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The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy : With Illustrations

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this book is right about many things, but wrong about some important things. philosophy certainly has a lot of sacred cows in need of skewering, and stewart does an admirable job of satirizing popular (and academic) notions of just what philosophy is...however, even he admits in the end that his critique is not only inadequate but somewhat ironically self-refuting...and his exclusive attention to the metaphysical and epistemological traditions leaves out pretty much everything written in ethics, political theory, and aesthetics, all of which are certainly central to philosophy! i find this strange and hypocritical for someone who admonishes us to teach philosophy as a part of other disciplines, rather than as a discipline in its own right. his treatment of certain areas--kant's ethics, the american pragmatists--is pitifuly brief and inadequate, and one gets the feeling that the author is out of his league in certain areas (not surprising, since he does try to cover all the big names to at least _some_ degree!) but then i'm not sure how seriously the author wishes us to take him...in the end, his closing words of advice "be responsible! be good! be true to yourself!" only beg the questions philosophy wishes to answer: _why_ should we be good? _why_ should we be responsible? _why_ should we be true to ourselves? more importanly, _HOW_ does one act good, responsible, stay true to one's self, etc...i get the feeling the author doesn't think these are particularly philosophical questions. but they are--and that's the point. i'm all for recognizing that philosophy isn't something professors do at college--it's something we all do, every day. but then we should take such questions as seriously as possible, right? so what exactly is it the philosophers are doing wrong? still, an enjoyable read, and educational, for philosophers of all kinds, whether professional or amateur.

Did you ever think of a history of philosophy that was not just interesting but funny? This is that book. Prepare to laugh and to find chapters like "Descartes : I drink therefore I am" and "Sartre : Being-in-the-Cafe". But, in my opinion, this most unusual adjective for a philosophy book --funny-- is not the principal one that I can say of it. Oddly as it may seem, at the end of the book, the adjectives that came to my mind (or body?) were : saddening, shocking, distressful. Because it woke me up from my dogmatic dream : that philosophy was important and useful. This book imposes a dramatic change of view about philosophy and the great philosophers. For example, after reading the chapter on the sophists, I got the impression that they were just "consultants" of their time. If this is true, they contributed much more to the welfare of their society than the lazy Socrates. Of course, nobody is saying that this book contains THE truth about philosophy, but it contains ENOUGH truth for me to unhesitatingly make the decision NOT to read any other philosophy book in my life. Besides, I've already read more philosophy books than I want to remember. If you are an amateur philosophy fan as I WAS, don't miss this book, it might be your last.
P.S. : Whatever you do, don't skip the chapter "Heidegger : Much Ado about Being"

While Stewart's book is certainly neither exhaustive or perfect in its portrayl of every significant philosopher, it certainly is a rather unique entry into worthwhile philosophy reads. For one its rather humourous, and two, it attempts to be critical. While most introductions to the subject tend to be far to pious and pedantic, Stewart can point out an obvious flaw or two in nearly anyones favorite philosopher (unless your favorite is David Hume). This book is probably a better read for the novice rather than the newbie, but all the same it pokes much needed holes in the rather pompous tradition of the History of Philosophy.

The book is written in a good style, is funny and contains, without doubt, interesting reflections on the history of philosophy. Particulary interesting is the last dialogue of plato, where the author turns Socrates against Plato. But the book has also its fails. Those include an obsesion with the idea that philosophers are "mystical" thinkers ( without bothering why mysticism will be wrong if that was the case) and thus wrong, and that they all of them practically are searching for a holly grial of philosophy. One can think that there is some misrepresentation on philosophical positions, and that they are dismissed out of hand without a serious analisis. A good example of that is the presentation the author makes of Marx. I am not a marxist myself, neither I pretend to be a marxist apologist, but definitevely his short review of Marx is, to say it in a word, a strawman. Also the bias of the author is seen on his slight preference for analitic philosophy over continental ( even if the author claims that both are irrelevant). I will say that you better read the philosophers themselves after reading this book, and then compare both views. As an introduction to the history of philosophy and philosophers views this book is defintevely not a good idea.

This book works on two levels. On one, as a good reminder of Western philosophy (although the author insists that there is no such thing as Western thought, I disagree). If you have never read philosphy, of course, this won't be enough and you'll probably be lost. But if you have, and not necessarily all of the philosophers cited, it will be a very good and quick trip through the fascinating chain of successive explanations given about... well, about everything.

