The Dream of Reason
A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
About the book
Anthony Gottlieb, for many years a senior editor at The Economist, set out to tell the story of philosophy the way a journalist should: relying on primary sources, questioning conventional wisdom and explaining it all as clearly as he could. Covering thinkers from the sixth century BC up to the Renaissance, the book has sections on Heraclitus, the Milesians, Parmenides, the Pythagoreans, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, among others. Along the way readers meet Empedocles, who believed himself a reincarnated bush, and Diogenes in his earthenware tub. Published in 2000, it is the first volume of a planned trilogy, followed by The Dream of Enlightenment, and has been compared with Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb said he could not put it down, placed it where readability meets scholarship, and credited Gottlieb with taking a fresh look at the material.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Flaneur)
I could not put it down. It hit me at some point that I was at the intersection of readability and scholarship. Clearly the value of this book lies beyond its readability: Gottlieb is both a philosopher and a journalist (in the good sense), not a journalist who writes about philosophy. He investigates and provides a fresh look at the material: For instance what we bemoan as the flaws of Aristotelianism during the scholastic period came 2000 years after his work. Aristotle had an empirical bent --his followers are the ones to blame.
I liked his constant questioning of the labels put on philosophers and philosophies by the second hand readers.
Clearly he missed a few authors who deserve real coverage like Algazali, but I take what I can get.
The only other readable history of philosophy is Russell's. This one was less hurriedly put together.
Someone should bug the author to hurry with the sequel on Locke, Hume, etc.
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