'Astonishing ... enjoy its riches slowly, and savour every
generous, erudite and undogmatic page' Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times
'We English men have wits,' wrote the clergyman Ralph Lever in
1573, and, 'we have also framed unto ourselves a language.'
Witcraft is a fresh and brilliant history of how philosophy became
established in English. It presents a new form of philosophical
storytelling and challenges what Jonathan Ree calls the
'condescending smugness' of traditional histories of philosophy.
Ree tells the story of philosophy as it was lived and practised,
embedded in its time and place, by men and women from many walks of
life, engaged with the debates and culture of their age. And, by
focusing on the rich history of works in English, including
translations, he shows them to be quite as colourful, diverse,
inventive and cosmopolitan as their continental counterparts.
Witcraft offers new and compelling intellectual portraits not only
of celebrated British and American philosophers, such as Hume,
Emerson, Mill and James, but also of the remarkable philosophical
work of literary authors, such as William Hazlitt and George Eliot,
as well as a carnival of overlooked characters - priests and poets,
teachers, servants and crofters, thinking for themselves and
reaching their own conclusions about religion, politics, art and
everything else. The book adopts a novel structure, examining its
subject at fifty-year intervals from the sixteenth century to the
twentieth. Researched over decades and illuminated by quotations
from extensive archival material, it is a book full of stories and
personalities as well as ideas, and shows philosophy springing from
the life around it. Witcraft overturns the established orthodoxies
of the history of philosophy, and celebrates the diversity,
vitality and inventiveness of philosophical thought.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!