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Confessions of a Philosopher:: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosphy from Plato to Popper

1998Bryan Magee

5/5

The plain fact is that none of our direct experience can be adequately put into words.When I discovered episodes of Bryan Magee's program on YouTube, I felt like I hit a gold mine. I couldn't believe that someone had made a television show like this, wherein an eminent living philosopher gave a lengthy and detailed explanation of a great dead philosopher's ideas. The more I watched, however, the more I came to appreciate Magee rather than his guests. His ability to give lucid, brief, and insightful explanations of the subject matter, while skilfully guiding the discussion to the most pertinent points, was really impressive. So when I finished watching every episode I could find, I went ahead and bought one of his books.Confessions of a Philosopher attracted me in particular because of its concept: to introduce the reader to philosophy through the medium of autobiography. This appealed to me because, before I had even heard of this book, I often wondered why philosophy wasn't more often written in an autobiographical style.This would help with philosophy's image problem, at least. So often I encounter bafflement that philosophers can be so passionately interested in their questions—questions that to many people seem pointless and inconsequential. I have trouble understanding this bafflement, since for me philosophical questions are some of the most intellectually puzzling and emotionally gripping questions I know, and moreover relate directly to my own experience. A philosophical autobiography struck me as the perfect solution to this perceived triviality, so I was excited to see Magee's version.Unfortunately, I think this book is far weaker than it could have been. This does not mean that I think it's bad or not worth reading; indeed it is immensely readable and remarkably interesting. Magee is a skilled and entertaining writer—his prose always lucid and clear, if sometimes wordy and repetitive. And the reader of this book, especially someone new to philosophy, will emerge from the end of it much more knowledgeable. Indeed, even though I've read a decent amount of philosophy myself, I learned a good deal, especially about Schopenhauer and Popper. So this book has much to commend it. But along with its good points were many aspects I found frustrating and off-putting. This is due, ultimately, I think, to its attempt to do too many things at once.The book starts off strong with a series of short vignettes, illustrating how philosophical problems appeared in Magee's life ever since he was a child. He wondered about how his conscious experience related to the rest of reality, why his awareness was tied inextricably to his body, and whether time and space were infinite or came to an end eventually. These anecdotes were, for me, perhaps the best part of the book, since here Magee illustrates how abstract problems can arise in everyday experience and also depicts some of the existential dread that often comes along with these questions.From there, Magee moves on to his philosophical training at Oxford, and that's where the trouble starts. When he began studying, logical positivism was the dominant paradigm, although it was soon to be replaced by linguistic analysis. Though they differ in many respects, these two approaches share the idea that most philosophical problems, as traditionally conceived, aren’t real problems at all. The only reason people think they are real problems is because of inadequate logical analysis of the concepts, terms and propositions, or a lack of subtlety in appreciating the finer points of linguistic usage. Thus analysis of one kind or another could dissolve the problem simply by clarifying it.As Magee repeatedly makes clear, he found these approaches both intellectually unsound and personally unsatisfying. But it soon becomes apparent that, because he had been forced to study this philosophy for so long, his antipathy goes deeper than that. He is resentful and bitter that the philosophy is so popular. He finds it to be absolutely pointless, indeed not philosophy at all, and he thinks it’s a bankrupt tradition practiced by brilliant but uncurious and unoriginal dunderheads.Personally I think his verdict on these paradigms is overly harsh, but that’s not the real problem. The issue is that Magee returns insistently and continually to attacking this tradition, from the beginning of the book all the way to the end, usually in such a vehement and venemous tone that I couldn’t help but be put off. Indeed, his attitude towards analytical philosophy reminded me most strongly of Richard Dawkins’s attitude towards religion. In both cases, the shrillness of tone is what bothers me, not the content of what is said. What’s more, the repeated intellectual attacks turn this book from a philosophical memoire to a polemic or a philippic, which really detracts from the overall impression, I think.There is also a remarkable vein of hypocrisy that runs through these pages, which I think is psychologically interesting and yet weakens his main points. For instance, he denounces secondary literature in philosophy; and yet Magee has spent his life producing secondary literature. He criticizes G.E. Moore for wishing to find philosophical justifications for what he believed as a child; and yet over and over Magee points to his childhood experience as shaping the kinds of questions and answers he’s seeking in philosophy. Once again: Magee reproaches analytic philosophers for seeking to have their preexisting beliefs clarified and confirmed, instead of attempting to broaden their viewpoint; but Magee makes it clear that he has felt quasi-Kantian longings his whole life and appreciates Kant for clarifying and justifying this worldview. The list goes on.