The Giants of Philosophy from Knowledge Products
39 hours of Philosophy on 26 Audit Cassettes for £99
Review by John Mann
31st October 1997
I’ve always wanted philosophy on audio cassette but until this series came along my only consolation was a set of recordings I had made of Bryan Magee’s The Great Philosophers TV Series. Although there are plenty of books available on cassette I have until this series found no philosophy available - why don’t philosophy lecturers sell tapes of their lectures? There is of course the argument that books shouldn’t be put on cassette - you should be able to stop and think about a passage, or pause and go back, and that having a book "read to you" isn’t as good for you as reading it yourself. My answer to this is that you listen to tapes of books instead of listening to the radio or music - for example when driving or doing housework - not instead of reading. So these tapes provide the opportunity to listen to philosophy when driving to work, doing the ironing, having a bath or on headphones when going for a walk. It doesn’t mean people will throw down their philosophy books because tapes become available! So, now the tapes are available, are they any good? The simple answer is yes, pretty good. Are they expensive? Not really, the tapes work out at around £8 per philosopher lasting 21 to 3 hours spread over two casettes.
There are three important facts for readers of Philosophy Now to know about The Giants of Philosophy.
There are thirteen tapes each about a great philosopher, encompassing the history of Western Philosophy.
The format of the tapes is to summarise the work of the philosopher, including plenty quotations, a sort of "Coles Notes" of philosophy.
The tapes are read by Charlton Heston and are made in the USA.
Some people will raise an eyebrow at the last item. Is this important? For me, it isn’t particularly important, but there is a certain style - a very American style - going through the tapes which some people won’t like. Perhaps surprisingly Charlton Heston is very listenable and no doubt a better presenter than the various academics who writes the scripts that he reads, and keeping the same presenter for all tapes gives the series continuity and identity.
Any "history of philosophy" will be controversial and the list covered in this series is no exception. The philosophers covered are Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Hume, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dewy and Sartre. Don’t agree? OK, so who would you choose?
It is quite interesting to compare this list with Bryan Magee’s The Great Philosophers TV series, made in the mid-80s. This series had fifteen programs, but Magee divided them up as follows: Plato, Aristotle, Medieval Philosophy including Aristotle and Aquinas, Descartes, the British Empiricists Locke and Berkeley, the European Rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel and Marx, Nietzsche, Frege and Russell, the American Pragmatists William James, Charles Peirce and John Dewey, Heidegger and Sartre and Wittgenstein. Magee’s programs lasted around 40 minutes, which is only about a quarter of the length of a Giants of Philosophy presentation, yet even within that short timespan in half of his programs Magee groups philosophers together: seven of his presentations include more than one philosopher, while the other eight concentrate on just one philosopher. This is because the aim of Magee’s programs are to send his viewers to the original books to read. (frequently in the programs he says that he hopes he has given his viewers enough interest in the philosopher to go and read the books themselves), but the Giants of Philosophy aims to educate its listeners in philosophy, in the words of the advertisement "the full substance and content of important ideas are presented, yet sophisticated, complex and subtle concepts are explained in clear and understandable language that invites the intelligent listener to ponder an idea without struggling through labyrinthine arguments". Paradoxically Magee’s presentations are very high-level and with little reference to any text, while Giants of Philosophy goes theme by theme through selected books by the chosen author. Where Magee covers the entire philosophy of Plato (together with a preamble on Socrates and the pre-Socratics) in 40 minutes, Giants of Philosophy takes that long discussing Plato’s The Republic.
One final point on comparing The Great Philosophers with Giants of Philosophy is the philosophers missed out by Giants of Philosophy: Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Frege, Russell, James, Peirce, Heidegger and Wittgenstein are all covered in The Great Philosophers but not in Giants of Philosophy, which only has one philosopher not covered in "Greats": Kierkegaard. How can so many philosophers be ignored? In some cases the answer is they are not totally ignored. Take Descartes for example, in the tapes on Hume, Kant and Spinoza there are discussions on how the chosen philosopher’s work compared with Descartes, so the listener will get an understanding of Descartes from the other tapes. In other cases "greats" are genuinely ignored - I don’t believe Wittgenstein is ever mentioned for example. The reason for this is that Knowledge Products who make the Giants of Philosophy series also have other tape sets. I sent off for their catalogue and discovered that The World of Philosophy tape set, read by Lynn Redgrave, is also available: this covers many areas missed out by the Giants series, it consists of the following: Socrates; Stoicism and Epicureanism; Confucius, Lao Tzu and Chinese Philosophy; Maimonides and Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Avicenna and Medieval Muslim Philosophy; Duns Scotus and Medieval Christian Philosophy; Descartes, Bacon and Modern Philosophy; Voltaire and Rousseau; The Philosophies of India; William James, Charles Peirce and American Pragmatism; Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whitehead; Simone de Beauvoir; 20th Century European Philosophy. At the end of one of the Giants of Philosophy tapes another philosophy series is advertised on modern philosophy, featuring tapes on Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger etc. My conclusion from all of this is that it is better that each tape deals in depth with an individual philosopher, than that one tape tries to cover too much ground. The tapes in "Giants" do give a full treatment of each philosopher covered, if your favourite philosopher isn’t covered yet, no doubt they will be in time.
So what exactly does a Giants of Philosophy presentation consist of? They each follow a similar layout, let’s take Plato as an example. Each presentation typically begins with the reputation of a philosopher, and some famous quotes about them. With Plato we get the "all philosophy is a footnote to Plato" quote from Whitehead, plus how important he had been, and how relevant he still is. Next comes a biographical sketch to give a quick summary of their life (each text subsequently discussed is placed within the context of their life), which is usually followed by the historical and philosophical context. In Plato’s case this means explaining the politics of Athens, as well as the an outline of pre-Socratic philosophy. Greek society and the place of Socrates in that society ("the gadfly of the state") is also discussed. The length of these introductions varies, typically they are about half of Side 1. On Plato the rest of Side 1 of Tape 1 ends by starting an account of Plato’s trilogy on the trial and death of Socrates. Side 2 Tape 1 begins by completing the trilogy on the death of Socrates. Side 2 finishes with the Meno and an explanation of Plato’s views on knowledge and virtue. Each book covered typically had a large number of quotations, all quotes being read by actors. For Plato each character in a dialogue has a different actor/voice, but for other philosophers all quotations use an actor as the "voice of the philosopher". This makes it clear which parts are the script (Charlton Heston) and which are quotes. Where quotes from other authors are included, these are again read by other actors to make it clear these are quotes from other authors and not the philosopher being covered. This format works well and makes it easy to pick out the quotes. Continuing with Plato, Tape 2 Side 1 begins with the Republic, and the whole side summaries and quotes from the Republic. Topics covered are education, the social system, roles in society, the ideal society, forms and the cave and an evaluation of Plato’s political philosophy. Side 2 of Tape 2 covers the Theaetetus and the Symposium and a final summary and conclusion.
Listening to philosophy can be difficult. If you come to a difficult argument or a technical section it is more difficult to rewind the tape than re-read the passage. Perhaps for this reason I enjoyed the more "poetic" philosophers such as Plato, St Augustine, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard than Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas and Kant. However in total all the presentations were clear, intelligent and very enjoyable to listen to. It’s perhaps unfortunate that they have to be bought as a complete set for £99, but they’d make a great Christmas present!
Total number of words: 1550
The Author is an Software Designer and lives in Hadleigh, Suffolk.
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