A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher

100 Essential Thinkers, by Philip Stokes, 
Arcturus 2002/2006 ISBN 0572032064 pp218 UKP 8.99

A Brief History of Philosophy from Socrates to Derrida, by Derek Johnston, Continuum 2006 pb ISBN 0826490204 pp206

The Great Philosophers: the lives and ideas of History's greatest thinkers, by Stephen Law, Quercus UKP15 ISBN 1-84724-398-3 hb
 

What a lot of books offer an accessible and attractive reference guide to philosophy! Or to be precise, Western Philosophy. Or to be even more precise, traditional, male-dominated 'analytic' Western Philosophy. For that is clearly the real object of so many of these authors' interests and backgrounds. Bertrand Russell's classic, the Concise History of Western Philosophy, at least acknowledges this disjunction, both by specifically limiting itself in it choice of title, but also by numerous scholarly references in the text proper to the influence of figures outside the conventional canon to 'Western Philosophy'. Alas, few of these more recent books indicate any evidence of knowledge of, far less recognition of, the importance of other philosophical traditions and themes. 

Such is the style of the times, and surely, this is how 'philosophy' is usually understood in the West. Perhaps it is possible to make sense, at least in an introductory volume, of 'Western Philosophy' without knowing anything about the great world of knowledge that lies outside its borders? So let's consider how useful these two works might be for the general reader, anxious to have a reliable and accessible guide to the 'Greats'.

Both books share an attractive graphical approach. Great Philosophers is a hardback, in full colour on high quality paper, superbly, indeed one might say lavishly, illustrated, not only with the 'conventional' images (evidently from various commercial photo libraries) but also with some unusual and intriguing new ones. Some of my favourites were the full colour plate of the screenprint by Eduardo Paoluzzi, 'Wittgenstein in New York' and that grubby B&W photo of Martin Heidegger sitting proudly at a table at the University of Freiberg flanked by Nazi soldiers and flag bearing swastikas.

Indeed, the text follows up some of these interesting biographical asides too, as part of an efficient and thorough bibliographical summary for each, but basically the Great Philosophers is concerned to provide potted summaries of the supposed 'contributions' of those elected to the 'pantheon' to a tidy march of philosophical knowledge. 

Here, in this rather grander project, it is much less reliable. For example, it says that 'Marx didn't have a lot to say about the precise form that communism would take' whereas, in fact, at the heart of the Communist Manifesto is a list of practical steps the new state must take. It is also a highly partial account, describing the notorious incident where Wittgenstein waved a poker at Karl Popper as part of a Cambridge University debate, by saying indulgently of Wittgenstein that he 'picked up a poker, gesticulated with it in order to make a point, and then abruptly departed the scene'. Garvey and Stangroom continue by explaining that Popper 'is said to have subsequently given as an example of a moral rule that one should not threaten visiting lecturers with pokers'. This is a less convincing account than the more usual version, which has Wittgenstein pick up the poker, wave it threateningly at Popper and demand of him an example of 'a moral rule', only to be wittily put down by the reply: 'Not to wave pokers at visiting lecturers' (exit Wittgenstein).

This, of course, is all so much philosophical trivia, a more substantial concern, for a book offered as an introduction would be if it gets its main messages wrong. And much of Great Philosophers is admirably clear in explanation and exposition, even if delivered in a rather a lofty 'Professorial' style, a stye it seems in places to have inherited more or less directly from Garvey's earlier and well-received, Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books. In fact, Great Philosophers seems to be an expanded version of this, with additional thinkers and of course the greatly improved presentation. On the other hand, it also means that not a few chapters seem to read like a scholarly account of a philosopher 'topped and tailed' with a more chatty, 'populist' introduction and conclusion.

Take for instance Great Philosophers' introduction to Ayer, whose main justification for being counted as a 'Great', seems to be that he features in Garvey's choice of Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books. The Great Philosophers starts:

There's an awful lot of universe out there to think about - pick a snail [sic] no one's noticed and you're off. It is not so easy to be an original philosopher. We've had nearly 2.500 years of thinking [i.e.. that there was no 'thinking' in the world before the Greeks, which is of course nonsense, as indicated earlier - Editor] undertaken by the brightest people imaginable, on about four questions. Good luck to anyone who dreams of effecting a philosophical paradigm shift. So it's a little hard to take seriously the hiccoughs which accompany many treatments of A.J. Ayer's philosophy.

