The Heart of Philosophy

The book delivers more or less on that which the description describes. This book attempts to make philosophy more approachable by recounting significant discourses in the context of the authors life experience. It is actually a fairly effective technique for introducing the subject. As an entry into some of the major ideas and faces of Philosophy, it's not bad. You will need to read other pieces along with this book, as it really does take on too much. However, if one has to start somewhere, this is fairly digestible.

If I were teaching an Intro to Philosophy class and realized that many if not most of my students would never read philosophy again, this is the sole volume I would choose to be the text. This is so because it is written in a totally non-technical way, addresses philosophy's historic major tasks (truth, reality, ethics, etc.), and does so in a "real life" narrative that importantly addresses the failure of most academic philosophy. What is this failure? Needleman brilliantly uses the metaphor of a dinosaur's remains to show the condition of philosophy as it is typically taught in (at least) American schools. You see the bones, are aware that something alive was once here, but are also confronted with things that are now manifestly dead. He also characterizes many people who took philosophy with hope and expectation...and turned away, disillusioned and disappointed, like someone who had loved and lost. Students have not failed philosophy; it is the other way around. Thus, were I teaching an Intro class, this text would provide students with the perspective of an accomplished Philosophy professor who realizes that simply to present "arguments" and nit-pick over textual irregularities, is to miss the substance and significance of the philosophical quest. There *is* one real drawback to this book, recently republished, and about which I wrote both the author and publisher. Professor Needleman authored this book at a time when it was still commonplace to use the male pronoun when referring to people, both as individuals and in their collectivity. I hope that if there are further, future editions of this work, this error will be corrected. That aside, I recommend this book in the highest possible terms, without reservation.

At the heart of this book about the heart of philosophy is a vision of the tranformative potential of ideas. Needleman distinguishes between genuine philosophical ideas (e.g. the kinds of ideas Socrates inquired about, like Reality and Beauty) and "mere concepts" (i.e. discursive tools, with which we carve up the world). The latter are essential to our day to day practical life, but the former (when presented properly, which is to say Socratically) have the potential to interrupt and transform our habitual ways of being and seeing. To be in the grip of ideas is to experience, according to Needleman an eros that amounts to both (1) a recognition of the inadequacy and finitude of our concepts, and (2) a passionate drive to challenge and question our everyday life and become better, more beautiful in our thinking and more excellent in our lives. It is an exciting book, that reminded this reader at least of the bewildering enchantment that I felt when I first encountered philosophy. It is also exciting for being a powerful reminder that philosophy is and ought to be about life -- and at the same time that the transformative power of philosophy stems from its highest (ideal) aspirations -- which means that philosophy for life should not be a matter of watering it down and merely using the "tools" of philosophy to think about everyday matters. Needleman's descriptions of teaching experiences in which he aimed to engage students with real thinking were especially helpful to me as a reminder that the first task of teaching philosophy should be to lead students to discover for themselves the objectivity of thought: to discover for themselves that thinking is not merely subjective but imposes real and exacting demands upon the thinker. What disappointed me somewhat in the book is that while Needleman powerfully identifies the task of philosophy in the first instance (to expose the listener to the power of ideas and thereby shake them free of their convictions about the obviousness of their assumptions about life), he doesn't really say much about where to go from there, and about the potential of philosophy to speak to and transform everyday lives once the philosophical conviction that one must change one's life has taken hold. He gives a brief account of the history of philosophy, for example, and shows how in the works of several major thinkers there are resources for pushing readers to an "aporetic" state (state of confusion and bewilderment about what they take for granted) that is the starting point of philosophy. But having done this he gives little indication that or how thinking further about the history of philosophy or thinker more deeply about particular themes becomes important or essential. He writes almost as if (though I don't think he really believes this) the whole history of philosophy has as its essential task simply to generate the "eros" he describes for different ages and different peoples -- as if there is a kind of perenni

Jacob Needleman is not a bureaucratic philosopher. His teachings are about an intense search for a meaningful life. In this book he talks about some intense experiences in his own life and also with students and their parents. He also presents a very personal overview of occidental philosophy. Many philosophy teachers of our days are more concerned about formalities and structures of thought. Past philosophies are studied as dead bodies: cut into pieces, dissolved with chemicals, watched through microscopes. I have already used this book in philosophy seminars for management students, at the University of Campinas, here in Brasil (there is a Portuguese translation). The response was enthusiastic! If you want to find more than formalism in philosophy, you will probably enjoy this book.