Straight thinking

THE GREAT PHILOSPHERS
Series edited by Ray Monk and Frederic Raphael
Weidenfield, £2 each (Non-Fiction)
ISBN's: various

Philosophy is hard work; it is also fun. There is plenty of both in the first dozen titles of this cheap and cheerful new series of pocket books. But be warned: though short enough to read on an average commuter's journey, these ambitious little volumes are not primers.

Beginners may be baffled by their density and vocabulary. Unlike, say, the Fontana Modern Masters, they do not pretend to offer rounded introductions to their subjects; still less are they Bluffer's Guides. Rather, they are essays in the strictest sense of the word: attempts, deliberately partial, to interest the reader in a particular aspect of the thinker in question.

It was a good idea to appoint Ray Monk, the engagingly readable but highly professional biographer of Wittgenstein and Russell, as co-editor with Frederic Raphael, who makes no claim to philosophical expertise, merely to curiosity.

Their first batch of eggheads are mostly done to a turn, if a little hard-boiled here and there. Anthony Gottlieb's Socrates is outstanding ­ so good, in fact, that I am already looking forward to his forthcoming history of Western philosophy. Ronald Hayman, the biographer of Nietzsche, has produced an illuminating account of the philosopher's cacophony of voices. Intriguing, if less convincing, are his medical theories: Nietzsche's notorious headaches were, it seems, due to sinusitis, and it wasn't syphilis that sent him insane, but a non-organic collapse. Hayman makes his partly voluntary loss of identity and the ability to communicate, except through music, sound like schizophrenia.

I also enjoyed Monk himself on Russell, and John Cottingham on Descartes: both masterly expositions. Andrew Hodges on Alan Turing, Michael Ayers on Locke, David Berman on Berkeley and Oswald Hanfling on A.J. Ayer, are more technical and in places quite demanding, but more or less sound. Not recommended are Raymond Plant on Hegel (too dull), P.M.S. Hacker on Wittgenstein (too obscure), Christopher Johnson on Derrida (too narrow). Still, this is a promising venture. If, for the price of a glossy magazine, you try a Great Philosopher with your lunch, you shouldn't get indigestion.

Saturday November 15^th 1997

Copyright 1997 The Times Newspapers Limited.