 ...he was killed by an AIDS-related illness; he was one of the first victims of a disease he presumably thought only properly existed in the context of particular discourses or narratives.

We call lots of different things 'red', but how did we manage to learn the meaning of the word when we are never presented with an unambiguous example of redness? Red things in the world are round and red or juicy and red or crunchy and red. How, then, did we ever learn to use the world [sic] correctly?

Or think about our knowledge of something red, say the knowledge that this apple is red. It is clear that it will not be red for long; apples rot, after all, and eventually it will be brown, maybe decomposing into something we would not even call an apple any more. Consider these two questions. As the apple rots, what standard do we use to determine whether or not is its red? It seems that we need some unchanging standard, some fixed redness, but what could fit the bill in this changing world of rotting apples?

Second, if we really know something, it is hard to see how that knowledge could turn false. Opinions might turn out false, but if something is known - squares have four sides or 2 + 2 = 4, say - it has to be true forever. Again, nothing in this changing world seems able to shore up the permanency of knowledge.

Plato's remarkable solution to these problems is the theory of forms...

First, Plato never uses the 'colour example' - however popular it later became. Secondly, there is nothing in the Theory that says something that is red has to stay red. The sky is red when the sun sets, and not afterwards. That is not a problem with 'being red'. Garvey is right that we need an unchanging standard, but emphasising the short-lived redness of the apple is a strange way to illustrate this. One might even say 'confusing'.

In fact, in the Republic, Socrates says that:

The lovers of sounds and sights are, as I conceive, fond of fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that are made out of them, but their mind is incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty.

The one [who] loves and embraces the subjects of knowledge, the other those of opinion? The latter are the same, as I dare say you will remember, who listened to sweet sounds and gazed upon fair colours, but would not tolerate the existence of absolute beauty.

All of which implies, à la John Locke later, that Plato thought that there was a difference between 'knowledge of' colours and 'knowledge of' beauty. Anyway, in Great Philosophers, Garvey has a second chance to return to the topic, this time aided by Jeremy Stangroom, who once upon a time described himself as a mere computer technician but now has become rather more grandly: 'the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy website' .
This time the search for definitions of 'the virtues', during which 'Socrates never finds an acceptable definition' (and 'it is possible that this raises a difficulty which Plato's middle and later works attempt to answer') is tackled anew, through different examples. This time, 'our use of a general term like 'blue'.'

We apply the word 'blue' to a variety of things, but how on earth did we learn to do so when we never actually encounter an unambiguous example of blue? Everything we see is blue and cold or blue and bitter or blue and small: how then did we learn to use the word 'blue' in the first place?

Or consider what we take to be our knowledge of something blue, let us say, for instance, my mundane knowledge that my shirt is blue. It is fairly clear that the world around us is constantly changing. My blue shirt will be washed and washed; it will begin to fade, and soon it won't really be the same fetching blue that it is today. I might inadvertently wash it with something else that is not colour fast, something bright orange, in which case my faded shirt will not even be blue at all. Regrettably, in the fullness of time, it won't even be a shirt any more, returning, as all things must, to dust.

First, as my shirt fades, what standard do we use to say, truly, that it is not as blue as it was? As my shirt falls apart and looks less and less like a shirt (perhaps more and more like a rag) what standard do we use to say, truly, that it is not a shirt any more? Some unchanging standard seems needed to make sense of these judgements, but what could do the job in this changing world?

Second, it seems that a proposition known could never become false. Opinions certainly could change, as do fashions, but if knowledge is possible, the objects of knowledge must themselves be unchanging. If something is known, it is known forever. 'Two plus two equals four', 'Triangles have three sides,' Bachelors are unmarried adult males', these propositions are true, and they cannot run out to be false tomorrow. Knowledge, thought Plato, is above the fluctuating vagaries of this imperfect world. How could this be? What ensures that knowledge is fixed, if everything around us is constantly changing?

