Product Description

An exceptionally rich, intelligible and illuminating history of Western philosopy from the sixth century BC to the Renaissance, THE DREAM OF REASON provides an introduction to the puzzling personalities of the philosophers, as well as an extremely sensitive and persuasive presentation of their views.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #254369 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Executive editor of the Economist, Anthony Gottlieb is one of the contributors to the recent collection of excellent essays in The Great Philosophers. His latest achievement, The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance is not only superbly written, but is, quite literally, enchanting.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one begins with the Milesians and includes the Pythagoreans, Heroclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and the Sophists. Part two concerns Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, while the final part deals with the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Skeptics, and ends with a survey of the philosophers from late antiquity to the Renaissance. His aim, he tells us, is to "approach the story of philosophy as a journalist ought to: to rely only on primary sources; to question everything that has become conventional wisdom; and above all, to try to explain it all as clearly as I could". The fruit of this ambitious 10-year project is a compelling history of philosophy with genuinely revelatory power destined to become one of the books of the year. Not only does one come away with a new-found reverence for the ancient philosophers and the largely unacknowledged debt we moderns debt we owe them,--particularly Parmenides, Democritus and Epicurus--but he has the gift of making the old familiar names breathe again.

This is not a book to be dipped into in search of favourites, but is rather a book to be read cover to cover in order to expose oneself to the cumulative force of the narrative. Accessible and immensely enjoyable, it is difficult to imagine a better book of its kind in recent years. Beginners, intermediates and even professionals should all get something out of The Dream of Reason. Volume two is on the way, and if the first part is anything to go by, it should be well worth waiting for. --Larry Brown

About the Author
Anthony Gottlieb is Executive Editor of The Economist. He studied philosophy at Cambridge University and University College London and has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review and is the author of a short book, Socrates.

Customer Reviews

Excellect, informative, entertaining
The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, by Anthony Gottlieb (Norton), 2000, pp. 469.

This book proves that an introduction to the history of Western philosophy does not have to be dull or badly written. The Dream of Reason is a sprawling book, written in an accessible pre-postmodern narrative style. With very few exceptions, we are introduced one by one to male philosophers, long dead, in a time line stretching from the 600's B.C.E. to the beginnings of modern science and philosophy. It has a strong cast of characters, excellent quotations, and a compelling tale to tell of the origins and adventures of reason. The dream is that the universe is intelligible and that we can, finally, make sense of everything.

The history of philosophy is never complete. A single author is limited to connecting some of the dots together, and not all the dots can be connected in one story. A book like this is a sampling from the history of philosophy. The samples show us the birth of reason from a radical questioning of religious and mythical accounts of natural processes, followed by a critical examination of morality and cultural values, in which reason turns within and questions itself. Those early thinkers open up a new world of philosophical reflection on the physical universe, the self and the gods.

The structure is simple. We simply stroll down a time-line meeting noted philosophers, starting with the reputed originator of philosophy, Thales, and moving through history up to Galileo and Descartes. At first, they speak to us in poetry, later, in prose. From the beginning, philosophical ideas had a disconcerting tendency to turn the world upside down, to put things in a perspective different from the ordinary ones of everyday life and mythical understanding. Out of these philosophical ideas and the commentaries on them comes the subject matter of philosophy. Out of techniques for dealing with ideas, such as dialectic and logic, come new questions and innovations in thinking. Key to this development is a persistent inquisitive bent that does not shy away if the argument overturns conventional wisdom or appeals to authority. There is something very bracing and optimistic about this story of the emergence of independent thought in a world bound up with accepting and unreflective tribal life. This is despite the fact that philosophers who try to grasp the real behind the veil of appearances often make themselves look foolish or dangerous in the eyes of others.

As Gottlieb tells it, philosophy bravely sets out with the Pre-Socratics to look for natural causes at work in the physical world. It develops inwardness with Socrates and Plato, and is systematized by Aristotle. Later, philosophy began to decline, slowly at first, but faster toward the end, when the schools of philosophy were closed in 529 A.D. We learn that even before this, the rational and dialectical side of philosophy had been replaced by a yearning for salvation and an embrace of obscure assumptions and doctrines. What philosophy texts were written tended to be in the form of commentaries. I found this part most intriguing since I know least about the thousand years from the closing of the philosophical schools to the 16th century. This book helped me to grasp the entirety of this obscure period in the history of philosophy.

The story of reason is one of advance and retreat. Sometimes the dream of reason seems to be close to realization, while at other times it looks like an impossible ideal at best, and a pernicious aberration of the human will to power, at worst. Having been dreamed in the first place, reason has continued to trouble the sleep of the human mind. Even if, as happens from time to time, reason is suppressed, it has never ceased to demand an answer and has always kept coming back for more. The freedom of the human mind to think for itself cannot be taken away.

The Dream of Reason is none the worse because it is an old-fashioned history of philosophy. True, it is always already deconstructed by anyone who wishes to criticize, but for its target audience of interested nonprofessionals, this book is likely to do more for the general understanding of Western philosophical history than many a more tedious tome. The writing is lively, the tale well told, and even if it is open to the objections of the learned, what history of philosophy is not?

Brilliant and absorbing
Anthony Gottlieb's 'The Dream of Reason' (it's title quoting Goya) is a history of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. Rich with well-argued points, the book is thoroughly absorbing, and a must-have for anybody with the slightest interest in philosophical issues. This volume is the first of two, and, if Gottlieb's forthcoming study of philosophy from Descartes onwards matches the quality of this first outing, they will prove an indespensable duo.