Philosophical Classics: The Thinking Person's Guide to Great Philosophical Books

by James M. Russell (Editor)

Over the centuries, philosophers, novelists, psychologists, and social critics have grappled with complex and often contradictory questions. What is the meaning of life, if it has one? How should we live our lives? What do we really know? Why do we think things are knowable? Are the words we use a world unto themselves, or do they signify something in the “real world”—whatever that is? Is this the best of all possible worlds or must it be remade, and how? Do alternative universes exist?Philosophical Classics is an incomparable guide to significant works of philosophical thought. Rather than focus exclusively on the most serious, difficult works, it accepts that enlightenment can be found in many places and many guises, some of them quite unexpected. So, in addition to a whirlwind tour of classics by philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche, it covers great philosophical novels and poems, as well as books in other disciplines that have generated philosophical ideas, such as psychoanalysis, politics, and more popular genres of writing with a philosophical bent.Each entry provides a detailed but accessible summary of a given book and its key points, often referring back to earlier philosophical writings, and features a capsule overview “Speed Read” as a bonus. Although written in a brisk, breezy style, Philosophical Classics conveys the essence of each work under discussion.From Winnie the Pooh to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ayn Rand to Carl Jung, and Jacques Derrida to Philip K. Dick, this book condenses twenty-five centuries of thought from five continents into a remarkable and indispensable guide.

Genres: Philosophy

244 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

James M. Russell has a philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge, a post-graduate qualification in critical theory, and has taught at the Open University in the UK. He currently works as a freelance writer, designer and editor. He is the author of A Brief Guide to Philosophical Classics, A Brief Guide to Spiritual Classics and A Traveller's Guide to Infinity. He lives in north London with his wife, daughter and two cats.

Reviews

[Venky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ambrose Bierce once laconically remarked "All are lunatics. But he who can analyse his delusions is called a philosopher. James M.Rusell in his work takes on the unenviable task of penetrating the veil of delusion surrounding his reader. In his hope of making his reader a more credible and evolved lunatic, the author embarks on a whirlwind analysis of 67 (yes you read that right!) major philosophical classics bearing the imprimatur of an equal number of handpicked philosophers. The selection criteria is based on factors such as popularity, relevance, test of time etc.

From Metaphysics to Meta narratives, from existentialism to situationism (among other 'isms'), 'A Brief Guide...' is a heady cocktail of the opaque and the obdurate; the fundamental and the fanatical. James M.Russell's gallery of greats both delight as well as disappoint. While the narration of the distillation of thought processes, writing styles ranging from the condescending (Bertrand Russell and Wilhelm Freiderich Nietzsche) to the caring (Peter Singer and Ted Honderich) provides an indispensable guide to the inner motives of the authors, the dense and oblique descriptions of the works of Jacques Derrida, the incomplete theorems of Kurt Godel and the concept of Wilhelm Freiderich Hegel's "The Other" bring the reader to the very brink of catatonic insanity!

A refreshing feature of this collection is the inclusion under the broad sweep of philosophy 'non-mainstream' books such as 'The Prince' by Antoine Saint-de Exupery and 'Moominpappa At Sea' by Tove Jansson. Whoever thought that childrens' books would be at a far remove from the rigours of philosophy obviously thought wrong!

A glaring omission from the phalanx of philosophers is the brilliant Karl Popper. Popper's magnum opus, "The Open Society" not only represents a society society as standing on a historical continuum reaching from the organic, tribal or closed society, but also has had the effect of spawning a new revolutionary and revealing school of philosophical thought. Another notable exclusion is the French philosopher Henri Bergson.

The most captivating feature of the book is a 'Speed Read' box at the end of each Chapter providing an excerpt/extract from the work discussed in the concerned chapter.

A Brief Guide to Philosophical Classics - still leaves the reader a delusional lunatic struggling to evolve!

[Kerem · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of brief notes on the history's most important philoshophers. It's obviously quiet short, but it would give you a quick journey through it.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ick.

[Jeff Kelleher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Capsule summations of 66 philosophers, in 244 pages. Each is further capsulized into often-jocular "speed reads" of a hundred words or so.

There is a certain type of reader who is drawn to primers on philosophy. We empiricist-logicians, for example, tend to get lost in the deep abstractions that philosophical thought often demands. We can comprehend utilitarians like J. S. Mill, objectivists like Ayn Rand, and pragmatists like William James. But Kant and Kierkegaard baffle us. Don't even mention Jacques Derrida. Yet these are eminent thinkers and we are not, so the failing must be in our own meager faculties, right?

So we keep going back to digests such as Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy" and Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy", always hoping that these popularizers will clear it up for us. This work by James M. Russell raised similar hope. Unfortunately, the hope is disappointed.

First, the selection of works is downright quirky. Marx's "Capital" is included but not Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"; Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" but not William James's "Pragmatism".

The bigger problem is that Russell is so saturated with the lingo of his profession that he cannot rise above it and write clear English for us denser folks. Here is a sample, drawn from his explanation of Michel Foucault:

"Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject, Foucault concentrates on analyzing the discursive and practical conditions of the existence for truth and meaning. This does not mean that Foucault denounces truth and meaning, but just that truth and meaning depend on the historical discursive and practical means of truth and meaning production."

Don't waste your time