Plato's Theory of Forms is an attempt to deal with all of this and the solution is radical. He claims that real, mind-independent entitles exist - forms of things like Justice, Good, Beauty, Triangle, Blue, Bachelor, and so on for any general term you like...

In this sense, 100 Essential Thinkers should be a welcome addition to many philosophical libraries. However, as with Stangroom and Garvey's various essays, the content is undermined as well as enhanced by its ambitions. Stokes wishes to be an expert perhaps on a little too much, and in doing so falls into the trap of offering potted lectures to the reader where it would be better to step back and merely summarise the historical record. 

Take, for example, his discussion of Russell's Theory of Descriptions. Stokes praises this as having solved the 'King of France' problem. This he sums up as the problem of whether it is true, false or simply meaningless to say that 'The present King of France is bald', given that there isn't one. If we say that the statement is false, it implies that the opposite statement 'the present King of France is NOT bald' should be 'true' which does seems unsatisfactory.
Russell's solution, says Stokes, is to restate the proposition by breaking it down into three supposed constituent parts:

1. there is some person who is the present King of France;
2. there is only one such person;
3. that person is bald

Stokes offers that this strategy has now become 'a standard tool of logical analysis'. Alas, he does not move on to those other tricky questions such as the question of the properties of unicorns or even of God. We might then ask whether statements like 'Unicorns have only one horn' or 'God is good' can be so quickly dealt with as 'false', given that they can also be broken down into a series of dodgy propositions...

Another foray too far, perhaps, is when Stokes describes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, repeating rather dubius claims that this theory was not Bejamin Lee Whorf's (it was) and that Whorf relied on a vague idea that Inuit had many terms for snow (rather than the detailed studies Whorf really made of the language of the Hopi Indians). Some will wonder at times where Stokes found his information. But they will wonder in vain. Stokes' book offers not a single source or reference. It must have been a great labour indeed to research 100 philosophers entirely from scratch! 

Whatever, this book, along with others mentioned here, seems to set a new, low standard in academic sourcing. 
And so on to Derek Johnston's effort of 2006, evidently successful enough to have been reprinted four times in the following three years). This a book by an old-style schoolmaster written in the style of the old-style schoolmaster ('Try to note other approaches to this question as you read on', he advises). The selection is conservative, the analysis likewise, and the text is broken up into numerous subsections such as 'life', 'thought' and 'appraisal', which are then broken down into smaller subsections like 'the method of systemic doubt' or 'I think therefore I am' (both from the chapter on Descartes, of course). More alarmingly, the paragraphs themselves are written in disjointed sentences, as though literally taken from someone's notebook.

Most of the book is reliable, but often the price of this is to state the obvious such as 'Socrates held that virtue is the supreme good' a sentence which particularly offends as it seems to be equivalent to saying that 'being good is the supreme good'. That is quite apart from whether Socrates really did ever say such a thing, which would be a debate involving careful analysis of the historical sources on Socrates, whom some specialists think may not even have existed far less can be ascribed particular policy positions. 

Such careful examination does not seem likely to have been carried out by Johnston, as he also declares that there are 'two main sources' for Socrates, that is, Xenophon and Plato, whereas there is also Diogenes Laertius, who often is, in fact, taken as the only 'reliable' source. This kind of omission is unfortunate in a book offering itself as a reference work, especially for those young and impressionable minds or those 'coming to philosophy for the first time' that the back cover dedicates itself to - twice - and unfortunately there are many others. 

In the next chapter on Plato, we are unreliably told that 'Plato was the first thinker to construct a great philosophical system', a claim which should surely set the proverbial 'alarm bells ringing' if seen in any student essay, indicating ignorance not only of all the great thinkers outside the Western tradition, but of course all the 'pre-Socratics' who certainly constructed what they considered to be 'great philosophical systems', even if the details left to history are rather less. Whatever happened to Pythagoras for example! But Pythagoras does not appear anywhere in this evidently 'a bit too brief' History of Philosophy.

