A history of philosophy that could have been better thought out

PHILOSOPHY: A Short History of Western ThoughtBy  Stephen Trombley,  Atlantic Books, 282pp. £14.199

STEPHEN TROMBLEY has undertaken the unenviable task of distilling 2,500 years of western philosophy into a book of 282 small pages (index included). To his credit, he makes a decent fist of it and manages to namecheck the most important and established thinkers and their philosophical movements. Indeed, reading such a slim yet packed volume can almost induce dizziness. Pre-Socratic philosophers first, then Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and company whizz by, with Sts Augustine and Aquinas next, only to be followed by another set of thinkers and another – and, before you know it, familiar philosophers not that long gone, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, make an appearance.

The snapshots of each and the headlines of their thinking will not be to everyone's taste. Indeed, if one feels the need to wolf down thinkers at such a savage pace, is it really worth the bother? Surely philosophy demands a little more time and effort in reading. Crash courses are all very well, but time for reflection is central to understanding the subject. Trombley's perfectly adequate entries on Socrates and Plato, for example, pale into insignificance when compared with, say, Bettany Hughes's magnificent The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life. Admittedly Hughes's book is a much larger work than Trombley's, but it is also much more vivid and, ultimately, more rewarding.

That said, Trombley’s style, for the most part, is engaging, and he is not afraid of making the odd joke, remarking that “the Sceptics were, well, sceptical of Stoicism”. The philosophical pen pictures can cause other problems, however. Writing about the Catholic Church’s index of prohibited books, Trombley adopts a more polemical tone than he does in other entries. He argues that the church “replaced the murder of the Crusades and torture of the Inquisition with a form of mind control that lasted until 1966”. (Catholics will, no doubt, be glad to know that this mind control ended back then.) He writes that the church did not put Mein Kampf on its index because of the institution’s “long history of anti-Semitism; but the omission of the works of Karl Marx, the most influential anti-Christian in modern times, is puzzling”.

Is murder an appropriate word in the context of the Crusades? And had the Catholic Church put Mein Kampfon its index, would Trombley really have been happy and excused it for the index in the first place? A more serious approach might have been to explain why the Catholic Church felt the need to have an index, to analyse what it hoped to achieve and to put the issue into context. Do or did secular governments, for example, operate their own indexes, and how does Trombley reconcile his appreciation of Frederick Copleston SJ and his magisterial A History of Philosophywith "mind control"?

Trombley’s assertion that Marx is “anti-Christian” may also come as a surprise to many Christians who feel quite comfortable with much of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, chiming, as it does, with Christianity.

Similarly, while writing about the philosopher and Catholic nun Edith Stein, Trombley argues that she petitioned Pope Pius XII to help save German Jews and that Pius did “nothing”. That assertion has been challenged many times by supporters of Pius (not all of whom are Catholic), and, at the very least, Trombley ought to note that Pius has been defended – even if he does not accept the defence. It is unfair and strange, given that Trombley goes out of his way to ensure that Nietzsche’s work is rescued from its association with the Nazis. In addition, Stein’s life, death and work have not been forgotten by the Catholic Church.

What would Socrates say about Trombley’s use of language and his arguments in this context? He might accuse Trombley over the ouzo of – gulp – being a Sophist and wanting to win the debate at any cost.

Trombley rightly notes that philosophy “remains a profession dominated by men”, and one is struck by that in this narrative time and again. Women philosophers are mentioned – Hannah Arendt is there (how could she not be?), as is Julia Kristeva. Disappointingly, Elizabeth (GEM) Anscombe is noted only in the context of a witty remark she once made. Anscombe studied under Wittgenstein, and her fellow British philosopher Mary Warnock said of her that she was “the undoubted giant among women philosophers, a writer of immense breadth, authority and penetration”.

Given that men rule the philosophical roost, should more of an effort not have been made to mark the work of those remarkable women who made a breakthrough in this arena?

Trombley’s book has some merits, but it also proves an old saying in Irish: ní bhíonn saoi gan locht. Or, in the English version, Homer sometimes nods.

Pól Ó Muirí is is Irish-language Editor