2020-06-25
15 分钟For this first of two special lockdown episodes of Philosophy Bites we interviewed each other. Here David Edmonds interviews Nigel Warburton about his bestseller A Little History of Philosophy. In the companion episode Nigel interviews David about his bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker.
This is philosophy bytes with me, David.
Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
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Interviews for philosophy bytes have, until now, always been conducted in person.
But philosophy bytes, like much of the world, is in lockdown.
So here's something a bit different, a book interview.
Philosophy books tend not to be bestsellers.
A little History of philosophy published by Yale was a rare exception, translated into multiple languages.
Its author might be familiar to you.
Nigel Warburton, welcome to Philosophy Bites.
Thank you very much.
We're talking today about a little history of philosophy.
You've written many books, but this is your best selling book.
Tell us a bit about how it fits into a whole series of books.
Well, back in the early thirties, Ernst Gombrich wrote a book called a little history of the world just after he finished his PhD.
He was a brilliant art historian and theorist about the nature of art, but he was asked to write a history of the world, and he wrote that it was quite soon banned by the Nazis for being too pacifist, and it wasn't actually published in English until 2005.
And then Yale University Press started commissioning a series following up from that.
Your book is a survey of the history of philosophy.
You're not the first one to attempt that.