On the other level, it is a demythification of the great philosophers and their complex, sometimes absurd, but always frutiful elucidations (for good and bad). The explicit purpose of the author is to demonstrate that all philosophy is ultimately wrong, for the simple reason that there can be no explanation, once and for all, for everything. There is no system of thought that engulfs absolute answers to every question humanity has posed throughout history. Truth, if it exists, has to be revealed bit by bit, through every discovery, idea, and experience, and we're still very far from absolute truths, if we get there one day. Which, by the way, would be the beginning of total boredom.

Stewart achieves the goal of writing a book at the same time serious, profound and professional, as well as easy to read, funny, mocking and direct. Philosophers are presented as ambitious, jealous, seriously interested in finding the truth, but also in dethroning predecessors and rivals, and in being the new Supreme Priests of thought. Nevertheless, along the pages, between joke and joke, we discover an admirable and sustained cultural enterprise, a systematic and reasonably organized effort to understand every phenomenon, from Time, Being and Nothing, to Cosmos, Soul, Ethics, Science, Art and Human Knowledge. Of course, the history of philosophy is the history of a collective failure. But mistake after mistake, mankind has been learning to think, elucidate, and understand. Maybe the answers lie today not so much in philosophy as in science: stars, genes, memes, have opened for us doors to awesome but also disturbing places. What we know today points to unsuspected possibilities, but it also may give you the creeps.

Is there still a role for philosophy in the understanding and resolution of the many implications brought about by artifical intelligence, genetic determinism, the relativity of time, global violence, the resilience of stupid ideas, family disintegration, or virtual communities (and sex)? Gues we'll have to wait and see.

I like to read about various subjects, philosophy is one of them. This book is funny, and at the same time critical. At times I think it's too critical, it's not fair when the one being criticized is not there to defend his ideas or himself (note: himself, some ad hominem attacks are being stated). The title is too ambitious and pretentious, but then again, so is philosophy as a whole.

This book certainly is not for beginners, though it doesn't cover all important philosophers in depth, it is still not the best read if this is your first or second philosophy book. I enjoy the book from start to finish, and recommend it to anyone interested in a critical not to deep philosophy book (but only if you too are a critical reader).

Well, this might not be the greatest book of philosophy, but it sure gives you a whole new idea behind the subject. Didn't Nietzsche say sckepticals were the only acceptable kind of humans? Well this book has a great sckeptical idology behind it, with a wisp of humor, of course, not adequate for Americans. Though the author is American, he's clearly what Nietzsche defined as a free spirit.

If you wish to understand philosophy and haven't quite withstood the ideas behind plato or find most books to institutional, you should read this book. Zarathustra was different before and after this book, this is how far it goes into explaining the ideas behind each philosopher, destroying it with the same Nietzschean hammer. (Read the epilogue also).

I found this book extremely difficult to read, starting from the introduction. I really tried to understand the author's point or the unifying thesis behind his approach to the history of philosophy, but I think I did not quite get it.

His truth seems to be that an epistemology of metaphysics is impossible, meaning that you cannot know the unknowable or what is beyond our knowledge (metaphysics). I understood that every philosopher needs an ultimate truth that underlies his philosophy, even if this philosophy is about the non existence of ultimate truths. In the end every philosopher's thesis contradicts itself by claiming to know the unknowable in some way, although some philosophers' contradictions are more evident than others'. The author's "irreverence" was more an attempt to show these probably inevitable internal contradictions even in the "greatest minds of all time". If you follow this logic to its ultimate consequences you can conclude together with the author that engaging in metaphysics and ultimately in philosophy as a whole, is useless. Maybe he is right, this was enough philosophy for me, at least for a while.

I myself cannot claim I found the truth about anything after reading this book, it was more "the truth about nothing" or "the truth is there is no truth, but also this is not true". This book is the history of philosophy written in a difficult and paradoxical way, with some funny anecdotes or comments in between.

In fact I would give it 2 stars for complicating things more than necessary and I do not recommend it for someone that is not into tortuous philosophical loops. On the other hand, it is a good introduction to the history of philosophy, and the author has done a good job in presenting a bit of almost any philosopher a lay person has heard about.