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Title: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century by Alfred Jules Ayer ISBN: 0-394-50454-2 Publisher: Random House Inc Pub. Date: 01 September, 1982 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $22.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: badly written and deliberately obfuscating
Comment: Picture an elderly English gentleman in his sitting room tossing out run-on sentences, partial explanations, and completely incomprehensible passages and you have the basic idea. One gets the idea that AJ Ayer was hardly interested in making himself understood. Yet he was interested in his obscure opinions and unstructured analysis.

While this book may be fine if you are already well aquainted with the material, it should not, I repeat NOT, be used as an introduction to philosophy in the twentieth century.

Rating: 5
Summary: A great book, which ought to be reissued
Comment: It's a shame that this book is out of print, as to my knowledge it is the best book of its kind. Ayer critically summarizes each of the major strains of 20th century thought, from logical positivism to pragmatism to existentialism. Russell, Moore, James and Collingwood are covered in some detail; other thinkers, such as Heidegger, Sartre, Quine and Goodman, are introduced more concisely (but not neglectfully -- for example, I found Ayer's few pages on "Being and Time" very helpful). A participant himself in some of the philosophical debates he chronicles, Ayer clearly understands what he is writing about, and he is both able and willing to translate complex ideas into non-technical language. The subject matter is not easy, but Ayer's style is always enjoyable. This book ought to be reissued, but for now it's worth tracking down a used copy.