In similar simplifying spirit, Johnston explains that Plato 'had a deep dislike of the notion of democracy... because he was profoundly shaken by the way the democratic faction had put Socrates to death'. Plato himself explains his objections to democracy differently (in the Republic) and it would certainly been 'unphilosophical' of Plato to construct his political theory as a response to the single case that Johnston supposes. Not content with this foray beyond the evidence, and evidently anxious to reassure his classes about contemporary political systems, Johnston adds parenthetically: 'We would be more inclined to use the word demagogy to describe the system to which Plato objected.'

One of the student-friendly features of the book (and there are many, such as John Sunderland's ten little sketches of 'the Greats') is the teeny-weeny potted summaries of the 'great works' - but alas, such brevity cannot be achieved without paying a price. The summary of Plato's 'Symposium' , for example, neglects to mention that at the heart of it is the discussion of the views of Diotima in which she suggests to a young Socrates the essence of what later becomes the 'Theory of Forms' itself, surely one of the key moments in Western Philosophy. And Diotima is one of those rare female figures in philosophy, of whom this book includes none. But then Johnston comfortably explains in the introduction that 'women have not yet been recognised as innovators in the Western philosophical canon'. There is a political subtext to a history of philosophy, and in Johnston's case it is often quite plain. And the chapter on Plato concludes by saying:

In Ancient Greek times the determining ethical institution was the state. In the Middle Ages in Western Europe [sic] the determining ethical institution was the Church. One of the marks of modernity is that the determining ethical institution has become the individual. Is this a gain or a loss: what have we gained, what have we lost?

Yet Johnston discusses just how Descartes 'could have spent a day in a stove', noting that it may have been a small room or a large fireplace 'really'. Whatever, still rather uncritically, Johnston explains that during his time in the stove, Descartes decided to 'make a clean-sweep [perhaps it was a fireplace really!] , to do away with all scholastic philosophy'. This is why Descartes, we are assured, really counts as the beginning of 'modern philosophy'. Yet the simplification falls apart when you examine Descartes'' work. The cogito itself 'I think therefore I am' is really a product of Descartes scholastic upbringing, in particular the advice of Saint Augustine that: 'He who is not can certainly not be deceived; therefore if I am deceived, I am.'

Johnston himself notes a few paragraphs later, slightly contrarily, that the second half of Descartes' argument rests on the claim of another scholastic Saint, Anselm, that 'existence' is a necessary part of perfection.

The chapter on Wittgenstein includes a longer and more interesting biography noting many of the strange events in Wittgenstein's life, albeit with a tendency to cast them all in a rosy light. However, it is doubtful that readers will benefit from the summary of Wittgenstein's philosophy which runs as follows:

Wittgenstein saw the world as a totality of facts, not of things. Facts are logical entities, they can only be asserted or denied. They are not hard, red, round etc. Things existing space and time: they have shape, colour, consistency, etc.
 A fact could be otherwise: we have to be able to think that things could be otherwise independently of whether those different conditions are realised or not. Pictures of facts as we express them in language give us meaning. Wittgenstein saw the world consisting of simple objects fitting together like links in a chain and giving us states of affairs.

Johnston's book will, one would imagine, appeal to both teachers and exam-minded -students, but not necessarily satisfy those looking for deeper insights into the subject. Perhaps it doesn't intend to.

The Great Philosophers: the lives and ideas of History's greatest thinkers, by Stephen Law, on the other hand, sets out to be something at least a bit different. 

For a start, it opts to start with Buddha, and for seconds, it includes 'rarities' in the philosophical pantheon like Parmenides, Averroês, William of Ockham, and Pascal. There are some 'recent Americans' such as C.S. Pierce, William James, Quine and Strawson. There are even a few women philosophers - Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir - and most oddly of all - Judith Jarvis Thomson.

