Review
The weaknesses of others are usually deeply entertaining (one need only look at the popularity of the Daily Mail and Heat) and ‘Philosophers Behaving Badly’ promises a couple of hours of indulging in elevated Schadenfreude. Rodgers and Thompson set out to illustrate the difficulties of consistently applying philosophical systems to life’s realities. In their introduction they warn of the dangers that prey on those entering philosophy unwarily. “Those seeking in philosophy a guide for the perplexed should be aware that while philosophy can enlighten it can also mislead and delude,” they write. They ought perhaps to have said: “Look on these works ye mighty and despair.” For they show that even the philosophers (those models of virtue) who came up with these systems of thought were inconsistent in sustaining their principles after the descent from the rarefield air of abstract thought to the muddy complexities of daily life. The book comprises eight biographical essays, outlining the main philosophical ideas and eccentricities of the philosophers in question. Although these philosophers are no worse than the average human being, their faults, when juxtaposed with their ideas, seem far more severe. The thinkers selected are not the only philosophers who have behaved badly, madly or inconsistently, but they are in some ways the pick of the bunch: Schopenhauer was a misogynistic grump. Nietzche’s syphilis drove him to madness. Russell was known as “Dirty Bertie”, Wittgenstein liked destroying the careers of his students, Heidegger was a Nazi, Sartre a self-centred philanderer and Foucault a self-confessed sado-masochist. It is only when they are compared with their lofty idealism that one realises the extent to which these philosophers were frequently incapable of setting these ideas into practice. Jean Jaques Rousseau, for example, wrote ‘Emile’ as a novel of education and yet failed miserably to educate or take care of his many illegitimate children. He left them in foster homes, terrified that they might despise him. His attitude towards his children was only one of the many inconsistencies which were part of his life. As an advocate of civil liberties and republican ideals, despising the aristocracy, he was dependent on its patronage and adored being lionised in upper class salons. As one of the fathers of the Romantic Movement, he understandably preferred comfort and luxury to nature. The other philosophers fail on different accounts. Mietzsche was incapable of living life according to his ideas for reasons of physical failure rather than an intellectual inability to uphold his principles. His madness was perhaps the most tragic and entertaining: at one point in the advanced phase of syphilis, one of his friends found him dancing naked in his room, convinced he was Dionysus. The great irony of his syphilitic madness is the fact that he only ever went to a brothel once and claimed to have lived an almost virginal life. As his failure to be consistent was due to a medical problem rather than to a flaw of character he does not entirely fit into the pattern of the book. His madness stands more as a warning not to visit brothels than as a warning for the perils of applying philosophy to life. Perhaps inevitably, the book’s central flaw lies in the simplicity of its conception. Geared towards those who have either little or no knowledge of philosophy, it falls between the cracks. On the one hand, it is too broad to be serious, and on the other it depends too much on a psycho-analytica style, constantly linking the philosophers’ childhood traumas with their later behavioural lapses. There is too much psychology for this reader’s taste – and too little scandal. That said, it gives a good general overview and there are interesting facts to be learned. –Anna Arco, Catholic Herald
From the Author
Every great philosophy is the confession of its founder, a kind of secret and involuntary confession. Friedrich Nietzsche.
Those seeking in philosophy a guide for the perplexed should be warned: while philosophy can enlighten, it can also mislead and delude. As Descartes observed, The greatest souls are capable of the greatest virtues as well as the greatest vices.
Philosophers Behaving Badly explains how the lives of eight major philosophers have often contradicted the tenor of their thought: Rousseau, the great apostle of education and good parenting, abandoned all five of his children to an orphanage and, despite professed egalitarianism, was adept at living of the rich and mighty; Schopenhauer’s philosophy of compassionate detachment from desire through aesthetic contemplation was belied by a life of petty selfishness and gloomy misanthropy; Nietzsche, while passionately preaching the death of god and the coming of an elite of Übermensch or supermen, lived like the reclusive, impoverished academic that he was; Bertrand Russell, supposed prophet of benevolent reason and world peace, seethed with inner hatreds that ruined the lives of all around him, especially women and children; Wittgenstein was so unshakeably convinced that he was always right about everything that he lashed out angrily at any who contradicted him; Heidegger supported Hitler and the Third Reich, in spite of having a Jewish mentor and a Jewish lover, and in the 31 years he lived after the war, could not bring himself to apologise ; Sartre admitted that his philosophy had been influenced by his problems in dealing with women; Foucault chose to live dangerously by frequenting the SM parlors and bathhouses of San Francisco, where anonymity allowed him the freedom to explore sex at its most impersonal and brutal, but cost him his life.
All of which shows that the life of reason does not necessarily lead to a reasonable life.
About the Author
Nigel Rodgers is a historian and author of several publications, most recently The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome as well as biographies of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.
Nigel Rodgers is a historian and author of several publications, most recently The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome as well as biographies of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.
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