He is a superb communicator of complex concepts with an eye for the arresting fact. has a masterly appreciation of the currents of western philosophical thought, especially the Anglo-American tradition. We would not expect, for instance, a historian of physics to remain neutral on whether Newton or Einstein had a better theory of gravity.Which means that narrating the history of philosophy can’t be properly pursued without staking, and defending, philosophical claims in one’s voice about truth, reason, history and teleology. It is, in one way, odd to expect anything less from a history of philosophy. What goes lacking in histories like these is the ideal of objectivity (some of these philosophical views are right, and some are wrong), as well as precisely what historians, in their revolt against Hegel, have become so suspicious of: teleology, an account of where it is all leading to. Grayling does here, as a catalogue of the opinions of the familiar great names, can give the impression that that is all there is to philosophy’s history, a cacophony of views, arguments, doctrines, systems. Presenting the history of philosophy as neutrally as Mr. Grayling’s evenhandedness that one finishes this book none the wiser about his own convictions, aside from a general disapproval of Marxism, deconstruction and any philosophy that takes its bearings from religion. In addition, he is charitable to a wide variety of philosophical views. Grayling approaches these methodological questions judiciously, taking as few controversial stands as possible.For a book that covers more than 100 individual thinkers spanning 2,500 years, the level of both detail and accuracy is admirable. What do epistemology, ethics and metaphysics have in common, other than their failure to become independent disciplines in their own right, as physics and psychology did?.
But this approach has its own difficulties.
Grayling repeatedly reminds us, for most of its history 'philosophy' referred simply to rational inquiry in general. Rather than begin with an overarching definition, he identifies core concerns of what we now call 'philosophy' and then traces their historical antecedents.
Grayling takes a modest approach to delimiting his subject.
0 kommentar(er)
