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His convictions make for exhilarating reading; but his failure to find in philosophy a reliable answer to his deepest concerns casts a shadow over the book, which darkens in the last chapter to a tormented despondency.
When he began studying, logical positivism was the dominant paradigm, although it was soon to be replaced by linguistic analysis. 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. 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 a skilled and entertaining writer—his prose always lucid and clear, if sometimes wordy and repetitive. It is what we have the best grounds at any given time for believing. Aug 15, Mridul Singhai rated it liked it. 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.
His most trenchant attacks are on the Logical Positivists who dominated the Oxford scene at the time when he was an undergraduate there, and for many years afterwards. They were influenced by the work done on language by Bertrand Russell and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus , but they ignored or even misinterpreted these two philosophers, who had stated that the rigorous use of language was indeed important and had worked out ways in which to make it so, but at the same time had declared that the philosophical issues which could not be discussed in this way were more important than those which could.
The Linguistic Philosophers, who gradually took over from the Logical Positivists, based themselves on the later Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations , and were even less concerned with the truth or verifiability of a proposition.
Instead, they thought that the principal task of philosophy was to elucidate the way words were used in practice, by examining, for example, the way in which the same word might mean different things to different people. They believed that it was not the business of philosophers to go beyond that and to produce any theories: Magee describes these Oxford philosophers as having all the characteristics of a narrow and intolerant sect. Neither Kant nor Schopenhauer were part of the philosophy courses at Oxford, which jumped straight from Hume to Wittgenstein.
The Establishment kept Karl Popper, whom Magee considers by far the greatest philosopher of our time, out of a professorship at Oxford and Cambridge.
Popper was, like them, an empiricist; but one who, unlike them, understood the way science really worked and had demonstrated the impossibility of the verification principle. But even Popper leaves Magee ultimately dissatisfied.
Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Confessions follows the course of Magee's life, exploring philosophers and ideas as he. Confessions of a Philosopher has ratings and 49 reviews. Magee simply skips the usual first class philosophical claptrap and takes you right into the heart .
Magee had the strong conviction that the empirical world cannot be all there is: After Oxford, Magee took a postgraduate course at Yale. He draws a vivid contrast between the cliquish atmosphere among Oxford philosophers and the broad and generous interest in the whole field of philosophy at Yale. There Magee discovered Kant, and at last he had found a thinker who spoke to his intuition that there was more to philosophy than the dry, narrow and limited fare that was dished out at Oxford.
For it was Kant who explained that there must be a reality the noumenal world beyond the phenomenal world of which we have experience; that the noumenal world is something we cannot ever know because we are forced to perceive the world in terms of the concepts and categories which we have as human beings and which may not correspond at all with what Reality is actually like.
Bertrand Russell in his explanation of Kant famously used the analogy of blue spectacles: The concepts and categories through which we have to experience the world, and which therefore are subjective and not objective, are Time and Space, Cause and Effect, and a number of other such pairs.
Kant went further; he demonstrated in ways which cannot be gone into here but whose conclusion was later, by quite different methods, confirmed by Einstein that Time and Space cannot operate in the noumenal world in the way in which we experience them here. We experience Time as sequential; in the noumenal world there can be no such thing as Past, Present and Future. So here Magee found a philosophy that spoke of the existence of a noumenal world, but one which was for ever hidden from us.
In many ways, Schopenhauer says, we see ourselves phenomenally, as material objects mediated by space and time; but as material objects we are unique in knowing ourselves also from the inside.
That experience is direct and intuitive; it is not the result of reasoning or of perceptions mediated by our concepts. They used their dialectical skills for purposes of intellectual terrorism which included the triumphant carving up in public of opponents, or even merely of the uninitiated.
One of the most valuable things for me about that year at Yale was that it enabled me to see Oxford from the outside, and to look at Oxford philosophers from the standpoint of other kinds of contemporary philosopher. Seen thus they appeared, it can only be said, provincial, superficial, self-admiring and above all intellectually unserious. For the first time I encountered people of my own generation who were of high ability, had first-rate philosophical training, and were in love with fundamental problems.
Several of them have since become well known, one or two internationally. Some of the most intellectually satisfying hours I spent at Yale were passed not in seminar rooms but with friends like these, talking about whatever interested us.
As I have said, the most valuable single educational experience I had at Yale was being introduced to the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The form in which this took place made an important difference: After that you can go on picking up an unlimited amount of worthwhile detail from secondary sources, but far and away your most important perceptions about the work of a great philosopher are those you have for yourself. This is not so in the early stages, however, when you are groping your way: This means that discussion is an indispensable part of philosophical training in those early stages.
It is true that many great philosophers did their creative work in isolation, but that was not how most of them went through the learning process that was necessary beforehand. It is a mistake, I believe, for beginners to think they can get very far by themselves in the study of philosophy. An essential part of the process for beginners is that their sincerely held beliefs — and, much more important than that, their assumptions, which are sometimes uncounscious — should be challenged by people who are as intelligent and well informed as themselves; and they should have to meet those challenges head-on, and deal with them adequately, or else adjust their beliefs and assumptions accordingly, or abandon them altogether.