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A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy
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  • ISBN13: 9780195112092
  • Condition: USED - Very Good
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Description
Readers eager to acquire a basic familiarity together with the history of philosophy but intimidated by the task will locate in A Passion for Wisdom a lively, accessible, and highly enjoyable tour of the world's excellent ideas. Here, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins inform the story of philosophy's development together with excellent clarity and refreshing wit.

The authors initiate together with the much ancient religious beliefs of the east and west and get us right up to the feminist and multicultural philosophies of the present. Along the way, they highlight key philosophers, from Plato and Buddha to William James and Simone de Beauvoir, and explore key categories, from metaphysics and ethics to politics and logic. The book is enlivened as well by telling anecdotes and sparkling quotations. Among many memorable observations, we're treated to Thomas Hobbes' assessment this life is "nasty, brutish, and short" and Hegel's description of Napoleon as "world history on horseback." Engaging, comprehensive, and delightfully written, A Passion for Wisdom is a splendid introduction to an intellectual tradition this reaches back over three thousand years.

Customer Reviews
Customer rating is 5 of 5  Short and excellent, but dense   2009-02-13
By Irfan A. Alvi (Towson, MD USA)
At only 128 pages, this is indeed a "very brief" history of philosophy. However, Solomon and Higgins still manage to cover a lot of ground, and this is by no means a superficial treatment. They accomplish this by making the text fairly dense and compressed, and it's apparent that this book was derived from its 305-page sibling by the same authors, A Short History of Philosophy.

Although it's dense, the book remains readible because the authors write clearly and unpretentiously, yet without condescending to "dummies" or "idiots": the book is intelligently written for intelligent readers who are prepared to give it the sustained concentration it deserves.

Another strength is that the authors include a good dose of non-Western philosophy, especially in the first third of the book, and they link this nicely with Western philosophy, showing how many Western ideas were probably derived from non-Western antecedents, or at least co-evolved with them.

As far as the ideal audience for the book, I see that as a tricky question. While one might be inclined to classify this book as an ideal introduction to philosophy, I think the density of the book could present a challenge for many novices, but they could perhaps address that by reading the book more than once. And even if novices can't quite absorb the book, it could still serve as an effective primer for longer introductions where things can be explained at greater leisure (such as A Short History of Philosophy itself).

For readers who are already reasonably versed in philosophy, I think this book would serve as an excellent and quick survey/review of the subject, and I can highly recommend the book to that audience. In fact, this is by far the best short book I know of for that purpose.
Customer rating is 5 of 5  A Passion for Wisdom: a very brief history of Philosophy   2007-05-20
By L. Demestre (Toronto, Ont Canada)
This book is a tied summary of the philosophical wisdom through different epochs and regions. It covers both Western and Eastern system of thinking and goes from the Pre Socratics to the Postmodernists. It is an excellent book, easy to read and understand. I will recommend this essay to all those who are concerned with transcendental things, knowledge and morals.

Customer rating is 4 of 5  A politically correct history of philosophy   2007-02-04
By Wil Roese (Baltimore, MD)
A Passion for Wisdom is a well written, concise history of philosophy. My only complaint and reason for 4 rather than 5 stars is its biases towards political correctness
Customer rating is 4 of 5  Very Good Introduction   2006-11-09
By S. Camp (Raleigh, NC USA)
This book is perfect for those looking for, a the title states, a very brief history of philosophy. Solomon and Higgins do a great job of incoroporating Eastern philosophy as well as the usual Western philosophy. The explanations put forth in this book are thorough but not to specific-intensive - that is to say, a newcommer to the study of philosophical history could easily follow the text. I recomend this book to students and teachers alike, as well as anyone looking for an informative read.
Customer rating is 5 of 5  Easily the best short introduction to philosophy I have read   2006-07-09
By Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
This is a "concise version" of Solomon and Higgins's A Short History of Philosophy (1996) which wasn't all that short at 329 pages--well, for a history of philosophy actually it was kind of short. As the authors point out, a "short" history of philosophy (in German) by Hans Joachim Storig, runs to 750 pages, and Bertrand Russell's famous popular opus from 1945, A History of Philosophy was 895 pages long. What the authors have done here is to distill the essence of their larger book, mostly by judiciously pruning. The result is a witty, pithy and very well edited introduction for almost anybody interested in knowing what philosophy is all about.

