Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper by Bryan Magee

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

• 
  Roy Lotz

  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.
• 
  Richard

  A pity about the silly title - it's one of the most resolutely and deliberately un-confessional books you can imagine - but this is a brilliant introduction to philosophy that far surpasses any of the thousands of books ever published by academic philosophers under the title "An Introduction to Philosophy." What a terrible shame that this book was (as I understand it) pulped in the US because of a few innocuous paragraphs about Russell's sidekick Ralph Shoenman. "Confessions" deserved a wide audience, and is the ideal book to give anyone really serious about getting into the subject. (If they think it's too long, hard, or detailed, well then they shouldn't be getting into the subject. Nobody is ever going to make taking Kant and Schopenhauer seriously easier than this!)
• 
  Tanja Berg

  I have no difficulty understanding why I haven't read this in the 16-17 years this volume has graced my shelves. It's much harder to understand why I bought it in the first place. I must have bought it on a whim, soon after having read "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder. I also had to study philosophy of sorts ("theory of knowledge") in highschool, so maybe I was inspired. This was no good, despite a fairly promising start.
  
  The book is about Bryang Magee's discovery of philosophy and his career in the field. Most of the time it is mind numbingly boring, but occasionally it is informative. The biggest problem I had was with what how arrogant the author is as he describes himself in this book. No one is as intelligent or understands philosophy as well as he does. *eyeroll* I bothered until about page 400, when he came with the remark that teaching didn't give him anything because none of his students could bring any new questions to the scene. Poor Mr. Magee, too clever for this world by far.
  
  NOT RECOMMENDED.
• 
  Rachel

  Although he consistently rubbed me the wrong way with his unabashed love of the Canon and brushes with pretentiousness, his descriptions of his own psychological turmoil and struggle to find meaning in life saved my shit. Who knew I could count an Oxford/Yale-educated, 70-year-old British Wagner-fetishist among my brethren? This is a great book for anyone who knows nothing about Western philosophy but wants to and/or for anyone who "has philosophical problems" (this sounds much more important than "is mentally unstable," doesn't it?). This guy is obsessed with clarity and obviously has a true mastery of his subject. He did some BBC series on philosophy in the '70s which I am dying to get my hands on! His actually made me want to read Plato and Schopenhauer!
• 
  Jon Stout

  I heard of Magee’s book described as “the idea of bibliotherapy – curing oneself through reading the entire corpus of philosophy.” As someone who has always felt the lure of philosophical questions, I was fascinated to read about how a particular public figure had integrated philosophy into his personal biography. Bryan Magee studied philosophy at Oxford, but made a career as a broadcast journalist, as a member of the British parliament, and as an author, only incidentally returning to academic stints. In his “Confessions” he mixes his fascination with philosophical questions in with chapters on his personal love of music and the theater, his life crises, his professional forays in various areas, and his increasingly prominent role as a broadcast popularizer of philosophy.
  
  Magee starts off by recounting his childhood interest in philosophical issues such as: Does time have a beginning, and if so, how did it begin? Is the universe infinite, or does it have boundaries? When he went on to study philosophy at Oxford, he was disappointed to find that the teaching of philosophy did not involve wrestling with philosophical questions, but rather the analysis and criticism of what philosophers had written. At Oxford the prevailing method was Linguistic Analysis, which while it was a valuable and powerful technique for examining the language of philosophical questions, it rarely attempted to answer the questions.
  
  At Oxford, the “major” in which people most often studied philosophy was PPE (philosophy-politics-economics). The standard teaching of the history of philosophy consisted in teaching Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, in other words mostly the British Empiricists who were the antecedents of the Linguistic Analysts. Not even Plato and Aristotle were basic. Magee bemoans a state of affairs in which people became adept at the specialized skill of analyzing language, but did not really come to terms with the problems. I remember that in the 1960’s I read about and was in awe of the PPE programs at Oxford and at Cambridge. It was helpful, after many years, to be disabused of my youthful infatuation.
  
