This was part of my father’s library, and has some of his underlining in a couple of chapters.
As the title suggests, it is an overview of philosophy. Trueblood emphasized the back and forth questioning of issues, and filled it with illustrative quotations with appeals to read the original author. "The best way toward greatness is to mix with the great." Dialog is one of the best ways to sharpen your own thoughts, and he tries to approximate that in the book.
Samples:
A.N. Whitehead, The Function of Reason "Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study."
Or his own words in the penultimate chapter, on Society
The ultimate enemy is not any of these things or events to which we usually refer. The most terrible enemy is triviality. No society will be a good one, no matter how adequately people are fed and clothed, if it is not a society in which men and women can be made to feel, without deception, that their lives are important.
…
The ideal social order, then, must include many things, but three are preeminent. It must include freedom; it must include order; it must include a sense of meaning.
The book was an interesting journey through the to and fro of debate about the limits of proof and determinism and chance, and what can be built on the foundation of the certainty of error. (If you know that at least somebody in a debate has to be wrong, what can you infer about the existence of an objective order?)
He spends more time than warranted on the Oxford group that followed Wittgenstein, but their approach (philosophy is merely the study of the grammar and never tried to figure out if propositions are true or false) isn’t so much of a live issue these days. Which was inevitable.
It was fun to see where I fit in the spectrum, but I have a lousy memory for names and I'd have to re-read it to make sure I had the labels right.
Read it. Though perhaps Trueblood would say "Read Plato and Temple and..."
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