Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre

by Jonathan Rée, Thomas Jones (Narrator)

In Becoming a Philosopher Jonathan Rée describes the extraordinary lives of some of most influential thinkers of the past four hundred years and the radical and sometimes bizarre ideas that emerged from them. In so doing he challenges the notion of philosophy as a set of fixed ideas to be arranged and catalogued like botanical specimens. Rather, the philosophical life is revealed, as Kierkegaard has described, as one of relentless struggle, a never-ending 'dance in the service of thought' which might, with luck, result in a single fresh idea.





This collection of ten biographical pieces, originally published as book reviews in the London Review of Books, begins with Spinoza, the excommunicated lens grinder who sought as little attention as possible for his anonymously published work; and ends with Sartre, the most public of public intellectuals whose funeral was marked by thousands on the streets of Paris. In between we find Newton working tirelessly to establish a chronology of the ancient world; Hegel gazing on Napoleon as he marches through Jena in 1806; and Wittgenstein drawing up plans for a new kind of propeller before writing his landmark Tractatus in the trenches of the First World War. Alongside them we also meet Leibniz, Hume, Lessing, Kierkegaard and Collingwood.





This audiobook also features an introductory conversation between Jonathan Rée and Thomas Jones, an editor at the LRB and presenter of the LRB Podcast.





Subjects Spinoza, Newton, Leibniz, Hume, Lessing, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Collingwood, Sartre.





These pieces have been amended in places from the original for the purposes of recording.

Audible Audio

Published July 29, 2025

About the author

Jonathan Rée is a freelance philosopher who used to teach at Middlesex University in London, but gave up lecturing in order to "have more time to think," and was for many years associated with the magazine Radical Philosophy. His work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Nosemonkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent companion to Rée's superb Witcraft, his history of how philosophical ideas made their way into English (often with a considerable delay). The chapters here on Kierkegaard and Sartre neatly fill some gaps in that earlier book's narrative, as it (mistakenly and frustratingly, in my view) ended the story largely with Wittgenstein. (Yes, Kierkegaard was earlier, but didn't get translated into English until the early-mid 20th century.)

The introductory interview was also a nice touch, with Rée's dislike of histories of philosophy - and especially of Bertrand Russell's, and of Russell more broadly - an entertaining educated rant that helped shift my perspective on what has become one of my favourite genres of book over the last few years. I knew it's not just me who sometimes, when reading the original works rather than someone else's summary of them, struggles to understand and needs to re-read paragraphs repeatedly - but it was very reassuring to hear that the same is true for Rée.

Philosophy is hard, basically. Intellectual biographies and histories of philosophy may make it more accessible - but the point is philosophy is all about the act of thinking, not just understanding ideas.

This feels like a particularly useful insight in the age of GenAI, when it's easier than ever to find a summary of an idea, and to have someone (albeit a bot) explain a complex concept in simple terms. This may be a shortcut to understanding, but sometimes this can mean your understanding is only superficial - by reaching your knowledge via an intermediary, rather than working at it yourself, you're likely to be missing nuances and details, as well as to be picking up received wisdom and interpretative assumptions from other people, rather than determining your own understanding.

Taking shortcuts via other people's interpretations isn't always a bad thing, by any means - but it's worth being aware of what you may be missing by doing so. I'm probably never going to read Heidegger's Being and Time or Sartre's Being and Nothing in English, let alone in the original German and French. I've always known I'm going to be missing something as a result - the summaries of these books that I *have* read have convinced me there are aspects of both I'd find fascinating. But Rée's emphasis on taking the time to digest philosophical works, to ruminate on them, to make the effort to truly understand them has given me pause.

Much to think about here, in other words - not bad for what is at its core a collection of book reviews.