A Brief Guide to Philosophical Classics

Sometimes it is the design of the cover of a book that draws one.  Other times, it is the book as an artefact that attracts.  Or it could be the title.  Most certainly, yes, in this case.  The title of the book I want to review today is A Brief Guide to Philosophical Classics: From Plato to Winnie the Pooh by James M. Russell (Robinson Publishers, London, 2015).    A book that throws its philosophical net as far from Plato as Winnie the Pooh, a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by the English author A. A. Milne, must surely be worth perusing.  Having seen the range of the contents, I was not long deciding that I would purchase this book to accompany my many other books on philosophy on my shelves.  For a general reader, this short book, which consists of a moderate number of pages at a finishing line of 286, provides a wide-ranging introduction to philosophical ideas both from the major philosophers of the Western Tradition as well as from novelists and poets who presented their readers with such ideas in less formal and less scholarly forms.

The structure or form of this book is clear from beginning to end.  Russell picks one well-known or popular book from each philosopher or author to review, and finally, at the end of each essay, he summarises each book in a nutshell under the title of “The Speed Read.”  A clever way of presenting a book for neophytes or beginners, or any general reader with an interest in philosophical questions.   

The main sections of the book bear enumeration immediately.  Section 1 covers the standard history of Western Philosophy, while Section II, titled “Wild and Crazy Guys: Outsiders and Gate Crashers”, include the following motley crew: Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, Rand, Borges and Aldous Huxley.  Section III on Meditations ranges from William Blake and Kahlil Gibran to Primo Levi and Ram Dass. Section IV on Psychodrama ranges from Freud and Jung down to Fromm and the contemporary Alain de Botton, one of whose books I recently reviewed in these posts.  Section V on modern “-isms” is suitably sundry, as seems to be Mr Russell’s wont, offering us books by Marx and Engels, Peter Singer, James Lovelock and Naomi Wolf for our delectation.  Section VI deals with books by John Rawls and Daniel Dennett, among several other philosophers of whom I have not heard -- I suppose, it is good for me to admit my Socratic ignorance here in a truly philosophical way.

The author finishes this comprehensive book, which is choc a bloc with philosophical ideas, with a section on the continental philosophers, among whom he reviews books by Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva. 

However, unlike Jonny Thomson’s Mini Philosophy and Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy, the book reads more like a textbook, or a compendium of first-year university notes, and so can be quite a dull and lumpy read.  While it lacks the story-filled magic of Thomson or Warburton for defusing complexity, it offers a far wider range of ideas for philosophical debate.  One small criticism I have is that the ground-breaking feminist book The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir was omitted from an otherwise comprehensive introduction to philosophy and a worthwhile reference book to have on one’s shelves.