  Magee touches on many topics, some of more interest to me than others. He seems to have known all contemporary British philosophers, starting with those at Oxford. He became personal friends with Bertrand Russell and with Karl Popper, and reveals a lot in his personal interactions with them. Bertrand Russell could speak about arguments he had had with Lenin. He mentions that at the end of his life, Russell was cut off from his personal friends by Ralph Schoenman, a personal assistant who ended up managing Russell’s life in old age. Magee plausibly speculates that Schoenman was foisted on Russell by the CIA, because Russell was the world’s foremost spokesman for nuclear disarmament. If this is true, it is sad and scary.
  
  Magee talks at length about the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Popper, and indeed has written important books on both. He sees both as having built on Kant, who Magee considers the greatest philosopher since Plato and Aristotle. In particular Magee discusses the Kantian concept of the thing-in-itself. If all we can know is our experience of things, what is beyond our experience (the thing-in-itself) cannot be known. This raises interesting questions, such as: Are we talking about what we don’t experience at the present moment, but might be able to experience in the future? Or are we talking about what cannot possibly be experienced, and if so, how do we know where the boundary is? Toward the end of the book, Magee speculates in the style of Schopenhauer, that the thing-in-itself might be the Will (in a highly specialized sense), that is what drives action both in ourselves and in the world. This might be something like the spark of humanity which we have in common even though we are individual human beings. But all of this must remain speculation, because the thing-in-itself is by definition unknowable. Nevertheless, Magee relates these questions to his own personal life, to his fear of death, and to his own search for enduring meaning.
  
  One of Magee’s major accomplishments has been the production of two television series of discussions about philosophy, Men of Ideas and The Great Philosophers. These were widely popular in England and in other countries, but were not broadcast in the U.S. because TV execs thought they would not go over well here. I have started watching them on YouTube, and I think they are magnificent. They are also published in book form, but I think Magee’s interactions with prominent scholars is well worth witnessing directly. Magee has made a life in philosophy, but not as a professor, and knows how to pose a philosophical question so that it is personal and important.
• 
  Ryan Boissonneault

  Born in 1930, Bryan Magee wrote Confessions of a Philosopher at age 67, after a lifetime spent wrestling with philosophical problems. In fact, his interest in philosophy began between the ages of five and nine when he began questioning the nature of consciousness and time. These questions, along with similar ones, would consume the rest of his educational and professional life.
  
  And so, this book, part survey of western philosophy and part memoir, is the result of six decades of thinking deeply about philosophy on a very personal level. As such, the depth of content in this book is unparalleled, and I can easily say that it’s among the top five best books I’ve ever read.
  
  Unlike most histories of philosophy, it does not start with Greek philosophy and proceed onward in chronological order. It presents philosophy as it was encountered by Magee, and so you not only learn about western philosophy but you learn about Magee’s own intellectual development as he encountered and grappled with each philosopher. This makes for a unique and interesting account of the subject that is truly one of a kind.
  
  The account is also unique in that Magee developed personal relationships with two of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper. This gives his account a personal touch absent in most other books.
  
  Finally, Magee changed my thinking completely about the legitimacy of a whole approach to philosophy, namely that of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. He explains, in terms I can’t see how anyone could disagree with, how linguistic analysis confuses a tool for doing philosophy with the purpose of philosophy.
  
  For example, when Socrates was asking questions about justice and virtue, he wasn’t asking for definitions, he was inquiring into the nature of human behavior, character, and morality. Similarly, the purpose of any branch of philosophy, even metaphysics, is to ask and answer questions about the world, and an analysis of language misses the point of the entire exercise.
  
  In the same way that linguistic philosophers tried to reduce philosophy to linguistics, logical positivists tried to reduce philosophy to science. But in the process it was discovered that their own principle of verificationism could not itself be verified and was found to be metaphysical itself.
  
  Philosophy has never fully escaped from these assaults, but Magee presents his case and his hope that the next great philosopher will renew the original purpose of philosophy, which is to explain the world rather than to analyze language or to remain in complete subservience to science.
  
• 
  Ryan Flynn

  This is in my Top 3 favorite books of all time.
  