(The reason I find this psychologically interesting is because it shows that being intelligent and well-educated does not make you self-aware.)This hypocrisy reinforces another notable quality: his sense of superiority. Whether in politics, philosophy, or life generally, Magee thinks most people just don’t get it. Other people are either intellectually uncurious or spineless, whereas Magee thinks for himself and harbors no illusions. Other people are unreflective or dogmatic, whereas Magee is thoughtful and open-minded. Other people are partisan and short-sighted, whereas Magee is liberal, tolerant, and always takes the long view. At least, this is what he’d have you believe. Magee’s default attitude is that, through a combination of his temperament, personality, education, and life experience, he can see the truth when other people simply can’t or don’t want to.The main emotional drive that Magee brings to this book comes from his midlife crisis. At around the age of thirty, Magee realized that he was inevitably going to die, and his next years were consumed with this overwhelming and, for him, intolerable realization. It soon becomes clear that this anguish over his own mortality was not a discrete event in his life, but characterizes his whole psychological makeup. Indeed, finding some way out of this anxiety is what motivates his interest in philosophy.Although I have trouble sympathizing with this existential terror, the pages detailing his state of mind are undeniably gripping. This brings me to the next tension running through this book. In addition to being both an intellectual autobiography and a polemic against contemporary philosophy (already a stretch), this book also has an educational aim. As a result, the sections detailing his mental agony alternate with sections explaining the lives and ideas of the great philosophers. The juxtaposition is often jarring. Just when you are getting absorbed into his emotional state, he is suddenly giving an overview of Chomsky or Popper; and just when you become interested in Popper, it’s back to Magee’s torment. But for me the most frustrating aspect of this book was Magee’s insistence that living with crippling existential angst is the only rational, honest, and brave way to live. I disagree with this view, for many reasons. First, the characteristics of this angst often struck me as being due to unfulfilled religious cravings. He is terrified of dying, and longs to know whether some kind of afterlife exists. The possibility that this life is all we have, and that it is the result of mere chance and not of cosmic significance, seems intolerable to Magee. Indeed, he says that if that were the case, all life would be ultimately meaningless and pointless, and everything we consider important just a pathetic attempt at self-delusion.I have trouble even wrapping my mind around this view, because it seems to rest on an assumption like this: “Everything apparently meaningful must be eternal to be really meaningful.” No matter how much I think about it, I can’t see the logic behind this assumption. It seems to me that meaning can only exist in experience; and since experience can only take place in time, I don’t know what timeless, eternal meaningfulness could be. Besides, if something is meaningful to me now, in this moment, I don’t see how my inevitable death in the future can invalidate this experience of meaning in the present. It is telling no discussion of this kind takes place in the book.The longer and deeper that Magee delved into his existential crisis, the more frustrated I got. In fact, “frustration” is the key word for this book, both for Magee’s outlook and my response. Magee is frustrated with his contemporaries, with himself, and with his inability to know the answers to certain metaphysical questions. And I was frustrated with his frustration. To me it seemed obvious that he was attempting to know the unknowable, and that this urge was motivated by an emotional response to an unwarranted assumption. What most frustrated me was that a lifetime of studying philosophy had not brought to him any humility or tranquility. Magee remains frustrated, arrogant, and anxious to the end—indeed, proudly so. Magee would have you believe that anxiety and frustration are the only truly rational responses to life. He insists that philosophy isn’t about analysis or activism, but rather an attempt to answer pressing metaphysical questions. These questions he regards as so crucial that everything else is of trifling importance. For my part, I can’t see the logic or the wisdom in this view. Philosophy, if it is worth the name, should not only deal with certain traditional problems—problems of metaphysics, epistemology, morality, and the rest—but should lead to an acceptance of yourself, your limitations, and the world around you. In other words, the love of wisdom should make you more wise. If the study of philosophy leads to a crippling obsession with metaphysical mysteries, I don’t think it's worth much. Thus by introducing philosophy through the prism of his own psychology, Magee risks giving a bleak impression of the subject. The reason I have been dwelling on the shortcomings of this book at such length is because I think it could have been really great if it were more focused, less polemical, and less driven by frustration and anxiety. Even as it stands, however, it is an absorbing and rewarding read. Magee’s mind is rich and restless, and this book is brimming over with thoughts, observations, anxieties, opinions, and theories. Not only is he bright and supremely well-educated, but he has been personally involved with many of the most eminent philosophers of the twentieth century. The chapters on his meetings with Popper and Russell alone would have been worth the value of the book. And despite my disagreements and exasperations, I think I gained a lot. Often the most frustrating books can be the most rewarding.
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