Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey

by Roger Scruton

Philosopher Roger Scruton offers a wide-ranging perspective on philosophy, from logic to aesthetics, written in a lively and engaging way that is sure to stimulate debate. Rather than producing a survey of an academic discipline, Scruton reclaims philosophy for worldly concerns.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Ebooks, Reference

611 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1994

About the author

Sir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.

In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.

In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).

Reviews

[Lynne King · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does one view the following two paragraphs?

“The concept of life, therefore, has been appropriated by philosophers in their search for the ‘true individual’. The heap is an arbitrary individual; even the table is one thing only so long as our interests require it to be. But when it comes to the dog, the cat or the human being, their unity and identity seem to belong to them quite independently of the way they are classified. It is part of the nature of Moggins that she is one cat; and the criteria for counting cats are given by the theory of felinity.”

Well I had no problem with that but this one which follows on?

“I have referred to two marks of the ‘true’ or substantial individual: unity and identity. There is an organisation which makes it non-arbitrary that this part and that part belong to ‘one’ being; and also non-arbitrary that this thing at one time is the ‘same’ as that thing as another. Life – or at least animal life – promises something that philosophers have always prized and never clearly obtained, namely criteria of unity and identity, and in particular criteria of ‘identity over time’.”

This surely can be read several ways? And I’m not even sure if I agree with it but I have an excuse; I’m not a philosopher.

“Skimming” through this book now, however, it looks a good educational tool for me.

I don't believe that Goodreads is good for me. I already had a lot of books before coming across this "online Library" and now I find that I'm in the midst of a veritable bookshop. I've always had eclectic tastes but with the advent of Kindle, there’s another enticement that my brain cannot control.

I’m often finding books at home that I’ve either read, partially read or not read at all and this book comes in the middle category. I actually only looked at this today after coming across an excellent discussion between two GRs readers, when I turned my computer on and had a “quick” look into GRs for “my fix” before starting a translation.

I see that I purchased this hardback on 22 April 1994 and the only reason I did that was because Descartes, at the time, had unexpectedly sprang to mind. I recalled studying Descartes at university in my French Studies programme. So I began this book and really it was all too much for my mind to handle at the time. Too many theories, if I recall and I guess not enough evidence in these statements, some of which were quite incomprehensible to me. There's also the factor of the vagaries of the human mind. Aren’t we lucky as human beings that we have this ability to reason.

There are so many viewpoints on philosophy that are discussed from Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Kant and many others through to Roger Scuton et al. So where does one start?

I recall skim reading through this book at the time and now I feel it is appropriate to read it. Perhaps it will be better in the winter when I’m relaxed, with a glass of Burgundy at my side and the romantic glow of the log fire. Will I be enlightened? Well, I’ll have to find that out and I do believe that Roger Scruton is the person to do that.

I’ve rated this a three until I can re-evaluate the book.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Scruton’s Modern Philosophy is, in a strange way, the funniest work of serious philosophical commentary I’ve ever read. This survey is organized thematically, so the chapters have headings like Soul, Mind, Time, Science, God, Death, etc. That is one part of the book’s humor. With almost comical erudition, Scruton just keeps coming with insights on every painfully complex issue confronted by philosophers from Descartes to Rorty. It’s astounding that at some point he doesn’t gag and croak on his own brilliance.

Through 500 pages of exposition he simply never yields! Is God possible or impossible? Is time real or an illusion? How did Kant deal with Hume’s Law? (How did Hume deal with Hume’s Law?) Why is it impossible to superimpose a left hand on a right hand even in four-dimensional space? (What is four-dimensional space?) Why is it unreasonable to fear death and doubt immortality?

The indefatigable Scruton sifts through thousands of arguments on the finer points of freedom, free will, and “the” will…the finite and the infinite…process and becoming…. There’s an inherent intellectual suspense in this tome, deriving from its chapter by chapter virtuosity. What is process? What is becoming? What is a number? Why isn’t zero a number? What is now since now is not the same now as it was when I began typing this sentence and you began reading it?

