MixedThe Wall Street JournalGrayling takes a modest approach to delimiting his subject. Rather than begin with an overarching definition, he identifies core concerns of what we now call \'philosophy\' and then traces their historical antecedents. This is a wise strategy, because, as Mr. Grayling repeatedly reminds us, for most of its history \'philosophy\' referred simply to rational inquiry in general ... But this approach has its own difficulties. What do epistemology, ethics and metaphysics have in common, other than their failure to become independent disciplines in their own right, as physics and psychology did? ... In his highly readable narrative, Mr. Grayling approaches these methodological questions judiciously, taking as few controversial stands as possible...For a book that covers more than 100 individual thinkers spanning 2,500 years, the level of both detail and accuracy is admirable ... In addition, he is charitable to a wide variety of philosophical views ... It is a testament to Mr. Grayling’s evenhandedness that one finishes this book none the wiser about his own convictions, aside from a general disapproval of Marxism, deconstruction and any philosophy that takes its bearings from religion ... Presenting the history of philosophy as neutrally as Mr. Grayling does here, as a catalogue of the opinions of the familiar great names, can give the impression that that is all there is to philosophy’s history, a cacophony of views, arguments, doctrines, systems. What goes lacking in histories like these is the ideal of objectivity (some of these philosophical views are right, and some are wrong), as well as precisely what historians, in their revolt against Hegel, have become so suspicious of: teleology, an account of where it is all leading to. It is, in one way, odd to expect anything less from a history of philosophy. We would not expect, for instance, a historian of physics to remain neutral on whether Newton or Einstein had a better theory of gravity...Which means that narrating the history of philosophy can’t be properly pursued without staking, and defending, philosophical claims in one’s voice about truth, reason, history and teleology.
