» Wednesday, 27 February A.D. 2008
christian academics
What does faithfully executing your work as a Christian mean? At least in the academic world, it looks something like this:
Oddly, the most objective History of Philosophy I've ever read, and it's a big one, is Frederick Copleston's. It's a nine volume thing, about 4,000 pages in all, but it's also a blast. Plus, there was lots of remedial stuff that, even after I got by B.A. in Philosophy, I really didn't have a handle on, and I feel that Copleston is really great refresher training as well. Ironically, for Russell, Copleston was an Orthodox Catholic, almost personally a Fundamentalist, and so it is odd, even bizarre that such a source, which would seemingly be the most unobjective, really does a wondrous job.
And on people Copleston disagrees with, he does so with a phenominal fairness. In fact, the people he disagrees with, you can tell he made an extra effort to be very careful to represent those views as the people putting them forward really intended.
So, although I am a die-hard Agnostic who believes that Copleston's Catholic Orthodoxy is pure silliness, amazingly, I must say that his ability to portray other philosophers in a way that is true to those philosphers in question, is almost uncanny, really sheer genius. That being said, probably Russell had a higher I.Q., and that may have gotten in his way with his particular History project...
The shot at the end is quite unnecessary, however. The sheer bewilderment of this reviewer that this Orthodox Catholic could improve upon Betrand Russell is a response worth striving for.
posted by Nate @ 2:02PM