  I'd put something by Nassim Taleb on that list (he recommended this one). Yuval Harari's Sapiens and Bryan Magee.
  
  It is (as the sub-title says) a tour through Western Philosophy but it is also deeply personal and perhaps most importantly, readable.
  
  I don't know of another book that will teach you as much about the philosophical underpinnings of Wesstern society and which will at the same time be as thoroughly enjoyable a read.
• 
  Mridul Singhai

  Two chapters into the book, I do not have anything but pity for the author who never fails to be pompous about his 'elite' education and believes that self-education can not even be half as fulfilling as traditional education.
• 
  Seppe

  Ik kwam tot dit werk door de plechtigheid van Bryan Magees dood (1930-2019) te zien. Dit was een interessante viering te zien op de volgende link.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p96xJ... .
  Hierbij werd het leven van de overleden filosoof gevierd en zijn visie op de liefde en de muziek, de zaken die hem het nauwst aan het hart waren doorheen zijn leven. Zo publiceerde hij over Wagner, en werd zijn vergankelijkheid met schoonheid gevierd en niet betreurd, diverse sprekers vertellen hun kennismaking met deze filosoof.
  
  Een klassiek literaire vorm van schrijven is de bekentenis, een vorm die vaak gebruikt is van Augustinus, tot Rousseau en Goethe. In deze autobiografische schetsen wordt het innerlijke leven van de schrijver blootgelegd, diens twijfels, zekerheden en weerstanden worden op papier bekend voor diegenen die zich erin kunnen herkennen . Bryan Magee is erudiet, spitsvondig in de Britse traditie van het woord, schrijft vlot en ziet humor om elke hoekslag van zijn levensverhaal.
  
  Magee schrijft zich in deze traditie van deze bekentenissen, hij ontsluiert zijn filosofische zoektocht vanaf zijn vroegste herinneringen als kind, waarbij hij zich afvraagt hoe het komt dat hij zijn ledematen kan bewegen, of waarom "God" een controversieel en ambigu concept is. Van zijn vroegste herinneringen gaat hij over tot de filosofische zoektocht die hij had tot bijna zijn 70ste verjaardag, en welke figuren en teksten hem hierbij hebben geholpen.
  
  Magee verkent zijn filosofische zoektocht, van het bestuderen van de Oxford filosofen Wittgenstein en Russell, tot zijn ontmoeting met Popper, die steeds terugkomt, tot bij Kant en Schopenhauer, de grote figuren die zijn helden blijven doorheen zijn narratief. Magee heeft uitvoerig over Schopenhauer gepubliceerd in zijn leven, en betreurt de onderwaardering van deze filosoof in de angelsaksische wereld, en dit is volgens mij zeer terecht.
  
  "Word ik beroepsfilosoof of niet?" Vraagt Magee zich af na zijn studententijd. Hij kiest ervoor om niet de academische wereld in te gaan maar daarentegen aan politiek en televisie te doen. Dit deed hij ten einde het vermogen te hebben om aangenaam te leven en naar theater en cultuur te kunnen gaan, maar ook de creatieve vrijheid te hebben om zelf te beslissen waarover hij publiceerde, hij schreef namelijk aan de lopende band boeken, niet beperkt door een doctoraatbursaal of een universiteitspost. Ik vond dit een openhartige en interessante bemerking over de vraag naar leven van of voor de filosofie.
  
  Magee had een interessant leven en hij leerde vele mensen kennen. Zo waren er met Bertrand Russell en Karl Popper enkele ontmoetingen die hij gezapig en uitgebreid beschrijft. Voor zijn televisiereek voor BBC leerde hij ook het summum van het filosofielandschap in de jaren 1960-1980 kennen, in deze serie "The Great Philosophers" liet hij telkens een klassefilosoof spreken over historische figuren, sommigen nog heel gekend vandaag de dag zoals Peter Singer, Anthony Kenny of Martha Nussbaum. Uitgebreid komen deze ontmoetingen aan bod en wat hij van deze figuren heeft geleerd doorheen de televisiereeks. (Deze is ook op youtube te vinden)
  
