by on - Men of Ideas
Overview
This is freely rewritten transcript of interviews with fifteen philosophers which took place in 1975-7 and were broadcast on BBC television in 1978. It is a snapshot of the main varieties of western philosophy as they stood in 1975.
Why should anyone be interested in philosophy at all? Why is it important? What is it anyway?
Considering respects in which literature and philosophy may overlap.
Isiah Berlin - Introduction to Philosophy
Why should anyone be interested in philosophy at all? Why is it important? What is it anyway?

Iris Murdoch - Philosophy and Literature
Considering respects in which literature and philosophy may overlap.

I found Iris to be not very impressive in this interview. Iris seemed to have decided that literature which aims a delivering philosophy is generally bad literature, decided to avoid this mistake in her own philosophy, and taken limited interest in the efforts of others to make this work.

However, the defects of this lack-lustre interview are not all with Iris.

Though this was not long after the high noon of linguistic philosophy, the empoverished conceptions of both philosophers of the scope and methods of philosphy still seems remarkable to me.

The Overlap
I note here some of the more concrete information about which philosophers or novelists were thought to have done something which connected philosophy and literature.
Which Philosophers Wrote Well
First, here is Magee's idea of which philosophers were good writers (without consideration of their status as philosophers). First the great:
  • Plato
  • St. Augustine
  • Schopenhaeur
  • Nietzsche
Then the "very good":
  • Descartes
  • Pascal
  • Berkeley
  • Hume
  • Rousseau
He also mentions two nobel laureates, Russell and Sartre, without saying whether he thinks them good. I won't report which he thought bad. Later he mentions some works of literature which were philosophically motivated
Attitudes of Philosophers to Literature or Art
  • Plato - was hostile to artists
  • Schopenhaeur - regarded art as being central to human life
  • Marx(ism) - sought to enrol art as an instrument of social revolution
Novelists with a Mission
  • Dickens - social commentary promoting social reform
  • George Elliot - similar to Dickens but not always as "successful"
  • Tolstoy
Novelists whose work has philosophical content
  • Dostoevski - the greatest of all existentialist writers?
  • Jean Paui Sarte - particularly La Nausee
  • Proust - the nature of time
  • Stern - Tristram Shandy influences by Locke's ideas about association of ideas
  • Tolstoy - a philosophy of history (inter alia)
Philosophers who Wrote Novels
  • Voltaire
  • Rousseau


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Created:2006/2/20

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