Scruton’s more easily appreciated humor—and more intentional—emerges when he writes about the likes of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, etc. He freely despises these “Continental” rogues and impostors. Heidegger gets battered the worst as a kind of mad German mystic. The problem with the others, running from existentialism through deconstructionism, is that their devious, busy little minds worked very, very hard to undermine humanity’s faith in all previous thought, institutions, and the possibility of just, collective human cooperation and mutual understanding.

“Nothingness, [Sartre] tells us, lies coiled in the heart of Being, like a worm.” Dear me! And interpretation, says Nietzsche, godfather to the deconstructionists, is a function of power, not truth. The text therefore, any text, says Derrida, is a tissue of the reader’s imagination, not the author’s.

Let’s call this book laborious but not labored fun, a steep hike through the hills of what you think but don’t know why you think it.

Scruton is the author, despite Derrida’s views, of fifty books. Obviously, he’s a little mad himself, never sleeps, corresponds with everyone about everything, reads every philosophical journal at the speed of light, and on more than one occasion enjoys expressing solemn awe at the brilliance of Aristotle, Kant, and the Lawful Hume.

[Albert Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is, as subtitled, “an introduction and survey,” but there is also an underlying thesis in Scruton’s arrangement of subjects. By “modern philosophy” he means not merely recent developments in philosophy, but an emphasis on philosophers since Descartes who are “modernists” – committed to the modern age, believing that “traditions must be overthrown or redefined in order to do justice to the new forms of experience.” New forms of experience include those made possible by the rise of natural science in the modern era.

Modernists necessarily conclude that there is no “trans-historical” truth; that is, that what is regarded as “truth” is derived only from the power structure, the interests, which inform it. Thus, “truth” has no independent authority, but is contextual to time and culture. Clearly, this view excludes eternality of truth – nothing is true at all times and all places. There is no foundational principle for something being regarded as “true.”

Indeed the very word – truth – is unmoored from its usual meaning. Or, perhaps more accurately, the word “truth” is used to sow confusion because we use it to mean two different things. One—let’s call it capital-T Truth—is the baseline orientation for all our mental efforts, unchanging across all philosophical meanderings. The other “truth” is just a construct for whatever is the present discussion, a variable, like using “x” in basic algebra.

This difference in meaning for the word “truth” leads to a self-refuting paradox. No, not “paradox.” Fatal inconsistency. A philosopher who says there are no truths, or that all truths are merely relative, or that truth is a changeable state rendering capital-T Truth illusory, is essentially saying you should not believe him. So don’t, as Scruton advises.

Scruton re-affirms the argument of this book near the end, for example in his penultimate chapter titled “The Devil,” where he gives reign to his view that we indulge in a sort of negation that involves “the repudiation with which we rid ourselves of that which irks us.” He’s pulling the threads together, here, no longer giving us a survey nor an introduction, but explaining the gap between our better angels and our worst instincts.

Our sense of estrangement in the world correlates to a kind of repudiation. As we grow to adulthood, we experience an increasing awareness of our estrangement from our family, until we come to a point of repudiation of them. This often takes the form of teenage rebellion, in which the adolescent is tortured by that sense of alienation and feels he must finish the job, so to speak, sundering the ties that formerly bound him in bonds of love but also restraint.

We naturally hope the rift is not permanent. “Rejection may lead to reconciliation, as the son learns to sympathise with the father, and to see the old law as a necessary precursor to his own affirmation.” But the break might also lead to a lifelong posture of negation, “a refusal to accept any external authority and a rejection of every value, every custom, every norm which impedes the ‘liberation’ of the self.”

As with individual adolescent angst, so with the movement within society toward the false sense of liberation:

"This arrest of the soul in the posture of negation is worthy of study, since it is at the root of much that passes for philosophy in a modern university: from Marxism to deconstruction, the modernist philosopher has occupied himself with proof that there is no authority, no source of law, no value and no meaning in the culture and institutions that we have inherited, and that the sole purpose of thought is to clear the way for 'liberation.'”