  Om af te sluiten is dit een uitstekende memoire over een succesvol filosoof, de titel is dan wel wat misleidend door de hoge ambities. Het gaat over een authentiek persoon die zijn twijfels blootlegt en dit doet om anderen te kunnen helpen in hun eigen zoektocht naar het goede leven.
• 
  bh

  As an informal introduction to philosophy, this was a revelation. Magee provides detail discussion of major philosophical problems through the medium of autobiography, and how each personally affected his life. Thankfully, he uses this primarily as a framework, devoting most of the words to the philosophy itself, breathing life into a subject that is often thought of as stuffy and academic. This style works wonders, but unfortunately Magee becomes more and more undisciplined as the book goes on, shifting the focus towards himself. I guess, this being an autobiography, he is entitled to do that, but it really takes away from the impact of the ideas. I would say that a good 100+ pages (1/6 of my edition) could be cut entirely, in which Magee talks about his mid-life crisis, love of music, novel writing, television programs, and so on without so much of the direct reference to philosophical ideas. Nevertheless, this book has succeeded in reviving my dormant interest in the subject, and comes highly recommended for anyone even slightly curious about the mysteries of life.
• 
  Bon Tom

  This book was my literary bread and butter during... certain years and carried me over that... wasteland. I lost count of how many times I went through it, I bookmarked the crap out of it, it's all in marks, bookmarks and bookmarks of bookmarks. It's highlighted, underscored, checkmarked, frames are drawn, and comments - my momentary petit mals, that seemed like blissful insights, relevant at the time - put in. I revel in the memory of smell of shitty paper it was printed on. It's the most passionate account of philosophy I've come across to this day. And in a sense, it's the passionate account of author's life. Thank you mr. Magee.
• 
  Asim Bakhshi

  Proved to be an absolute page-turner almost like a paperback thriller taking away your sleep. Magee simply skips the usual first class philosophical claptrap and takes you right into the heart of philosopher. His ability to see through the texts and patience to spend time with them in order to truly reach under their skin is amazing. The expositions of Kant, Schopenhauer and Popper are truly exceptional and the character sketches of Russell and Popper are a bonus.
• 
  Suhail Khan

  Bryan Magee himself sums up on what it feels to read a book on philosophy - 'reading an original is an experience of a different order altogether from reading someone else's account of it, no matter how good. There seems to be something fundamentally interactive about the nature of philosophy. Questioning, dialogue, discussion, debate, argument are essential to the nature of philosophy'. This book can do a wonderful job in making one interested in philosophy and ask questions and seek answers related to one's own life.
• 
  Cindy

  This book will be of great comfort to people who are averse to the "just pick a side and defend your position to the death" kind of mentality. If you're a truth seeker, if you feel oppressed by many of today's ways of thinking and prefer your arguments to have a little bit of logical rigor, you will like this book. Its pages are truly fertile soil for thoughts to germinate. The reason why I say this is because some of the things Magee mentions are just a little bit confusing and require you to keep reading to fully understand them, and the big ideas he presents have quite a bit of space between them. A lot of confusion and dense information is distracting, but a little confusion gets the brain to sometimes extract things that aren't really there, and with space to breathe, these thoughts can grow and develop separately while you also figure out the author's intended message. I recommend this book if you feel uninspired.
  Magee talks a lot about how philosophers have stopped trying to formulate and answer the important questions. This is actually a big deal. People make it seem like science will solve everything that can be solved, and there's nothing left for thoughts and logic to do. I don't know if this is true (as Magee mentioned, it's impossible to make universally verifiably true statements in science), but I find it encouraging that Kant anticipated some of the conclusions that Einstein made about time by sitting in his room and thinking logically about reality. Just like Bryan Magee, I'm fascinated by "what philosophy is capable of in the minds of its best practitioners."
• 
  Simon Mcleish

  Originally published on my blog
  here in January 2002.
  
