The Story of Thought: The Essential Guide to the History of Western Philosophy

I found myself pleasantly surprised by this book. It's ginormous in size, with big glossy pictures, so I assumed it would likely be fluff. But I found the material to be a lot more in depth than I expected, giving good backgrounds on many of the philosophers lives as well as their ideas. And the pictures are quite lively and go well with the book. This is strictly an into for the layman book though. If you want to know the very most detailed stuff, keep looking. IF you want a nice history up until about the 1960's or 70's, then this is for you. I would have liked to see more returning to a timeline to continually give more context to the current material by showing lineage to past material, but it's still done relatively well. Also, it's really more about the old philosophers, virtually covering nothing after 1980, and a lot has happened. It could've also done a bit better covering political philosophy, which it only touches on by talking about Marx and Hobbes. Even certain people like Locke have their direct political ties downplayed, presented more as just a series of ideas. All in all though, very nice coffee table book.

I have used this book to get some quick information on philosophers that fellow students would mention in class that I had never heard of. Magee does not go into much detail on each entry, but there is enough information there to acquaint yourself with a given philosopher and his ideas as well as the time period in which he/she lived. The book can also be a life saver when you need just a snip of information to support an idea in a research paper.

Outstanding book. Two to six pages on key thinkers and thoughts, well-placed against the backdrop of history, religion and culture. This filled in many (huge) gaps I had in my long, expensive education. One of the best written, most concise books of its type I have had the pleasure to read.

The author, Bryan Magee, is best known -- at least in England -- for his television series on philosophy, "Men of Ideas," "Thinking Aloud," and "The Great Philosophers." I knew nothing about them when I was given "The Story of Thought" for Christmas. I only know that this is a wonderful book.In highly readable and lively text accompanied by beautiful pictures, Magee describes the development of Western philosophy by examining and sampling the works of its main proponents, from Socrates to Sartre.In each vignette Magee highlights the philosopher's main ideas... Don't worry, Magee takes the main philosophical theme apart and reassembles it in modern (and understandable) language.That's one of the two greatest features about this book: Magee's ability to explain what these great philosophers had to say. It's pretty widely accepted that if you delve into philosophy you rapidly become hip-deep in obscure and difficult language and definitions. Magee points out the philosophers who were most guilty of writing in dense and undigestible prose: most of Fichte's writings, for example, "were extremely obscure," and Immanuel Kant, called by many the most outstanding philosopher since the Greeks, "was not an attractive writer."However Magee reveals that many philosophers wrote beautifully: Thomas Hobbes was "trenchant and agressive;" Rene Descartes was "a superlative writer;" William James had "an exceptionally pleasing style.""The Story of Thought" makes you believe that you'd like to study philosophy yourself. Magee makes it attractive and relevant to the way we live. In his hands it becomes much more than a tortured explanation of why we exist or what thought really is. Magee shows us that, "Philosophy begins when human beings start trying to understand the world, not through religion or by accepting authority but through the use of reason."The second great feature of the book is based on the fact that Magee is obviously an art lover. "The Story of Thought" is beautifully illustrated and, frankly, I keep coming back to it because of the pictures. There are close to 400 illustrations: paintings, sculpture, photographs, book covers, and diagrams in this 240 page book. But the pictures support the text in the best way, by conveying difficult ideas in visual terms and by putting faces to these deep thinkers.Magee illustrates the power of the ideas in his examination of each philosopher. For example John Locke influenced the American and the French revolutions; Rousseau argued that feelings should replace reason; and, of course, Galileo and Newton whose experiments and scientific ideas shape everything in modern life.Magee reserves some of his most piercing analysis for Karl Marx. The largest revolutions in history, in Russia and China, were sparked by Marxist theory. Many intellectuals in Third World countries were attracted to Marx's concepts of central planning and modernization. By the mid-20th century about a third of the world's people was under the sway