The Great Philosophers: From Socrates to Turing

The strength of this book lies equally in its brevity and its authorship. Only a truly informed lover of Russell such as Monk could achieve so concise and elucidatory a review. What's more, by situating Russell's life's work in his early childhood traumas, one gleans so much more than just a clear and accessible panoramic overview of the evolution in his thinking, itself an incredible achievement for subject matter so heavy, but one also appreciates the personal mission in Russell's life's work to prove the existence of absolute truth. In this way, [spoiler alert] when one reaches the end of these 58 printed pages, one is able thus to interpret its ending not as a failure of mission but as transcendence. So Russell renounces the search show more for absolute truth, and in this way, finally is able to accept, integrate and overcome the great loss and uncertainty of his early life. At a spiritual level we come to understand his superficial failure as his most meaningful success. This is a movingly universal and inspirational tale with meaning beyond the history of western philosophical thought. And how charming to by the way come to understand the genealogy of the language of my high school mathematics teachers. This story of a man who largely did his thinking alone and can be said to have achieved nothing in his life, can also so clearly be understood to have created the language and frameworks from which entire field(s) of thinking would arise within a generation. A fantastic introduction to Russell - and Wittgenstein - and very well told. Bravo! show less

I started to read this because I wanted to get a nice spring reading of popularized philosophy. I had heard good things about this series. I got through the first three articles (Socrates, Plato and Descartes), and stopped. Those articles were meandering, and did not seem to have good points. They also were not at all well popularized.

The Great Philosophers brings together in one volume and in chronological order the best from a successful series:-

Anthony Gottlieb on Socrates

Bernard Williams on Plato

John Cottingham on Descartes

Roger Scruton on Spinoza

David Berman on Berkeley

Anthony Quinton on Hume

Terry Eagleton on Marx

Ray Monk on Russell

Jonathan Ree on Heidegger

Peter Hacker on Wittgenst

Frederic Raphael on Popper

Andrew Hodges on Turing