This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 19, Issue 2, from 2006.
These days, it’s scepticism which tends to make me most sceptical. Not, you understand, the reasonable, thought-through scepticism of esteemed organs such as this, but what passes for scepticism in the wider world, yet is really no more than a world-weary cynicism.
I’m particularly sceptical about the standard sceptics: those who proclaim that society is dumbing down. Like all doomsayers, this lot have of course been around for years, and had they been right, by now, after a good few centuries of decline, we’d all be unable to add up one and one or use words longer than, well, you know, that word that means the number of sounds you get in a word.
Looking back through some personal archives (a grand word for long-forgotten folders on my hard drive), I came across something I had scribbled in response to just such a claim made about nine years ago. Weidenfeld and Nicolson had just published a series of short monographs called The Great Philosophers series. This heralded the predictable accusations of pernicious simplification and trivialisation. Philosophy, say the critics, is a complex and difficult subject and not something that can be captured in 60 easily digestible pages.
The usually eminently sensible Stuart Jeffries, for example, in Education Guardian wrote that the series suggests “profound and tricky philosophers could be served up like a light supper”. I’m sure he’d backtrack on that now: after all, he frequently interviews leading thinkers in considerably fewer than 60 pages and has also made some short TV programmes which have attempted to explain the character of entire nation’s philosophies. If he followed his own supper analogy through, he’d be a biscuit boy.
Jeffries’ mistake is actually the same one more cynical sceptics make, whether they’re dissing popular culture or George W Bush: they underestimate the intelligence of the masses. Most readers of such short books do not expect them to tell them everything there is to know about the philosopher in question, just as they would not expect one of Jeffries’ interviews to fully reveal the mind of their subjects. There is always the occasional ignorant bore who thinks an hour spent with a primer has equipped him with all the knowledge and conceptual tools to be an expert, but for every one such individual there are countless more who read these books simply wanting, and getting, some basic grasp of the great ideas which have shaped human understanding.
This is even more evident in the case of obviously tongue-in-cheek books like Pooh and the Philosophers, which is in any case far more amusing if you know a little about the subject anyway. It’s no more than a form of intelligent entertainment, and as yet I have not met anyone (nor hope to do so) who after reading the book would claim to have learned a great deal about philosophy.
Given that we accept accessible introductions don’t give us the full picture, there still seems to be a feeling that by their very nature they attempt the impossible. How can one distil a complex system of thought into an easily digestible read? But this accusation too rings hollow. The best popular science, for example, far from tempting the reader into thinking they know all there is to know, is actually extremely humbling. Yet I would have thought even the flimsiest grasp of science is required for anyone who hopes to achieve a decent general education. These things are too important to be left to the specialists.
If this is true for physics, then it is at least equally true for philosophy. Philosophers examine the most basic questions of all. What is knowledge? Who am I? What is the right way to live? If their answers to these questions are not valuable to intelligent non-specialists, then we would be justified in questioning their value at all.
The best introductions do three things. First, they engage and entertain. This is actually essential if they are to achieve their goals: you don’t take in much from books you have to wade through, desperately trying to stay awake. Second, they present the most significant ideas of the great thinkers in that subject area in a way which can be understood. Of course, depth is sacrificed to achieve this, but the days when an educated person could reasonably be expected to have a good in-depth knowledge of more than one or two subjects has gone. And in any case, in most subjects, the essence of a theory is deceptively simple and philosophy is no exception.
Third, such works should leave the reader with no illusions about the extent of their knowledge. Any book which claimed in all seriousness to tell you everything there is to know in 100 pages would merit censure, but I don’t see many of these around. Writers don’t need to keep reminding us that there is more to know than they can tell us. Such disclaimers only prove to be wearing, but the implication should be there.
Of course, the cynical sceptics could point out that since I have myself published some ‘popular philosophy’ books which include those grievous crimes of popular culture references and lightness of tone, “I would say that”. To which I say, they would say that. You see, adopting a sceptical posture is not good enough: you need sceptical arguments too.
