Product Description

The story of Ted Honderich, philosopher, a story of a perilous philosophical life, marked by critical examination, and a compelling personal life full of human drama. This is the story of Ted Honderich's perilous progress from boyhood in Canada to the Grote Professorship of Mind and Logic at University College London, A. J. Ayer's chair. It is compelling, candid and revealing about the beginning and the goal, and everything in between: early work as a journalist on The Toronto Star, travels with Elvis Presley, arrival in Britain, loves and friendships, academic rivalries and battles, marriages and affairs, self-interest and empathy. It sets out resolutely to explain how and why it all happened.

It is as much a narrative of Ted Honderich's philosophy. He makes hard problems real. Philosophy from consciousness and determinism to political violence and democracy comes into sharp focus.

Along the way, questions keep coming up. Does the free marriage owe anything to the analytic philosophy? What are the costs of truth? Are the politics of England slowly making it an ever-better place? Is an action's rightness independent of the mixture of motives out of which it came?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1697238 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.34" h x 5.10" w x 7.96" l, 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 472 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Although he eventually held the Grote Professorship of Mind and Logic at University College in London, Honderich (How Free Are You; Conservativism) was slow to feel the pull of philosophy. In this rather pedantic and exhausting memoir, he recounts his journey from a lonely Canadian childhood to a career in that field. When he arrives at college, he embraces literature and literary studies, though he is an undisciplined student. Nevertheless, realizing that he has a gift for writing lively prose, Honderich supplements his studies with a job at the Toronto Star, where he becomes one of the paper's principal reporters and travels with a number of celebrities, including Elvis. It is at this time that the philosophical life begins to attract him. With his new wife, Margaret, Honderich goes off to London to study with his favorite philosopher, A.J. Ayer; after a number of teaching jobs, Honderich is eventually appointed to the chair once held by his beloved teacher. Always a realist--believing that reality is to be found only in the material world--he quickly aligns himself with David Hume's philosophy that every event in our lives has a determinate cause. Honderich's philosophy has been marked by his struggle to explain morality, passion and emotion by his theory of causation, yet his memoir focuses as much on his randy sexual appetite as on his philosophy. Furthermore, Honderich writes so often in a passive, third-person voice that readers may wonder if he is describing himself or someone else. Photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
Of all lives, the inner life of a philosopher is the hardest to capture on the page ... Ted Honderich has done the job.
–The London Times

... a triumph ... a public thinker with rich inner and private lives and no compunction about making himself vulnerable ... thrilling, intellectually fraught.
–The Guardian

...rough-hewn alpha male in the academic world, whose record of boozing, schmoozing and womanizing stands almost scandalously proud of the philosophical pack.
–The Journal of Consciousness Studies

...an unusual book ... just what academic and philosophical life was like in the second half of the 20th Century.
–The Spectator

...brutally honest self-portrait of a man whose passion for ideas and good-looking women has burned unabated.
–The Financial Times

Radical Philosophy
"It is a tale worth telling, and a tale worth reading."