  Brian Magee has spent much of his adult life presenting "highbrow" TV programmes, mainly attempting to popularise philosophy. This book is partly autobiography, and partly short accounts of the ideas of some of the philosophers who have been important in his life.
  
  Having been disturbed by philosophical problems (such as whether the world we see is real) to an unusual extent as a child, Magee studied philosophy. However, he was disillusioned by postgraduate study at Oxford, then in the grip of linguistic analysis, which he felt was both sterile and, because not concerned with what he considered the real problems, not really philosophy. Eventually moving into TV, he used the fact that it paid well to work only half the time, spending the rest of his life studying philosophy, attending concerts and seeing plays. In the course of time, he came to know two of the outstanding philosophers of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper.
  
  The major portion of the book consists of explanations of the main philosophical problems as Magee sees them (those raised by Kant, basically), and descriptions of the ideas of several philosophers, both those who have attacked these problems (particularly Schopenhauer, for whom he has a great admiration) and those who turned important schools of twentieth century philosophy away from them into the dead ends of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. These explanations, generally well integrated with the biographical material, are clear and easy to read, and have the real virtue of pointing the reader to the original sources (while warning of some of the most difficult to read - Hegel, Fichte in particular).
  
  Confessions of a Philosopher has certainly made me want to go away and read more philosophy and think about these problems; and that is something that I think would make Magee feel he has succeeded.
• 
  Safdar

  I think this is one of the most useful and approachable account of the effects of philosophy. the fact i liked is that Magee goes straight to the point which matters. the main question, the ultimate ones. seedhi baat no bakwaas. and he has introduced me to two philosophers about whose importance i was not yet aware. Popper and Schopenhauer. i liked that Kant was ever present throughout the narrative.
  
• 
  jayrt

  bryan magee is a giant among men. readability like room-temperature butter, rich like morning coffee, nutritious like brain broccoli. my only problem with confessions is magee’s tireless scholarship: i now have 20 more books to read thanks to all his recommendations. big problem, i know ;p
• 
  Steven Colborne

  Bryan Magee is probably my favourite philosopher, if not of all time then certainly of those who have lived and worked during my lifetime. Confessions of a Philosopher is Magee’s autobiography, and was first published in 1997, though he has gone on to write many more books and I believe he is still writing now, despite being in his late 80’s at the time I write this.
  
  Why do I hold Magee in such high esteem? Because I believe his approach to philosophy is the correct one, and is one that is often neglected in contemporary study of the subject. Philosophy, I believe, should be about the investigation of all of life’s mysteries, rather than a technical exercise undertaken by academics.
  
  In fact, a large part of Magee’s autobiography is dedicated to his expressing an understandable frustration concerning what the study of philosophy has become. He heavily criticises the traditions of analytic philosophy and linguistic philosophy as being largely uninteresting and peripheral to what real philosophy should be.
  
  Magee is what I would describe as a ‘philosopher of philosophers’ in that he isn’t well-known for producing any groundbreaking original ideas that have shaken the world of philosophy, but he has instead dedicated himself in an admirable way to understanding the great thinkers from the history of philosophy.
  
  He has had quite an amazing career, which involved a nine-year spell as a member of Parliament in the UK, and he hosted various television series which brought philosophy to a mainstream audience, as well as authoring over 25 books. If you search the name Bryan Magee on YouTube you will be able to find some of his discussions and interviews with other philosophers, and if you watch them you’ll see what an incredibly articulate and adept presenter he is.
  
  In Confessions of a Philosopher Magee talks about experiencing a kind of existential terror as a young man, due to having deep questions about the nature of reality that he couldn’t answer. In one particularly interesting passage, he describes watching himself bending his finger and being mystified and fascinated by the fact that he could do such a thing at will. Later in the book Magee describes various crises that he experienced (most notably what he described as a mid-life crisis) and how reading the great philosophers, especially Kant and Schopenhauer, provided a great deal of help during difficult times.
  
  Being a theist myself, it pains me that Magee never received a revelation of the reality of God. So many of the problems that he struggled with throughout his life and career can be answered with reference to God, but Magee always felt (as many atheist philosophers do) that positing the existence of God was a kind of cop-out. He simply had no revelation that God exists, and this explains many of his struggles.
  