This thesis is valuable, and to my mind proven, but there’s more to the book than this. It clocks in at a pithy 495 pages excluding a 100-page “study guide” which adds depth beyond mere footnotes. Don’t be put off, this isn’t strictly for philosopher egg-heads, it’s an accessible work. Aside from illuminating the distortions of modern philosophy, the subjects covered will take you deeper on a wide array of subjects of philosophy, especially if you’ve started out with some of the basics already in hand.

Please go out and read this book. Carry it around with you. Take it in a few pages at a time. The world will make a whole lot more sense, I promise.

[Phoenix Rises · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first long and complex book that I have read from cover to cover with such intense enthusiasm for a while now. This does not mean that I have not engaged with remarkable texts recently, however, I am aware that my reading habits have changed over time, because my attention is fragmented now, due to my intense interest to learn. It seems that for me to feel satisfied while reading, I have to read many books at once, with many different styles and ideas, to feel at home. The problem with this though is that it prevents me from sinking into a dense and complex book, but this book allowed me to do just that, and for several reasons. One reason is because I was interested in having a deeper understanding of philosophy as a whole, or at least Western philosophy, as this philosopher doesn't go into other world traditions unfortunately, and this book is immensely educational in that regard. Another reason, one that is just as important, is that this book, by synthesizing and analyzing so many different arguments, created a unique argument in its own right. Indeed, Roger Scruton has a passion and vision, and you can feel that in this book. Now, Roger definitely has some biases. He does not like the structuralists or the deconstructionists, he is skeptical of the utilitarians and the existentialists, and he favors Kant, for instance. However, he does have reasons for this, which becomes more and more apparent as he makes his way through his grand argument. Indeed, this is a very metaphysical book, and even though it has an emphasis on the analytic tradition of philosophy, by way of thinkers such as Wittgenstein and Frege, Roger really tries to get into the heart of what reality is, a hallmark of a great metaphysician. I am honestly impressed with this book, and I don't even know where to begin. The strength of this philosopher's take is in his emphasis on the question of what it means to exist in the human world. Roger's closing argument is that we are ultimately social beings that require community to feel fully alive and to transcend this world and ourselves, and one can feel the force of this argument by following Roger's arguments. What makes this specific claim so meaningful in the context of the larger argument at play is that Roger deduces this conclusion by showing how we have abandoned the search for objective truth, and seen the search for objective truth as a fault in our thinking. This is why Roger dismisses deconstructionism and the philosophy of the existentialists and Marxists. He distrusts the deconstructionists precisely because they claim their claim to knowledge by disapproving their own claims and destroying legitimate counter claims. Indeed, even though I like the deconstructionists for their creative use of cognition, I think that what Roger is really onto here is the way in which our ideologies can become so very dangerous, as well as at the very least counterproductive and pointless: In Roger's terms, the search for truth and understanding becomes another demon of Descartes. Surprisingly though, Roger didn't seem to have a problem with Nietzsche, but that might've been because he identified the ironic foundationalism that Nietzsche has in his philosophy. There is a lot that I could say about this book, but it is certainly not just a survey and introduction to modern philosophy, and philosophy in general. The book deals with many sophisticated arguments, from formal logic to the philosophy of mind, with a main argument as a whole, and this book deserves the attention that such a book would deserve. I would recommend this book though because it certainly challenges you as a reader. It challenged me to rethink how I look at philosophy as a whole, including its function and purpose, and I have re-examined many philosophical points that I've taken for granted over the years. In short, this is a great book, precisely because it isn't just about mastering philosophy, or even introducing philosophy, but attempting to understand very fundamental principles that come from philosophical reflection, and can improve one's life.

[Alex Tsiatsos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best, single volume, in depth introduction to the many and diverse schools of thought and thinkers that make up modern philosophy. The book mostly focuses on the rationalist, empiricist, Kantian and analytical traditions, but Scruton is fair to the continental thinkers who are usually discussed in less accessible texts. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about philosophy.

[Diogenes the Dog · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tough stuff.

[Steve Greenleaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A guide to philosophy via the 20th-century analytic school of thought--and succinct & accessible!