Speaking of Russell, the authors's treatment of him is characteristically sly: Noting that Russell turned his attention to more worldly matters after his youth (and the Principia Mathematica), they add that "he wrote an elegant and impassioned autobiography, conclusively documenting his political commitments, his love of philosophy, and what we might politely call his love of love. He also declared--as the First World War had clearly shown--that 'the world is horrible.' Formal philosophy, by comparison, seemed both a refuge and a waste of time." (p. 115)

Solomon and Higgins cover Eastern philosophy (which many Western books do not), and they bring us up to the postmodern era, although they scrupulously avoid discussing philosophers still living--a wise decision no doubt since most of us are still trying to cope with what happen to philosophy after the logical positivists got a hold of it early in the 20th century. Solomon and Higgins also address religious philosophy, which again is right, especially when you consider that most of Western philosophy since the Greeks has been strongly influenced by Christian values and ideas--and of course, the Eastern "philosophies" from the Vedas, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, etc., cannot really be separated from religion.

It is good to compare this to Russell's best-selling opus since Solomon and Higgins do very well exactly what Russell did very well, that is make philosophy interesting and even exciting for the general reader; and like Russell they write with unusual clarity. Unlike Russell however they refrain (mostly) from taking sides in the various philosophic disputes and they don't reveal who their favorites are. I guess I could say that Russell's approach was a critical one as he found fault with many of the icons of philosophy, even--or perhaps especially--Plato, whereas Solomon and Higgins try for a more descriptive and informative approach. I love Russell. He was a delight to me when I first read him as a teenager, but I must say that the approach of Solomon and Higgins is the more judicious.

Philosophy is like history in this respect. We cannot adequately critique the ideas of today because we are so completely immersed in them that we have no real objectivity. As the authors put it so very well on page 113, "Philosophy is never isolated or immune from its time and place, no matter how abstract it may be or however 'eternal' or 'untimely' it may declare itself. Philosophy may be prophetic, it can be nostalgic, or it can act as a mirror, a reflection of a culture. But more often than not, it expresses in abstract terms the ideals and aspirations of society."

This follows their observation that Nietzsche had predicted the horrible wars of the 20th century. Their treatment of Nietzsche (and virtually all of the philosophers) is generous although there is just the slightest hint that his ideas may have been in some part responsible for the rise of the kind of mentality exhibited by the Nazis. They recall Nietzsche's "incredible suggestion that human beings...[are] nothing but a bridge between the ape and the Ubermensch ('superman')" Personally, I am not a big fan of Nietzsche; nonetheless it is striking to consider that he may be exactly right: the science of the 21st century may fuse us with our machines, and through genetic engineering allow us to become something "more" than human.

The book is in three parts, Part I: "Is There Ultimate Truth?"; Part II: "Faith and Reason"; and Part III: "From Modernity to Postmodernism." I think this is just perfect. The search for what is true and/or to what extent we can know what is true is at the very heart of the philosophic urge. And the struggle between faith and reason rages on today as it has since before the Greeks. And what we have experienced in our lifetimes is the rise of postmodernism which is a serious critique of the self-satisfied modernity that grew out of the Enlightenment.

I guess what I like best about this book is a sense that it is a return to the kind of philosophy that I loved as a young man. As the authors put it, while they are excited "by the bewildering variety of ideas" that we have today in philosophy, they are "at the same time...disturbed by the fact that the old ideal of philosophy, as a search for wisdom rather than a peculiar professional skill or a merely clever game, has gotten lost." (p. 128)

This book brings some of the excitement back.



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