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Loading... A History of Western Philosophyby Bertrand Russell
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Important and inspiring. I actually listened to the audio book, which took a week. And to my surprise, at the end of each day I found myself reluctant to turn it off. In gulping it down so quickly I think I was able to see big picture more clearly than if i had read it slowly and focused the individual philosophies. Russel is eloquent, easy to understand and engaging. One leaves this book inspired with a deep desire for more, which is clearly the author's intent. ( )An encyclopedic account of the main thinkers of the Western tradition from a brilliant thinker. I started this book after having it on my shelves since college, although I vaguely remember a spasm of self improvement in which I had read the first chapter. I spent many airplane hours with a copy of it on the Kindle, and found that that eased the process of highlighting and saving favorite passages, of which there were many. Russell’s style is clear, opinionated, acerbic, and he has a tremendous erudition. Starting with the ancient Greeks, stopping with William James and John Dewey, philosophers that Russell knew, he tries to put the thoughts of the philosophers in the context of their times. He obviously has prejudices against Communism, and is neutral to hostile to religion, but he covers the great church fathers of early medieval times and Thomas Aquinas with care. This book was prepared from public lectures delivered at the Barne’s foundation in 1943, and probably is too breezy to satisfy the professional philosopher. It is necessarily dated, but Russell’s voice remains clear and compelling. If one only read one book on western philosophy, this should be the one. A true classic. Philosophy no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:55 -0400)
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