26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Making of a Mysterian..., December 3, 2003
This review is from: The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Paperback)
Philosophers are rarely, far too rarely, given to write a treatment of their field for the general public. Far too many "introductory" philosophy texts claim, in the preface or the intro, that this is a book for neophytes, for philosophical hatchlings waiting to dive off the tree, for "absolute beginners" when, by the third chapter, they're deep into metacognition or technical theories or truth. More often they skim deep subjects, and the skimming only produces useless mist that leaves the beginner dumbstruck and asking "so when do I learn the meaning of life?"
This book is thankfully not at the level described above. True, it treats some subjects way too briefly, but it at least does so in a way that will probably whet the appetite, not totally confound. McGinn states his intention clearly in the book (and no, I don't care about "Author's Intentionality" or the "Death of the Author", at least not now) to write a popular philosophical work. That he has attempted this is admirable. Unfortunately, the most likely reader of this work will be philosophers or academics, which are precisely the people who probably shouldn't read it. Colin McGinn may be "famous" but he's not too famous outside of academia. I have yet to meet anyone outside of "philosophical circles" that's heard of him. The testimony from Oliver Sacks may help, but most likely people looking for more than what's here will pick up the book, be disappointed that it's too cursory, and accuse McGinn of self-congratulation (he is a bit self-congratulatory in places, but one has to make philosophy seem worthwhile while one is attempting to sell it).
All of this is too bad, because the book does succeed in many places in making the "philosophical life" sound at least intriguing, challenging, and worthwhile. Insiders already know the life, and so that part of the book will probably be lost on them.
Some of the more interesting passages deal with politics in academia. Those who flew to academia to escape the politics of corporate life and business did not escape as completely as they thought. In academia you get put in your place. In academia there is nepotism, cronyism, pointless squabbles over who gets what position and why, and the always dreaded budget looms and threatens your projects, positions, and teaching loads. McGinn shows glimpses of this part of academia throughout the book. His run in with Micheal Dummett (who he claims ran him down in front of colleagues, though we obviously don't hear Dummett's side) and his depressing falling out with Oxford are just two salient examples.
Overall the book is a fast read, except for some passages that get a little more into the nitty gritty of technical details (but not too much). This book will not teach you how to be a philosopher, nor will it teach you philosophy (except at a very microscopic level). It may inspire you to look into philosophy, or to read St. Anselm, or Chomsky, or Saul Kripke, or Wittgenstein. Maybe some readers can relate with McGinn's "philosophical seduction" by the writings and life of Bertrand Russell (Russell did have an uncanny knack for writing books that make readers feel intelligent just for reading them; he is very seductive), but these readers will not be newcomers. After all, McGinn claims in the last chapter that Jennifer Aniston has never heard of Russell, or even Descartes for that matter, which is surprising (who hasn't heard of the "I think therefore I am" guy?).
McGinn has some healthy messages for the institution of philosophy. One of them is that philosophy should not be a science. 20th century philosophy, particularly Russell's philosophy - as a negative example - and the "linguistic turn" have suggested this. If philosophy were to become a science then scientists would truly be correct when they claim that philosophy is redundant. A second message is that certain philosophical questions may simply be beyond the human cognitive domain (McGinn's philosophy was rewarded with the moniker "mysterian" for this claim). Whether this is true or not it is a position to be considered when answering philosophical questions.
The book does not talk about the practical aspects of philosophy, or how can the average person could potentially use philosophy in their daily lives, which is too bad. Its focus is mostly the academic realm, which is a focus that runs the risk of losing some readers who are either unsympathetic towards or clueless about this strange sect. Nonetheless, the book is a good read and could serve as a good introduction to someone considering the "philosophical life" (read "academic philosophical life") as a career. There are warnings to heed in this book for the philosophical careerists out there.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The making of McGinn, May 27, 2007
This review is from: The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Paperback)
I learned about McGinn via the work of Jerry Fodor. "The Making of a Philosopher" was the first book I read from him. This book is a rather good portrait of the intellectual development of a person. It is fascinating to see how his interests in philosophy develop and the persons involved. The book has the additional benefit of containing philosophical explanations that are short, to the point and clear.
McGinn also comes across as a very likable chap, unlike some of the pompous gits one finds frequently in philosophy (for a sample of these individuals just take a look at the reviews in this page).
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10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worth a Look, May 6, 2004
This review is from: The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Paperback)
This book is both a memoir and yet another introduction to philosophy. McGinn tries to come at introducing philosophy in a different way: through his autobiography and through the issues that prompted his interests in philosophy, the ideas he found interesting as a young man studying philosophy, and what he has thought about at particular times in his career as an academic.
The results are rather mixed. You don't get much of substance here, and so you should look somewhere else if you're searching for a serious and comprehensive introduction to philosophy. But this book does cover enough ground to give you a taste of what current academic philosophizing is like. It includes a breezy, straightforward picture of the life of an academic along with brief sketches of lots of interesting philosophical issues. Furthermore, there's not a lot of history covered here; the emphasis is on a few historically important philosophical issues and the more striking arguments and positions that have been defended in contemporary analytic philosophy. So this really gives you an account of what professional life is like for people working in contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, the tradition in which McGinn works.
It appears McGinn intends the reader to come to philosophy in the same way he did. We go from the vague, somewhat confused ideas and concerns that first led McGinn to philosophy to immersion in ideas and concerns of current-day professional philosophers. Now, this emphasis on the intellectual development might seem too limited a perspective from which to introduce a subject. But this isn't such a problem here since specialization isn't as extreme in philosophy as it is in other parts of the academy. Since the division of intellectual labor here isn't as extreme as it is in the sciences, all philosophers tend to know a lot of the same stuff.
The book is quite interesting at the beginning, and I think the first couple of chapters would be a good introduction to just what philosophical thinking is like. Here there are very few details about McGinn's early life, and he concentrates on only those elements of his autobiography that are relevant to his intellectual development and his eventual interest in philosophical questions. So these chapters are concerned with the kinds of philosophical problems that are likely to be of interest to those without much, or any, background in the subject. Skepticism, free will, the existence of God--these are the sorts of issues that are introduced in this chapter. McGinn doesn't say a great deal about these issues here, though he says enough to reveal how philosophers attempt to answer them and how they criticize or defend the answers given by others.
The latter chapters come to focus more on the nature of life in academia and the issues that get discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy along with McGinn's own intellectual development as an academic. So we really get two stories here. The first story is the one of McGinn's rise to prominence in academia, and the other is the story of major issues in U.S. and U.K. philosophy from the sixties to the present. And these stories are interconnected since McGinn is a prolific thinker who has published on nearly everything of central importance in contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Some of the highlights he mentions are Davidson and Quine on meaning, Wittgenstein and Kripke on rule-following, Kripke and Putnam on reference, David Lewis on possible worlds, Dummett's anti-realism, Nagel's views about the mind and its relation to the body. And whenever McGinn discusses someone's ideas, he attempts to provide a brief portrait of them.
Whatever one thinks about McGinn's personality--and some aspects of it can be off-putting--his discussions of issues here is pretty even-handed. While he occasionally says unflattering things about other philosophers, but he's more even-handed when it comes to their ideas--even those ideas with which he isn't sympathetic. He doesn't ridicule the ideas of others; nor does he use the book to push his own ideas on the topics he discusses.
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