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The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Magee Any attempt to tell the story of Western philosophy should begin with the ancient Greeks, who produced not only the first but some of..." (more)
Key Phrases: simple cognitivist, Middle Ages, Magee Let, Magee One (more...)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
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The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy + Story of Philosophy + Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper (Modern Library Paperbacks)
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Magee has taught philosophy at Oxford, and in each of these volumes he attempts to make philosophy understandable to the lay reader. The DK book devotes just a few pages to each of the major thinkers and is lavishly illustrated. It would be suitable for high school, college, and public libraries. Great Philosophers is a series of conversations with important contemporary philosophers about the major historical figures, originally produced for the BBC. Confessions is an autobiographical excursion through Western philosophy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Product Description

Beginning with the death of Socrates in 399 BC, and following the strand of philosophical inquiry through the centuries to recent figures such as Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, Bryan Magee's conversations with fifteen contemporary writers and philosophers provide an accessible and exciting account of Western philosophy and its greatest thinkers. With contributions from A. J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, the book is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but gives an invaluable insight into the view and personalities of some of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2nd edition (January 18, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 019289322X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0192893222
  • Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #69,839 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Bryan Magee
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
Magee Any attempt to tell the story of Western philosophy should begin with the ancient Greeks, who produced not only the first but some of the very greatest of Western philosophers. Read the first page
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simple cognitivist
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Middle Ages, Magee Let, Magee One, Bertrand Russell, Magee That, Nussbaum Well, Theory of Forms, Thomas Aquinas, Warnock Well, Magee Can, Professor of Philosophy, Ayer Well, Ayers Well, Bryan Magee, David Hume, Philosophical Investigations, Stern Well, United States, William James, William of Ockham, Williams That, Dreyfus That, Dreyfus Well, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx
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The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy
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The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy 4.8 out of 5 stars (18)
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Story of Philosophy
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Story of Philosophy 4.3 out of 5 stars (36)
$17.12
Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper (Modern Library Paperbacks)
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Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper (Modern Library Paperbacks) 4.4 out of 5 stars (44)
$11.16
Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers
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Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers 3.5 out of 5 stars (13)
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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Philosophers . . . Great Fun!, December 18, 2000
By Edward Garea "Edward Garea" (Branchville, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
The basis of this wonderful book is a series of television programs first telecast by the BBC in 1987. However, while most would have stopped there and merely published the book as a transcript of the shows, Magee takes it one, two, and even three steps farther. As editor, he reworked the transcripts and even brought back his contributors for further revisions and improvements. The result is a delightful book that easily exceeds one's expectations, and mine were not so high given the fact the book is a series of conversations with academics about a particular philosopher or school of philosophy. In the wrong hands, this can be certain death by boredom. But in the right hands . . .

Can academics keep our interest while discussing philosophy? They can easily do so when: (1) they are allowed to rework and improve their material; and (2) when they are talking with Bryan Magee. Magee is no mere interviewer; he prods, interjects, disagrees, and yet allows his subject to shine when conversing about their subject. This is no mean feat; it takes a delicate skill to pull this off and still keep it entertaining. And this is exactly what Magee does. Whether he's asking Anthony Kenny his opinion on why so many great medieval philosophers come from The British Isles, asking Anthony Quinton to more exactly define Leibniz's Monad, debating Schopenhauer's philosophy with Frederick Copleston, or just sitting back and allowing Geoffrey Warnock to explain Kant's mataphysics, Magee keeps his readers not only entertained, but delightfully informed.

The highlights of the book are Passmore's explanation of Hume, Magee's defense of Schopenhauer during his conversation with Copleston (was included because he penned book, albeit hostile, about Schopenhauer), Warnock's easy explation of Kant's sometimes difficult metaphysics, Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl and Heidegger, and John Searle explaing the wonder that is Wittgenstein. Quite a lot of highlights for such a book, but as I said before, this is no ordinary book.

One final word: Magee is often described as a popularizer, a word that is often used disparingly, as in "He's not an expert, he's just a popularizer." Nonsense. A popularizer is at root a teacher, and to be a popularizer, one must really have a firm grasp of the subject matter. There are good popularizers and bad popularizers. Magee is among the very best. He not only knows his subject matter, but has the unique talent of making the experts not only entertaining, but also amazingly lucid.