  As I read Magee describing questions that he felt no philosopher has been able to answer, I felt a great sense of blessing that God has gifted me with answers to many of those difficult questions, though if I were to tell this to Magee I fear he would be sceptical (although who knows, maybe not beyond persuasion). I did actually write to Magee once when I was considering undertaking postgraduate studies at Oxford, as I knew he was associated with the university and I hoped he would be able to tutor me. He wrote me a lovely letter back explaining he had now retired from such work, but to receive a response from a philosopher who I admire so much was precious.
  
  I believe that Confessions of a Philosopher serves as a good introduction to many of the great names and problems of philosophy, and it’s a large book that covers a lot of ground. Magee has a knack for writing in an accessible way, although I will warn readers that he uses some distinctly philosophical terms (e.g. phenomenal and noumenal, metaphysics, epistemology, etc) that might be off-putting to those who have no familiarity with the subject. He does make an effort to explain complex terminology when he uses it.
  
  Magee’s life story is fascinating, especially so for British and American readers (he’s an Englishman but spent some time at Yale University in the US), though his work has been translated into many languages which demonstrates its broad appeal. Though he may not be widely recognised as one of the all-time great philosophers, I feel inspired by his integrity and knowledge, and his dedication to grappling with the deep mysteries of existence.
• 
  Kristen

  I went into this book hoping for an accessible introduction to the basics of philosophy, told in the context of a memoir. That's largely what I got, but maybe not the exactly the way I expected. The memoir format means that topics come up in the order that Magee originally experienced them, making the structure of the book less orderly and more personal, and more focused on those areas of philosophy that he had direct experience with.
  
  The down side of this approach is that Magee spends a lot time on topics that might not have needed so much detail if he were attempting a simple primer. The best example is his experience, as an Oxford student in the 1950s, with schools of modern philosophy like logical positivism and linguistic analysis. Magee repeatedly makes the case as to why these schools were ineffective at solving philosophical problems and, in in the end, will be considered a flash in the pan. However, for a reader who is completely uninitiated to philosophy, there is a large opportunity cost to reading about a niche area of the subject that the author ultimately concludes to be unimportant. If that's the case, why I did need to know so much about it in the first place?
  
  The strength of Magee's approach comes out much more strongly when he's talking about the philosophical questions that are important to him and the philosophers who best illuminate their possible answers, namely Kant and Schopenhauer. Before reading this book, I would not have guessed that philosophy could have a deep emotional component, but Magee's discussions of Kant and Schopenhauer rival some of my favorite writings by people like Robertson Davies or Joseph Campbell in their ability see beyond the surface of everyday life and approach the unknowable. It's the passages like this one that make the book moving and worthwhile:
  
  I have little intellectual patience with people who think they know that there is no God, and no life other than this one, and no reality outside the empirical world. Some such atheistic humanism has been on of the characteristic outlooks of Western man since the Enlightenment, and is particularly common in most of the circles in which I have moved for most of my life. It lacks all sense of the mystery that surrounds and presses so hard on our lives: more often than not, it denies its existence, and in doing so is factually wrong. It lacks any real understanding that human limitations are drastic, in that our physical apparatus must inevitably mould and set very narrow bounds to all that can ever be experience for us--and there for that our worldview is almost certainly paltry, in that most of what there is almost certainly lies outside it.
• 
  Khurshid

  Бу китобдан кўп нарса олдим. Айниқса, 20-аср Британиядаги фалсафий тенденциялар, Оксфорддаги фалсафий муҳит, файласуфларнинг ўзаро муносабатлари яхши тасвирлаб берилган. Муаллифнинг Рассел ва Поппер ҳақидаги хотиралари ҳам мен учун қизиқ бўлди. Китоб биографик шаклда ёзилган бўлса-да, фалсафий таҳлиллларга бойлиги, уларнинг анча тушунарли баён қилингани, муаллифнинг мавзуга астойдил қизиқиши ҳам ўқувчига маълум даражада юқади деб ўйлайман.
  
