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CHRISTOPHER BRAY is the author of 1965: The Year Modern Britain was Born
A.N. WILSON is a novelist, biographer, historian and columnist • JAMES MORAN is professor of modern English literature and drama at the University of Nottingham

Facing up to the big questions

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gist Charles Taylor, are mini masterpieces. To Copleston and Bertrand Russell, in which our
A History of Philosophy: be sure, one might wish for more on how, say, two interlocutors pretty much take it in turns
The Condensed Copleston the now 93-year-old Taylor’s background in to say that they’ll have to agree to disagree
ANTHONY CARROLL Hegel – on whose central importance to the on whatever point they’ve just discussed), he
(BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM, 496 PP, £35) great tradition Copleston was always properly and Ayer became good friends. Still, it is
insistent – informs so much of his work. Russell – a far more original thinker than
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £31.50 • TEL 020 7799 4064 And yes, it would have been nice Ayer – who is given a lengthy treat-
to get just a little insight into ment by Copleston (and
how MacIntyre contrives to Carroll) in the ninth volume

O
VER THE COURSE of 30-odd years, disdain both the moral arid- of Copleston’s series on util-
from the mid 1940s through to the ity of contemporary itarianism and early
mid 1970s, Jesuit priest Frederick capitalism and what he analytic philosophy.
Copleston (pictured) wrote what became his sees as the individualist Talking of Russell,
nine-volume A History of Philosophy. After fantasies of Marxism. But nobody would dare boil
Copleston’s death, in 1994, two other books, this is to cavil. down his History of
one on Russian thinkers, one on twentieth- Because Carroll, like Western Philosophy into
century ideas, were incorporated into the Copleston before him, a slimmer volume. Despite
series. A complete collection of Bloomsbury’s wants to offer up more than its flaws of tone and empha-
current paperback edition of the books will a collection of cribs on Comte sis – and its occasional
take up a good 18 inches of space on your or Kant or Cartesianism. descents into utter wronghead-
shelves. Nobody, save Copleston it seems safe Copleston really did write a history edness – Russell’s book is a glorious
to say, can have read the entire series all the of philosophy. He had an argument to make read, and it remains the best gift for any
way through. not just about the shape of individual budding philosopher. Copleston’s sly ironies
Make that seemed. For here comes Anthony thoughts, but about the overall trajectory of can amuse (his not-quite-dismissal of Gabriel
Carroll, a former student of Copleston’s at thought itself. Without ever giving in to the Marcel as more of a poet than a “public prop-
Heythrop College (where Copleston taught kind of vulgar historicist cramp that maps erty philosopher” is so wickedly suggestive, it
from 1940 until his retirement in 1974, and any and every phenomenon on to contem- has you aching to know what he’d have made
where sales from his History pretty much poraneous events in the, ahem, real world, of Derrida and Foucault’s designer-impene-
funded the setting up of the College Library). he showed over and over again how the tem- trable). But it has to be acknowledged that
He has taken it upon himself to boil per of the times can license modes of thought Copleston’s prose is so much less fun than
Copleston’s series down into one hefty but that might otherwise not have found expres- Russell’s. It’s not just its rebarbative length
handleable book. Even if A History of sion. that makes A History of Philosophy a slog.
Philosophy: The Condensed Copleston skewed Given the times Copleston himself was writ- Anthony Carroll has done both Copleston
or misconstrued the ideas and arguments of ing in, this was no small achievement. During and his admirers a huge favour by squeezing
the originals, it would be a masterclass of the middle part of the past century a lot of his thoughts between one set of hard covers.
compression. As it is, Carroll’s book is as clear thinkers who ought to have known better were
and colourful a summary of Copleston’s drift busy kidding themselves that philosophy was
as anyone could ask for. about no more than the clearing up of a few
In fewer than 500 pages Carroll covers confusions brought on by errant grammar or
everyone Copleston covered, from Socrates dodgy syntax. If it did nothing else, Copleston’s
and Plato through to Poincaré and Sartre. As series served to remind people outside the
bread to accompany his consommé double, academy that philosophy had once been –
Carroll has written an Introduction and a indeed, thanks to the contemporaneous exam- is run by Church House Bookshop
Conclusion. The intro has penetrating things ple of the existentialists, still was – a way of – one of the UK’s leading religious
to say about Copleston’s life and times, his facing up to the big questions: consciousness booksellers with thousands
of titles in stock.
History of Philosophy, the history of phi- and experience, life and death, good and evil.
losophy more generally. In the Conclusion,
To place an order call:
Carroll discusses a trio of more recent thinkers CERTAINLY, Copleston loathed what he saw +44 (0)20 7799 4064
whose work appeared too late for Copleston’s as the scientistic silliness of the logical posi- Email: [email protected]
original series. tivists. Not that he let a disagreement get in
As imitations of the Copleston style, these the way of a friendship. After a fiery debate International P&P charges will apply.
sections, on the critical theorist Jürgen on the existence of God with A.J. Ayer on the
Habermas, the Thomist moralist Alasdair BBC’s Third Programme (a far more dramatic the published review.
MacIntyre and the philosophical anthropolo- and demanding tussle than that between

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