This book is a bargain at any price.

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45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A great popularizer without apologies, June 23, 1999
By Adrian Walker (Mountain View California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Oxford paperbacks) (Paperback)
For many years in Britain Bryan Magee has been a popularizer of philosophy-and unashamedly so. In his view philosophy is too important and relevant a subject to be left to academics. There are few who can elucidate and demystify as capably. Accordingly, when you have Magee interviewing famous philosphers about very famous philosophers you have the ingredients of an exciting recipe-and the product is not disappointing. There is Bernard Williams on Descartes, Geoffrey Warnock on Kant and J P Stern on Nietzche-all outstanding. Beyond this though there is Dreyfus on Heidigger- a remarkable insight into a difficult philosopher and John Searles cool exposition of Wittgenstein. However, the very best is Coppelston and Magee on Schopenhaeur. Here Magee departs from his role as lucid interrogator and engages with the expert, often disagreeing. This is (as he explains) because Schopenhauer has been the subject of one of his own books. All of this makes for a lively exchange which led this reader to research further. While he popularizes Magee never cheapens. You should not expect this to survey all the thoughts of any one writer, but rather to stimulate your interest to read some great minds yourself. If this does so for any thinker the the author will have served his purpose.
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Introduction to the History of Philosophy, February 23, 2004
By ctdreyer (NY USA) - See all my reviews
I know of no better introduction to the history of philosophy than this volume, which is about as engaging as books on philosophy get. The conversations are easy to follow; no knowledge of arcane terminology is presupposed; and every attempt is made to bring out why these ideas are important and worthy of serious study today. Furthermore, the book's coverage is quite broad for its length of three hundred pages. It manages to cover philosophy from Plato to Wittgenstein, and I can't think of a single absolutely essential figure in the history of philosophy whose work isn't discussed here. Nevertheless, this book is less ambitious than many other shorter books on the history of philosophy in that it doesn't attempt to cover the entire history of philosophy. Instead, Magee and his interlocutors focus in on the most important figures in the history of philosophy and devote an entire chapter to each of them. Where historical trends in philosophy or other, less important figures are mentioned, they're mentioned in relation to the figures to whom the particular chapters are devoted. This strikes me as a significant strength of this book as a book for someone coming to philosophy for the first time. A beginner needs to know about Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, et al.; she doesn't need to know a little bit about every figure who has introduced an important idea or two. Finally, most of the interviews are with thinkers who are themselves good philosophers, and, in several cases (e.g., Bernard Williams on Descartes, Miles Burnyeat on Plato, Michael Ayers on Locke, and Hubert Dreyfus on Heidegger), the interviewee has done first-rate work on the very philosopher(s) he or she is discussing.

Each interview begins with a short biographical sketch of the subject by Brian Magee, and some attempt is made, in these introductions and in the interviews, to place each figure's ideas into the history of philosophy and into the history of ideas more generally. Still, there is no general format for these discussions. Some of the interviews begin with a sketch of the thinker's methodology or conception of philosophy; some begin with an account of one of the thinker's distinctive views that provides an entry into his thinking; some begin with a discussion of a problem to which the thinker was responding. From these beginnings, the conversation tends to develop and cover more of the thinker's views, with the dialogue format keeping things fairly informal without being superficial.

It's not that this book makes all of these things easy to understand. Some of them just aren't easy to understand, and there is no way to accurately describe their views while making those views easy to understand. And, in some cases, the difficulty of their views isn't simply a matter of unnecessary pedantry or willful obscurity on their part--though, in other cases, it may be partly a matter of these things. In fact, some of these figures (i.e., Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein) are notorious for the difficulty of their work. But, even in these cases, the conversations here go some way in helping to introduce their thought.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants an entry into the study of the history of the philosophy. In addition, if you simply memorize most of the information in this volume, you'll know enough to understand just about any reference to a famous philosopher and his ideas that you find outside of a philosophy classroom or journal. In other words, you'll look smarter if you read this book. Heck, reading this book might even make you smarter. What more can you ask for?

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