Along with many others, I initially thought of Roger Scruton as a political thinker, famous (and, to some, infamous) as a conservative. I read one of his books about 10-12 years ago, and read some about him, and found him to be an articulate traditional conservative thinker. Not a right-winger, but a principled conservative in the tradition of Burke, Hegel, and the Tory party. But more recently, I read some of his later works, such as The Face of God (2012 Gifford Lectures), The Soul of the World (2014), and On Human Nature (2017), all written in the decade before his death in 2020. These works revealed an impressive and persuasive philosophical anthropology. I decided to read more of his works, and happened upon Modern Philosophy (1994).

I’m not a philosopher, nor do I have anything more than a single undergraduate course in philosophy to my credit; that was a philosophy of history course. But through my interest in political thought and history, I was introduced to philosophy, which sparked a lifelong interest in the topic. I have some acquaintance with the greats, from Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle to contemporary philosophers. (I’m not very deep outside of political thought, but I’m fairly wide.) But what I don’t have is much experience reading 20th-century Anglophone philosophy, which, to me, seemed too picky and detailed on the microscopic issues of language and logic. Too much bland fare. But, it turns out, Scruton’s Modern Philosophy is just that: a course based on lectures he gave at Birkbeck College, London, on modern topics in philosophy seen primarily through the lens of the tradition in which he was educated. He received his doctorate from Cambridge in 1973. His dissertation was on aesthetics and was supervised by Elizabeth Anscombe. In other words, he was educated in the academic capital of 20th-century Anglophone philosophy. So what was this book going to be about? Scruton sets out his tenets in his introduction:

I also have serious reservations concerning the utility of much that passes for ‘research’ in modern philosophy, while recognising, nevertheless, that the subject has been irreversibly changed as a result of Frege and Wittgenstein, and must be understood from the most modern perspective if it is to be understood at all. It is by no means easy to convey this modern perspective in language accessible to the common reader; but the attempt is, I believe, worthwhile, and not only for the layman’s sake. The technocratic style of modern philosophy – and in particular that emerging from the Anglo-American universities – is in danger of killing all interest in the subject, and of severing its connection to humane education. Only if philosophers can rediscover the simplicity and directness of a Frege, a Russell or a Wittgenstein, so as to express the problems of the head in the language of the heart, will they really know what they are doing in the realm of abstract ideas. Part of my motive in preparing these lectures for publication has therefore been to rediscover the subject, by presenting it in the language that seems most clear and natural to me.

. . . .

Aristotle observed that you should not attempt to impose more exactitude on a study than the matter permits. Likewise, you should not strive to give easy versions of ideas that are inherently difficult. The best that the reader can hope for is that the difficulties are intrinsic to the subject matter, and not generated by the author’s style. When the subject becomes truly technical, however, I have tried to circumvent the difficulty, while giving a sufficient idea of its nature. My hope is that the curious reader will be able, at the end of this book, to find his way through most of the recent literature, and all the classics, of philosophy.

Scruton, Roger. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (Introduction).

I found that Scuton largely succeeds in his endeavor to present these ideas “in the language that seems most clear and natural to me” and to us. This is to say that some of the ideas about language and logic in the wake of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein and their heirs are quite deep, sophisticated, and abstract, but Scruton’s prose and patience make these concepts as accessible to a lay audience like me as I expect is possible. Scruton is a clear, fluent writer in my earlier reading of his books, and he maintains this voice as much as possible in this work. It’s no mean achievement.

The table of contents reveals chapters on about every topic that one would typically consider when identifying the concerns of philosophers throughout history: from “The Nature of Philosophy” and “Skepticism” to “Imagination,” Mathematics,” “Space and Time,” to “The Devil” and “Self and Other.” And everything in between. In addition to the main body of his text, he includes a “Study Guide” for each chapter that cites foundational and subsequent texts pertinent to the topic up to about the date of publication of his book, and provides additional elucidation on the chapter's subject. After completing this book, I felt that someone ought to award me a semester of college credit for all that I learned.

