The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of their Thought

by Ben-Ami Scharfstein

This highly readable volume offers a broad introduction to modern philosophy and philosophers. Ben-Ami Scharfstein contends that personal experience, especially that of childhood, affects philosophers' sense of reality and hence the content of their philosophies. He bases his argument on biographical studies of twenty great philosophers, beginning with Descartes and ending with Wittgenstein and Sartre. Taken together, these studies provide the beginnings of a psychological history of the philosophy of the period.
Scharfstein first focuses on the philosophers' efforts to arrive at the objective truth and to persuade themselves and others of its existence. He then explores truth and relevance, both proposing the broadening of the traditional philosophical conception of relevance and considering philosophers' need to create something that belongs to and transcends them as individuals.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction, Biography, College

496 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 1980

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The basic thesis of Scharfstein's work is a simple one, but one difficult to swallow at times: Philosophers are people. Hardly exemplary, and yet so very important! To be sure, this isn't a new realization. Plenty of philosophers have stressed this in their own ways. To my mind, the most forceful accounts are found in Nietzsche above all, but then also the Spaniards, Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno. The latter emphasizes the philosopher as the man of flesh and blood. There are other parallels, of course, but it was Nietzsche who really highlighted how human—all too human—philosophy is as a practice, and especially how our psychological needs inform the act of philosophizing. I've debated the existence of "pure reason" with friends before, and for years I've taken the negative side: I'm skeptical that a priori reasoning, combined with logic, can arrive at some ahistorical, eternal, objective truth. A simple glance at the history of philosophy should be enough to disabuse such a thought. In any case, this isn't cause for us to throw out truth, or philosophy for that matter, out the window. I think Fichte, James, and Nietzsche have powerfully shown how psychology figures into our thinking, and Scharfstein simply takes this line of inquiry and expands it—not in any new, radical direction, nor in extent, but in depth. That is, he endeavors to show, through 20 case studies, and with the aid of psychoanalysis (which, admittedly, I'm more hesitant about), that a plausible case can be made for considering a philosopher's personal situation when reading their thoughts. Scharfstein, though, is no fool who simply wishes to reduce philosophy to psychology or who repudiates the existence of truth. As he carefully explains,

Despite my emphasis in the biographies, I have never said or wanted to suggest that the psychological factors explain everything of importance. I have not wanted to reduce philosophy to simpler constituents or to explain it away, but to establish more of its personal context and significance. Psychological are to philosophical factors as foundations to superstructures: they establish only their gross limits. (123)

Scharfstein is highly conscientious in this project. He is always ready to acknowledge where his argument falls short, where he is insecure, where he is only speculating; I respect someone who is able to self-qualify and who doesn't simply hold up their thought with the arrogance of generalization, as if philosophical matters were ever so definitive. Thus, he proposes, against Plato and Aristotle, that philosophy begins, not in wonder, but in anxiety: “Reasoning is driven, I should say, by the desire to escape anxiety, and driven hardest when anxieties are extreme” (363). Through his meticulous readings of various biographies and his knowledge of psychological literature, he's able to touch on various factors that impact a philosopher's thinking: the philosopher's relation to their mother and father, the prevalence of death and suffering in their life (especially childhood), their physical health, their mental health (e.g., depression, suicidality, obsessiveness), marital life, sibling relationships, and the relationship to one's predecessors. All of this I find highly plausible.