In fact, the more 'recent' the great philosophers become, the more odd and subjective the choice seems to become. Law includes in the Twentieth Century list G.E. Moore, who is surely only a footnote to the history of philosophy, Sartre, who is often now considered to be rather less of a philosopher than a playwright, Peter Singer, who is a populariser not an innovator, and most bizarrely of all, Judith Jarvis Thompson, who is known only of the catchy thought experiment exploring the ethics of abortion, and for nothing else at all. Do such people then make good chapters in Law's account? These recent philosophers may well be eminent but they are not quite 'great'.

But back to Buddha. By including him here, (next up is Confucius, but 'Eastern philosophy' otherwise does not get another look-in) ) Law does two useful things for his audience, which is clearly the non-specialist reader, most likely indeed sixth-formers in schools. He redefines philosophy to make it include those all-encompassing spiritual questions that indeed historically belong to the discipline, but have to a greater or lesser extent been pushed sideways from philosophy 'guide books' and departments these days. The account of Buddha, as for all the philosophers, opens with a full one page black and white illustration, in this case of a stone Buddha, accompanied by a key quote, in this case:

It is just thirst or craving, which gives rise to predated existence, which is bound up with impassioned appetite and which seeks fresh pleasure now here and now there..

Each essay follows a uniform structure, which is clear and commendably jargon free. There is a short 'boxed' biography of each thinker, and another 'major works' box which (like much of the book) is highly idiosyncratic. For example, Marx's major works (but two) are The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, which many 'marxists' would challenge (the first being of course a political statement more than a philosophy and the second being a long rambling and uncompleted work of pseudo-economics. Russell, is given three 'major works' which are the Principia Mathematica, the Problems of Philosophy (which he disowned as mere popularisation) and the Philosophy of Logical Atomism, which may be very good but this reviewer freely admits not only to having never read nor indeed to having seen it referenced before. 

As for de Beauvoir, only one work is offered: The Second Sex. And the essay refers to her 'borrowings', as it were, from her partner, Sartre. (Law says she is "drawing on Sartre's notion".) Yet, as specialists in this area have argued, de Beauvoir in fact pioneered the existentialist ideas of the 'other' and explored the ideas of existentialism on - at the very least - equal terms with Sartre. So there are certainly quibbles, but that is not to say the book purports to be 'encyclopaedic' - it rather works, and I think tries to be, 'an introduction' to the rich trove of philosophical debates and ideas. As such it works rather better than most of the compilations under similar grandiose names.

There is neither the space nor the requirement here to step through the actual 'essays', as to be expected from the foregoing, these do offer highly subjective but often lucid and usually lively summaries of particular ideas. On Parmenides, Law looks at the principle that :

That which is there to be spoken and thought of must be

Plato gets five pages, thus deservedly breaking the book's stylistic norms, and Law chooses 'the forms' as the main theme. "Take trees, for example", says Law, adding that "according to Plato, each particular tree is a fleeting reflection of a form". But, as with Garvey, this choice of example is misleading as Plato does not use trees as an example. Trees, as Law goes on to say, grow, change shape, rot and die. Not to mention there are all those different types of trees. A better example would surely be triangles and tables - at least Plato himself uses those. 

The entry includes a lengthy version of Plato's 'Cave' allegory (or thought experiment) and another box offering the possible 'difficulty' with Plato's theory, namely that there seems to be a kind of 'meta-form' needed to embrace the shared properties of the form, say of tables and all the tables. This problem, Law rightly notes, is raised by Plato himself in the dialogue the Parmenides. Raising the issue here, on one hand, and then an objection later in a separate box is an effective pedagogical tool for communicating that philosophy is a real debate. The same ambition clearly motivates Law to devote the next essay, on Aristotle, to the issue of Plato's universals versus Aristotle's 'particulars', accessible not to reason but to the everyday senses. 

This collection of 'Great Philosophers' does not, in this reviewer's view, provide an overview of philosophy let alone, as the subtitle ambitiously promises, "the lives and ideas of history's greatest thinkers, and in that sense it may be a disappointment to some readers. Nor does it adequately eschew the academic's style of authoritative pronouncements on matters which should rather be treated as unsettled or debatable. However, as an introduction to the techniques of philosophy, as a resource for educational purposes, it does rather better, and thus deserves to find its place somewhere in the range of philosophy resources.