  Брайн Маги Оксфорд ва Йел университетларида фалсафадан таълим олган, академик муҳит ичида улғайган, аммо кейинчалик Британия телеканалларида ишлагани унинг омма билан яқинлашиши мураккаб мавзуларни содда тилда баён қилишга ундаган ва ўргатган. Шунгами фалсафий мураккаб мавзуларни, айниқса, Кант ва Шопенҳауэр қарашларини анча батафсил ва қизиқарли тушунтирган.
  
  Шунингдек, муаллифнинг мантиқий позитивизм ва тил фалсафаси юзасидан билдирган фикрлари ҳам, айниқса, бутун фалсафани биргина тил масаласи доирасида чеклаб қўйиш роса урф бўлган дамларни танқид қилиши ҳам анча ишонарли чиққан.
  
  Хуллас, китоб фалсафага қизиқадиган ва ундан бироз хабари бўлганлар учун қизиқ бўлиши мумкин.
• 
  Marts (Thinker)

  An excellent overview of Magee's philosophical/political/broadcasting journey, he even gives a bit of insight into how this all affected his personal life as well, I like something he said here in the final chapter, 'The basic philosophical problems are presented to us by living, not by books or by the education system.", how true that is...
  Magee also presents some great reading ideas for those who may be interested in philosophy, some of his early recommendations are Descartes' Discourse on Method and Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, I've read the Discourse its a pretty simple read, the Essay is a bit trying but a good read none the less...
• 
  Danny

  aangekondigd als Gardner voor volwassenen wordt het betweterig, narcistisch autobiografisch onderdeel van het boek vervelend. Bovendien stroken Magee's politiek-filosofisch gedachten niet met de mijne. Toch maar de inleiding van Russel lezen lijkt me
• 
  Derek

  This is a book I would highly recommend to anyone interested in philosophy, ideas, or basically intellectual history in the 20th century. In is an intellectual biography of Bryan Magee--an thinker, writer, and television producer. Magee was in the middle of the philosophical community, without being an actual philosopher (in the standard sense of being a professor at the university being paid to teach, research, and write about philosophy). He worked with and among many of the great philosophers of the 20th century as he interviewed them on television, wrote about them, befriended many of them, and generally immersed himself in philosophy.
  
  Magee summarizes the rise and fall of logical positivism, the linguistic turn, and the ultimate divide between analytic and continental approaches to philosophy. He rejects both analytic and continental approaches. He rejects the linguistic turn. And he rejects logical positivism (which surprisingly is making a comeback). He rejects all these mainly because he sees philosophy as being about ideas that are deep (specifically metaphysical ideas. e.g., space, time, etc.). He adores Kant, but think that Kant fails. Where Kant fails he believes that Schopenhauer rescues the Kantian project. He basically thinks that Schopenhauer understood all of the great problems of philosophy and was visionary in his addressing them (although he concedes it's not clear whether he succeeds or not--although I think Magee largely believes that he did). He believes that Karl Popper was the greatest philosophy of the 20th century--because he believes that he is one of the few that actually does "real" philosophy in original ways without resorting simply to the analysis of language.
  
  Mainly the thing I liked about the book is how thought provoking it was. Every page caused me to consider or reconsider the way I look at various philosophical problems. It made me much more aware of method--a definite theme of the book. He helped me to challenge some of the assumptions I have about philosophy. And finally, he articulated many of my own frustrations with analytic philosophy in ways I hadn't been able to express myself until now. I recommend the book highly.
  