If I were to write more about this book, I would have to do so on a chapter-by-chapter basis, and perhaps I will do so for some chapters. It’s certainly a rich enough deposit of philosophical knowledge and—dare I say?—wisdom, that it can and should be mined repeatedly to extract its full value. I won’t say it made this single work led me to fall in love with the dominant trends in 20th-century Anglophone philosophy*, but it deepened my knowledge and whetted my curiosity, so who knows? Maybe someday I’ll convert, or at least try to identify the nuggets in that tradition that I can value. And if anyone could have sold me on this proposition, it would have to be Scruton.

*My favorite 20th-century Anglophone philosopher is R.G. Collingwood, who’s known (if at all) for his work in the philosophy of history. However, the scope of his work is much wider than just the philosophy of history, and had he not died relatively young (age 53), when still at the height of his powers, he may have changed the course of British and Anglophone philosophy away from its more extreme aridity. See my post: “How the untimely death of RG Collingwood changed the course of philosophy forever” by Ray Monk: An insightful appreciation of Collingwood & a tantalizing “what if” scenario.

[William Schram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Modern Philosophy is an attempt by Roger Scruton to demonstrate the problems that modern philosophers tackle. It isn’t really focused on any one section of philosophy, rather it has 31 different concepts and ideas, and what our modern philosophy makes of each different concept. It is a really long book, but in that sense, it works as an introduction to each concept rather than something that delves deep into a subject matter. There are some schools of thought or thinkers that Scruton lavishes praise on, while others are skipped over entirely.

I thought it was interesting that Scruton talks extensively about Plato, Aristotle, Gottlieb Frege, and Wittgenstein while skipping over people like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. I don’t know why this is. I thought the author wanted to make Philosophy more accessible to the common man. Perhaps he doesn’t see them as true philosophers, but to ignore them entirely is rather odd. I was under the impression that Stoicism was concerned with how to live.

The book does explain this idea and that concept with some clarity, and it is somewhat well written, but as I said, I am horribly biased. The author possesses strong opinions on other works and doesn’t hesitate to call this or that over-rated. Now, I don’t really know all that much about that, but I do know what I enjoy, and this book was not enjoyable. It was quite informative, though.

[Douglas Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scruton’s survey of all the important topics in modern philosophy was written nearly 25 years ago but is as current today as it was in 1994. He did it then with the same clear writing and common sense style that he continues today in everything he writes. The summation on the last two pages in the section he called “The Social Construction of the Self” is brilliant, and IMHO should be read first and last.

[Swapnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Western civilization, having famously witnessed the death of God à la Nietzsche, is now struggling through the afterlife, like the enactment of a bildungsroman at the grandest scale - the end of innocence, the rebellion against the Father, the sundering of traditions, the departure from home - and now the traumatic confrontation of the indifferent world with the recurring doubts, the persistent threat against purpose always lurking around the corner. A pervasive anxiety that the Dark Lord of cosmic hopelessness can never be finally vanquished but only momentarily thwarted through sex, music festivals, job promotions, beer, new year fireworks, the giggle of your two month old.

Several have risen to the challenge of anointing a new authority, now that the throne lies vacant. Descartes convinces himself that all else might fall but the self-aware Subject must be real and subsequently constructs the world bottom up upon the foundation of Reason. Kant admits the Thing-in-itself will forever remain beyond grasp but takes solace in the Appearance being suffused with structure and coherence. Hegel appeals to the evolution of a World-Spirit, of History realizing its successive stages of complexification in the cradle of chosen nations and peoples in a linearized narrative of time and progress. Against the assault of scientific modernity, some seek solace in the irreducible intimacy of poems, others in the inscrutable vastness of the natural world.

Others are not so easily convinced that such a solution that can rediscover a source for the Transcendent is tenable anymore. Heidegger and Sartre are enchanted with precisely the negation that others find so disturbing - isn't the search for some groundedness to Being always going to end up as futile since Nothingness is the only shared objective fact towards which we all are travelling? Foucault perceives Power wherever he gazes. Derrida is adamant that meaning is but a flickering flame ever spreading, consuming word upon word upon word, never determinate, never stable. The Self is an illusion, laws and customs appealing to grand meta-theories are merely relations of dominance, the finality of Truth is a noble but anachronistic pursuit.

