A Hundred Years of Philosophy [Book Review]

Passmore is one of the most outstanding historians of the contemporary philosophical scene. He seems to have read everything, digested it, and has an uncanny ability to empathize with diverse philosophical viewpoints and elucidate them in a clear, witty, cogent style. Although the first three quarters of this revised edition is basically the same as earlier editions, we now have additions to his account of Ayer, Popper, Wittgenstein and Sartre; enlarged sections on Austin, Jaspers and Heidegger; a new section on Merleau-Ponty and a chapter bringing us right up to the present discussions of the mind-body problem in Anglo-Saxon philosophy. With this revised edition, one feels more acutely the pinch of the limitations that Passmore initially set for himself, viz., to treat the ideas of those writers that entered into the public domain of philosophical discussion in England during the past hundred years. Consequently his treatment of continental thinkers is not nearly as complete or perceptive as his treatment of British philosophers, or his chapters on "classical" American thinkers which are among the best written by anybody.—R. J. B.