wondering about the basic nature of existence and reality. As a 20th-century philosopher, Magee has a lot to say about his peers, and he spares no feelings. The "Oxford philosophers," who decided that philosophy was not about the nature of existence but about the nature of language, yet refused to give any consideration to fiction, are particular targets of Magee's intellectual scorn, while the late Karl Popper, a personal acquaintance of the author, is celebrated as a man who persevered in philosophy's true duties in the face of widespread academic frippery. If you've ever wondered why we exist, you have what it takes to be a philosopher ... or at least to understand one. Bryan Magee's Confessions are thoroughly engaging proof that you don't need a degree to be a deep thinker.(less)
Magee's book is highly recommended reading to anyone who feels philosophy is out of reach. It brings thinking about “life's inponderables” to an accessble level. It's not an easy read though; some chapters devote exclusively to Kant's of Schopenhauer's philosophy, the latter of which the writer sees as the resolution (or salvation, even) to the problems proposed by Kant. One thought kept dogging me as I read Magee's sometimes excruciating accounts of intellectual agony and ecstasy: he might benefit from Ken Wilber's work. Magee searches for answers from the rational realm that cannot be found there. Still he keeps on searching. A post-metaphysical approach as explicated by Wilber (“a means of a sentence is the means of its injunction” in the Appendix of Integral Spirituality) could lead philosophy out of mere theoria to an actual practice that could if pursued in the appropriate manner give an expereience of the type I feel Magee is searching for.
As an honest and intellectually as well as existentially stimulating account of the history of western philosophy, this personal tale of living and thinking about living is a superb read. Gives a good overview of important ideas and is openly critical to ideas the writer sees as less important. Life-sized introduction to questions that can take many lifetimes to tackle with.
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Magee's book is highly recommended reading to anyone who feels philosophy is out of reach. It brings thinking about “life's inponderables” to an accessble level. It's not an easy read though; some chapters devote exclusively to Kant's of Schopenhauer's philosophy, the latter of which the writer sees as the resolution (or salvation, even) to the problems proposed by Kant. One thought kept dogging me as I read Magee's sometimes excruciating accounts of intellectual agony and ecstasy: he might benefit from Ken Wilber's work. Magee searches for answers from the rational realm that cannot be found there. Still he keeps on searching. A post-metaphysical approach as explicated by Wilber (“a means of a sentence is the means of its injunction” in the Appendix of Integral Spirituality) could lead philosophy out of mere theoria to an actual practice that could if pursued in the appropriate manner give an expereience of the type I feel Magee is searching for.
As an honest and intellectually as well as existentially stimulating account of the history of western philosophy, this personal tale of living and thinking about living is a superb read. Gives a good overview of important ideas and is openly critical to ideas the writer sees as less important. Life-sized introduction to questions that can take many lifetimes to tackle with.