It is in this bleak and desolate landscape that Roger Scruton steps in to trace the history of despair and to reaffirm the centrality of human values against the nihilistic allure of moral relativism. And as the final sentence of this hugely rewarding enterprise asserts - even if he is headed towards an inevitable failure, he can least be accorded the dignity to know precisely why.

[mariam hasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

the early chapters of this heavy and soft-spined book offer an introduction to philosophy, painting a picture in broad strokes of its fundamentals and its house-gods. scruton (who i will now call rog) writes with precision, comfortable in the breadth of his knowledge and never imposing as he wields it. in fact, as he moves through ideas he becomes gentler, goes beyond knowledge and offers wisdom, weaving into the book the threads of an answer to philosophy's most pressing questions. the chapter on the devil is striking. his critique of what he calls modernist thought is measured, and even in the thin places where i disagree with it, beautiful. what seems from the outset to be a disinterested survey of a field reveals itself as something much more important and much more lovely.

[Luke Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure I was prepared for the density of this book. In this book, Scruton takes a thematic approach, working his way carefully and cogently through 30 different areas of philosophy.

I wish I had the study guide to go along with this one, and even more, I wish I had some smart friends to discuss these topics over coffee. Right now, they're all kind of jumbled up in my head, and I'm having trouble keeping them from throwing elbows.

Since the chapters are organized by theme, they will provide a helpful reference point as I continue to explore this topic.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend reading this if anyone wants a general understanding of issues in philosophy today. It can be dry and difficult to understand, but Roger is actually comical, just super-smart/nerdy comical. If you find lame chapters boring, skim them. You’ll find more chapters you like right around the corner.

[Rizwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep and thought provoking with plenty of suggestions in the study guide as to how to approach the various areas of research of Modern Philosophy further.

[Sumit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boos is ultimate but not an easy read.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lost some interest and capacity in some of the chapters of analytic philosophy. But overall, this is an excellent primer that also has an argument woven through it.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a book I'd recommend for a beginner. Here are just a few ideas from the book:

Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as a society meaning a society is composed of individuals.

"The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling; a paltry mediocrity. The highest pitch of every passion is to will its own downfall . . . ."--Kierkegaard.

"What are young girls coming to? In my day we would believe six impossible propositions before breakfast."--The White Queen.

Wittgenstein said, "Suppose I were to come across a person talking to himself in a state of exhaustion, saying ' . . . five, one, four, one, three--phew! I've done it!' And suppose that, on being asked what it is he has done, he replies, 'Recited the complete decimal expansion of pi, only backwards.' Would we know what to make of this?

The author concludes that arguments both for and against private property are speculative and metaphorical.

Fichte argued that reason is no more than another name for the self.

Could we have a negative of the ontological argument? One that would either prove or disprove the devil?

Heidegger argued that there is something true about Nothing, namely that it "noths."

Sartre in Being and Nothingness says, "Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of Being, like a worm." He speaks of looking for someone in a cafe and not finding him. His not being there is a reality all of its own.

Hungarian communist Gyorgy Lukacs, the philosopher and literary critic, was one of the few members of Imre Nagy's government who escaped execution after the Hungarian revolution was crushed by the Soviet Union. He is an interesting example of the issue of whether or not morality requires repudiation of morality in social law. His refusal to accept anything at all to do with the bourgeois brought about this quote from him: "Communist ethics makes it the highest duty to accept the necessity to act wickedly. . . . this is the greatest sacrifice revolution asks of us." Of course, revolutionary intellectuals like Lukacs and his followers did not have to face the sacrifice of their countless victims. Communism has been such an immense failure. Yet what system shall we follow? Where is the system that will work successfully?

For Sartre and Heidegger, the Other is the source of inauthenticity. The only crime I can commit is one against myself. My freedom is my essence. This will happen, according to Sartre, when I adopt a religion, a morality, or a social role created by others. The result is "bad faith." But self-made morality is a contradiction. The key, it seems to me, is to immerse yourself in this world, and by so doing, improve upon it.

By emptying language of every vestige of a moral idea, we change the way in which the world is perceived. Words like "truth" and "liberty" lose any meaning.

