A.J. Ayer: A Life Ayer (1910-1989) was a man of startling complexity: an exceptionally rigorous and penetrating philosopher, he was also a dedicated hedonist and seducer. J.A. "Beautifully written, sympathetic, and sensitive a balanced and rounded picture
| TITLE | : | A.J. Ayer: A Life |
| AUTHOR | : | |
| RATING | : | 4.73 (105 Votes) |
| ASIN | : | 0802138691 |
| FORMAT TYPE | : | Paperback |
| NUMBER of PAGES | : | 416 Pages |
| PUBLISH DATE | : | 2002-02-09 |
| GENRE | : |
A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) was a man of startling complexity: an exceptionally rigorous and penetrating philosopher, he was also a dedicated hedonist and seducer. He traveled in the most glamorous social circles, yet his friends found him oddly remote. Internationally acclaimed author Ben Rogers brings the brilliant, strangely vulnerable author of the classic Language, Truth, and Logic to vivid life, along with the Oxford intellectual world where he met Isaiah Berlin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and many other great thinkers and writers of the era. Colorful, intimate, and often poignant, this is a powerful biography of a provocative and unforgettable man whose ideas changed the landscape of Western thought. "Beautifully written, sympathetic, and sensitive a balanced and rounded picture of a very complicated man." -- Simon Blackburn, The New Republic "A readable and well-researched account of the l
EDITORIAL :
From Publishers Weekly "Freddie" Ayer (1910-1989) "was like an eighteenth-century rationalist voluptuary," one of his former students once recalled. Oxford historian of philosophy Rogers (Pascal: In Praise of Vanity) captures both aspects of the notable philosopher who believed in a life well livedDand asked that the song "Oh, What a Beautiful Doll" be played at his funeralDbut the frenetic voluptuary is much more vivid (Rogers identifies 30 of Ayer's mistresses, almost all by name, including gossip columnist Sheilah Graham) than the exponent of reason. Ayer came from wealthy families on both sides, went to the best schools and knew the beautiful and best-connected people. Precociously clever and narcissistically bent, he was "remote," Rogers concedes, "from some of the more ordinary human emotions." Yet his Language, Truth and Logic, published when he was only 25, achieved cult status a
REVIEW :
"I warned you," Anthony Blanche said to Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Where once philosophers as Hegel, Schopenhauer, McTaggart, Bergson and Russell wrote for an educated public, today philosophers write for other philosophers. He even lectured the Kennedy family! For Ayer, philosophy and life were separate affairs for the most part (and of affairs you'll read plenty). On reading his life story, I find that Ayer did more than I knew to bring the anti-metaphysical views of his hero Hume to the public, the academy, and a large and interesting slice of cultural limelights. And for that task Ayer was well suited. He firmly believed that when one began to speak beyond the realms of empirical evidence, one risked speaking nothing but nonsense, and to his credit he seemed to mostly avoid the temptation. Instead of a search for ultimate truths, philosophy has become a ser
No comments:
Post a Comment