Monday

Mr. Magee

Nassim Taleb is among my Dirty Dozen. Taleb endorses Karl Popper and his (from what I gather) disciple, Bryan Magee. So when I saw Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher listed in the bibliography of Fooled by Randomness, I decided to get it, which Marie bought me for my birthday. It's a thick book, both in size and content, but written with immense charm and goodwill.

There are some books that read with thorough honesty. Magee's book is (7% of the way through it) one of them. Although I'm only one page 32, I've seen him wax eloquently on the merits of Marx's Das Kapital as well as the reasons he's not a socialist and a statement that he's skeptical of government intervention in general. I've seen him scorn use of religion to answer ultimate questions, but then say the New Testament is one of the books that has had the greatest influence on him. He likes Popper, but he has spoken highly of Plato.

From what I gather, Magee is a Kantian, and whenever I read about Kant, I'm reminded of Gilson's shattering critique of the Kantian system in The Unity of Philosophical Experience, but no matter. I'm enthralled with Magee so far and am greatly looking forward to the next 400 pages.

Sample passage (from his discussion regarding his formal training in history):

I am aware that the present is as temporary as every previous now, and will soon be no more than another moment in the general past. All human beings--past, present and future--find their lives embedded at some arbitrary point in the middle of a rich, complex and unceasing historical flow that is ever-changing and goes on after their death. No one point in it is privileged as against any other, and none either more or less real than any other.

Chesterton fans will recognize a hat tip to GKC's democracy of the dead. Hopefully, most TDE readers will notice the metaphorical finger in the eye of our peers who think contemporary affairs are important or that contemporary culture is necessarily more enlightened than previous cultures.