Communities are not formed by rational individuals; rational individuals are formed by communities. We should not totally reject the Other as recommended by existentialists. Each of us is an Other for others. We must figure out how to show responsibility for that.

[Sam Eccleston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps of all his many books, this is the one in which the scope of Scruton's learning becomes most apparent. In each chapter he surveys a different subject in philosophy, and in every case he does so with penetrating insight; rendering subtle and complex ideas transparent to the mind of the reader. It is remarkable that in many cases he does a better job of this task than the authors of the works he discusses. This is a long book: around 500 words, but there is no surplus material here, the content is substantive throughout. Each idea is summarised with a complete economy of phrase, and yet Scruton's command of the English language is such that no paragraph comes across as a formulaic repetition of those that went before; they are all finely crafted to convey a precise meaning.

The chapters dealing with formal matters of metaphysics and logic are brilliant; Scruton ably summarises the different available positions, doing justice to the strengths and weaknesses of opposing arguments while maintaining a sense of the sheer mystery and paradox inherent in questions of this kind. In the later chapters dealing with aesthetics, politics, and ethics he becomes more polemical, but these chapters are still more brilliant for that fact. His discussion of the Devil in the context of post-modernism, for example, is an original and compelling comparison which rewards further contemplation, and the same can be said of countless other passages of this work. Even in polemical mode, Scruton has a way of summarising subjects that reveal them in a light not thrown by other thinkers; in his short chapter on Political Theory he reveals new facets to thinkers I spent three years studying at university- quite a feat, and the mark of a superior mind.

In short, if you want to experience, as if from inside, the commanding vision of a master of the art of Philosophy, read this book.

[Stan Murai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Scruton has produced a very readable and instructive
overview on modern philosophy. He takes a topical approach,
covering areas as varied as logic, ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics, among others. His own philosophical bent is toward the Anglo-American, analytical schools, but he does manage to cover the thoughts of many different philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein, even Hegel and Heidegger. Occasionally, his prejudices show in what could be taken as disparaging snide remarks, especially in a study guide section in the back of the book. His basically conservative outlook is not too obvious until maybe the last two or three chapters of the book which might expose him as a christian apologist of sorts. But I was never offended by his writing, even though my philosophical predilections are totally opposed to his. I recommend his book as a rewarding intellectual experience, which can introduce readers to a challenging, difficult subject.

[John Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tremendous overview of philosophy from Descartes forward, particularly on Wittgenstein and Kant. Probably more than a mere introduction for most people on the philosophers after the classical period. Although it can pretty dense in parts, Scruton does a really good job of making difficult material -- well, concepts, anyway -- accessible, to the point where he doesn't delve into some philosophers/philosophies enough, or dismisses important concepts outright. Still, for a good overview of today's thinking and a chance to discover the source material, this is a good (OK, very good) place to start.

[Sanjuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book with a friend. We would meet for coffee and discuss, and for the both of us, this was our introduction into modern philosophy. At the time, there was no doubt it was a bit too dense, too rich for us, and yet we did everything we could to follow it and look into it's claims and arguments further.

I've since grown to love philosophy, and I see this book as my entry point. It's still a bit dense, and I wouldn't say it's nearly as accessible as I've heard it claimed to be, but it covers a massive amount of indispensable material on the subject, and Scruton's arguments are well reasoned and provide for great discussion with others. A fantastic book.

[Brooks Yeager · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough and comprehensive survey of modern philosophy. Sounds dry, and it starts that way. But before long, you find yourself considering the basis of free choice and the question of whether the meaning of life is pre-ordained or self-created. All with sufficient technical rigor to convince even the practitioners that they might have something to learn.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seem to be starting new books much faster than I finish ones I've been reading. 'Tis a disease. The house is full of books with bookmarks halfway through. Anyhoo, I have bookmarks in at least four of Scruton's books and I like him so much I might just finish one.

[Israel]

An essential book for referencing both general and specific topics discussed in philosophy, very useful.

[Zach Waldis · Rating 5 out of 5]

He must be an analytic philospher, as he writes very well! It's an entertaining read as well.

[Jonathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is a hack job.