  This book was incredibly easy to read, engaging, and thought provoking. It is not systematic or rigorous. Thus, if you are new to philosophy this might be a great sort of first read. If you are an old hat to philosophy, this should be easy reading with a fresh take on some things--but it surely is not a philosophical treatise by any stretch of the imagination. It is about philosophy rather than being philosophy per se.
• 
  James Lyons

  I bought this since someone told me it was a great introduction to philosophy. While Magee does provide a great insight into the progress of philosophy over the centuries I did feel this book could have used some trimming in places; he repeats god-knows-how-many-times his criticisms of Oxford philosophy in the 1950's, as well as perhaps over-deifying Kant's heir Schopenhauer to the neglect of some of the later philosophers like Sartre (I haven't read Schopenhauer though; perhaps the praise is warranted). Still, I'll give Magee credit; he does write about philosophy with precisely the sort of passion that it deserves, instead of the sheer indifference that sadly most people give it these days.
• 
  Ricardo Gomes

  Não fosse pelo hubris tantas vezes desajustado e pelo foco excessivo na crítica ao positivismo lógico e à filosofia oxfordiana do século XX, este livro seria uma boa introdução à filosofia, principalmente pós-kantiana. Com 200 páginas a menos seria excelente.
  
  "Unacceptable doctrines that illuminate are like crosses on maps that show where treasure lies hidden; they tell us where to start digging, in this case because they tell us where we have gone wrong about something important to us. But of course unacceptable doctrines that illuminate can be that only for people who look at reality in light of them; for people who look only at them, and confine themselves to analysing them, there is only their unacceptability to be discovered, and no illumination to be gained."
• 
  Charles Rouse

  Amazing. I'd been hunting for something like this and found it here. Magee's story is fascinating, his elucidation of Kant was transformative for me.
  His further adoption of the ideas of Schopenhauer, not so much.
  His criticism of professional philosophy is something that the field needs to deal with.
  Five stars because I take philosophy seriously and he changed my direction by turning my Kantian suspicions into a more definite affirmation.
  And that's important to me.
  Good job, Mr Magee.
• 
  David James

  
  
  Magee, Bryan. Confessions of a Philosopher
  
  I first heard about Bryan Magee when, some 30 plus years ago the BBC daringly introduced televsion viewers to his series of interviews with famous contemporary philosophers. I’d maintained until then that Talking Heads, apart from Alan Bennett of course, was not real television, and that a camera stuck in front of a garrulous speaker was the acme of boredom. The very reverse turned out to be the case. Naom Chomsky, for a start came alive as a real thinking person, rather than the abstruse figure lurking behind something called Transformational Grammar. Magee himself was easy-going, chipping in with useful asides and breaking up what could have been a boring monologue. He had what I would call a light touch about what otherwise could have been heavy-going for the non-philosopher. That’s the way to do it, I affirmed to myself. Sadly, the BBC has now drastically cut the number of intellectually stimulating programs, replacing them with old comedy shows and snatches of obscure classical music and extensive interviews with performers.
  
  Confessions of a Philosopher is not so much about Magee’s intimate private life, about which there is little, apparently, to be confessed. It’s pretty much about his contact with the world of philosophy and its leading figures - Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the like, all of whom he has met and usually interviewed. September 1956 marked a watershed in his life, when the Suez crisis and the Russian Invasion of Hungary plunged him into political activity. (Magee himself became an MP, also a professional boxer) and ‘After I had achieved a measure of success in television, inducements of money and fame were dangled in front of me to work in it full time,’ but he resists the temptation. Magee also cuts loose from the temptation of an academic life, preferring reading and re-reading Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Marx and Nietzsche ‘and on my travels soak in them for weeks at a time.’ Kant, Plato, Pascal, Heidegger and St Augustine accompanied him on his European travels. But Russell and ultimately Karl Popper had the greatest impact on him, especially the latter’s The Open Society and its Enemies. After eulogising Russell, Magee turns to his guru, Karl Popper, to whom he devotes a whole chapter - ‘Getting to Know Popper,’ - which typically Magee insists on, even visiting him as an old man in his hideaway at High Wycombe. As Magee puts it, concerning his discussions with Popper, ‘ the pre-Socratics were invisible participants in every conversation: it was as if Plato, Hume, Kant and the rest were taking part in our discussion, so that everything we said had naturally to be referred to them.’
  
  Bryan Magee’s devotion to ideas is admirable and infectious. His writing is always clear and transparent, and in my opinion his Confessions should be the starting point for every student about to engage in the discipline of philosophy.