PHILOSOPHY FOR BEGINNERS REVIEW

‘Philosophy For Beginners’ by Richard Osborne. Not for the (overly) faint of heart. Perhaps a more accurate title would be ‘A General Overview Of The History Of Philosophical Thought.’ Not for a child or an elementary student, not for an amateur or novice learner, but for the already (reasonably) well-educated student. It is geared I feel towards the student who intends to pursue the subject of philosophy to its bitter end, perhaps to a Master's Degree or even a PhD. Otherwise, why would they be wasting their time with these overall character sketches and studies of philosophy, with its terms highly specific to itself, their meaning very specific also, and not tame or mild, but actually quite intellectually advanced? 

The dips into philosophy are a bit abstruse in their terminology and reference what only someone already familiar with the wider world of learning would already know. The delineations are somewhat abstract. Without prior knowledge, one would simply not be able to make sense of it. The outlines really call for connections to fill them in which would come in the form of an understanding already in place, or else further research.

In the former case—which one would presume in the proper order of reading books (one does not normally retroactively seek the information with which to fill in the blanks left by a book; instead a normal book wouldn’t leave any blanks in its presentation that it didn’t suppose the reader couldn’t supply from his current understanding) would have had to have spent significant time with this subject matter.

In conclusion, an inaccurate title. Misleading to call this ‘For Beginners.’ Overall, a fantastic overview of the general subject. But even ‘Introduction’ would have been a misleading title, for I feel that the jokes and references would be lost on someone without previous experience studying, learning, or at least somehow being subjected to this area of culture. Certain words, names, and ideas even I was unfamiliar with as a 41 year old man with a Liberal Arts degree in what basically amounts to philosophy from St John's College. All of this I say in defense of myself to anyone who would accuse me of reading a beginner's book on philosophy, and in a soft attack on the author or editor or arranger or whoever it was who chose this title, for their carelessness.

Jacques Lacan said that to learn new words is The means of acquiring more culture, and this book provides the perfect ground for the intermediate I would say student of the history of philosophy to improve his mettle. The biggest theme I see coming to light here in this book is the need to decide whether philosophical truth is a subjective or an objective thing. Every philosopher seems to have his or her own particular take on this, with the notable exception of Hegel, who manages to reconcile the 2 into 1 with his Synthesis of Thesis and Antithesis—the Subject and the Object, respectively.

It was interesting to read about some lesser known philosophers (for example Willard V O Quine, who apparently carried Ockam's Razor around, slicing up confusion and unnecessary complexity, and who had a great sense of humour) and schools of philosophy (for example feminism, with its revealing of deeper and deeper levels of questioning that seem to have no end, and seem to imply that there are actually more questions than answers, that arrival at intellectual truth will always be deferred by further questions, that to demand certainty is too lofty an ideal that will probably never be fulfilled, the truth seeker to be perpetually disappointed in his or her expectation thereof). 

As philosophy matures in this day in age, the philosopher must learn to be satisfied with curious wonder and the unfulfillment of having his or her questions unanswered.

Many great philosophers, many great ideas, many enlightening revelations, and it's easy to see the patterns emerging from how these great thinkers and their ideas influenced each other as this narrative unfolds. 

The question of progress is raised at the end: ‘Where has progress in this field brought us?’ It’s easy to argue that genuine progress, at least judged from the perspective of the development of the spirit of man, hasn't really brought us anywhere, that the spirit has always been and always will be the same: capable of pain or happiness, responsible for its own condition, capable of growth or complacency, satisfied or unsatisfied, as the case may be, at the same time fixed by logic, but never still or at rest, always moving or changing and dynamic in nature.

I enjoyed learning about some of the lifestyle choices of some of my favorite philosophers. 

My favorite philosophers in this collection would include Kierkegaard (a strong individual with a deeply religious character), Hegel (the most intellectually abstruse of all philosophers, admittedly, far removed from the everyday problems of everyday man, as Levi Strauss would say), Kant (defined by his stubborn, insistent, and rigid way of sticking in the groove and staying there, dependable, predictably consistent and reliable) Marcus Aurelius (the famous Roman Emperor obsessed with denouncing fame and holding himself up to an incredibly high standard of character), Derrida (who goes about the task of deconstructing as many traditional philosophical arguments as he can in the hope of revealing their emptiness), Aristotle (the classic philosopher-college professor who organized his knowledge into an impressively massive, coherent system), Heraclitus (the king of change; the joke goes that while he stared at the leaf on the medicinal Hellenic plant, and although to Parmenides or his followers, it would appear not to be changing in any way, Heraclitus never saw the same leaf twice), and finally, Spinoza (an honest, noble, and courteous man marked by a rare intellectual honesty and lack of ambition, he tried to demonstrate mathematically how to lead a good and normal life and basically acted on what he believed).

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