Great Philosophers: A Brief History of the Self and Its World

122 Pages·2008·0.99 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Reid

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Great Philosophers
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Great Philosophers
A Brief Story of the Self and Its Worlds
Jeffrey Reid
broadview press
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© 2009 Jeffrey Reid
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a
retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopy-
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Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario m5e 1e5—is an infringement of the copyright law.
library and archives canada cataloguing in publication
Reid, Jeffrey
Great philosophers : a brief story of the self and its worlds / Jeffrey Reid.
ISBN 978-1-55111-963-2

1. Philosophy—History. I. Title.
B72.R44 2009 190 C2008-907368-1
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To my loved ones
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Contents
Introduction .....................................................................................
Great Philosophers: Who are they? ....................................................... 
. Th e Presocratic Philosophers ........................................................... 
Heraclitus .................................................................................. 
Parmenides ................................................................................ 
. Plato and Socrates........................................................................ 
Socrates ..................................................................................... 
. Descartes .................................................................................. 
Aristotle and the Medieval Schools ...................................................... 
Descartes ................................................................................... 
. Hobbes .................................................................................... 
. Rousseau .................................................................................. 
. Hume ...................................................................................... 
. Kant ....................................................................................... 
. Hegel ...................................................................................... 
. Kierkegaard ............................................................................... 
. Marx ....................................................................................... 
. Nietzsche .................................................................................
. Sartre .....................................................................................
. Hannah Arendt and Charles Taylor ..................................................
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Introduction
T
his book attempts to tell a story through the life of its protagonists. In terms of
story-telling, there should be nothing surprising about this. It is generally the way
narratives are constructed. Th e diff erence here, however, is that the lives of the
main characters take place primarily in their ideas, and taken together, these ideas form
a shared narrative called the Western philosophical tradition.
Th is narrative has been recounted many times before, in many diff erent manners,
and the names of at least some of the protagonists may be known to many people today,
the same way literate citizens of Classical Athens were aware of the players and stories of
the ancient Homeric tales. However, a shared, common story only stays alive if it is retold,
recounted, reinterpreted and passed on. Most importantly perhaps, to stay alive a shared
story must belong to those who share it. Th ey must view the story with a sense of owner-
ship, and yet be willing and even eager to partake in it with others, exactly as the indigenous
Haida people of the Canadian west coast felt they could reveal their myths and legends to
European ethnographers because the Haida knew the stories were theirs to share.
Th is book is my attempt to retell the story of the Great Philosophers. I do so because
many people today may not know that the story actually belongs to them, that it is a great
part of who they are. Only by remembering it and recognizing it as theirs will they ever
be able to recount it to others. And it is a story worth telling.
My aim is to emphasize the strong narrative aspect of the Great Philosophers’ tale,
showing how each thinker’s ideas form part of an on-going story line: trials are endured;
obstacles are met and sometimes overcome, sometimes avoided; new paths are discovered;
unexpected characters are introduced ... Like any great story, the end is reached when we
can look back and recognize the narrative that we have been following as our own.
My goal is also to tell this story in an inviting, introductory way, to keep it short and
readable. Some might object to such brevity and fi nd cavalier and unfaithful the attempt

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 Great Philosophers: A Brief Story of the Self and Its Worlds
to summarize the infi nitely complex thought of each philosopher in so few pages. Indeed,
it may be particularly galling to university philosophers, like me, to have “their” thinker
dealt with in such summary fashion or to have the object of their life’s research only men-
tioned in passing, or not at all. To readers looking for a more encyclopedic approach, I
can do no more service than to refer them to such unsurpassed histories of philosophy as
those by Frederick Copleston or Emile Bréhier.
Finally, in defense of brevity, I would say that the story of Western philosophy is
ultimately a short one. It began only about 2,500 years ago, barely a heartbeat in the sev-
eral million year development of the human race, nothing at all when set against the 13.7
billion years or so since time and the universe began. Yet through the brief window of
Western philosophy, this pinhole of light, we have tried to see everything. In the history
of humanity, and perhaps in the history of the universe, it would be hard to fi nd a more
audacious enterprise.
Great Philosophers: Who are they?
Th ere is some agreement on who these philosophers are. Certain names impose them-
selves. Ask any group of Western philosophy professors to make a list of ten great philos-
ophers and the chances are fi ve names will show up on every list. Th e notion of greatness
may be somewhat relative, but the fact that any group of academics can easily agree on
at least fi ve philosophers who are “great” means that there is a core of thinkers in the tra-
dition who are inescapable. Why are they “great”? Why do we agree on the same names?
What does it mean to be a “great” philosopher?
In order to answer such questions, we fi rst must understand what it means to be
a philosopher. Th ere are many possible answers to this question. Originally it meant a
lover of wisdom; in the popular imagination, a philosopher has come to be a solitary
contemplator of things detached from any worldly importance, a quasi-religious or spir-
itual fi gure. I want to propose, for introductory purposes, a more realistic, down-to-
earth defi nition.
First of all, being a philosopher means being part of a certain fi eld of study. Th e
same way a mathematician must participate in the fi eld of mathematics, a philosopher
must participate in the fi eld of philosophy. What is a fi eld of study? I would answer that
it implies a specifi c set of objects. Mathematics, as a fi eld of study, studies mathematical
objects, numbers, operations, sets, equations, etc. Anthropology studies human cultural
objects. Physics studies physical, natural objects. Philosophy, to be a fi eld of study, there-
fore must study philosophical objects.
Th e idea of a fi eld of study also implies a history of study. It means that there is a pro-
gression, that there is a story that makes sense. Somehow, things are linked together in a
certain order that can be explained or recounted, understood and passed on. For example,
if we’re talking about mathematics as a fi eld of study, we accept that each new mathema-
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