I read Magee's book Confessions of a Philosopher some years ago and it was agonizing. Magee's personal bitterness was so pungent and so awkwardly colored his thoughts on philosophical topics that I found myself struggling to finish the book.<p>Of all the books on philosophy I have read, that book by Magee was easily the most off-putting.
His book /Men of Ideas/ is a set of conversations with leading philosophers (among them Searle, Chomsky, Quine), accessible to non experts. I read it as a kid and whenever I happen to revisit it I find just as inspiring. It seems to be out of print, though the videos from the BBC show are ironically on youtube,<p>/The Great Philosophers/ in which prominent philosophers discuss the major figures in the canon of Western philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, etc.) is also enticing, though less than /Men of Ideas/.
I think he would find the philosophy on eternal reoccurrence and determinism helpful. I’m somewhat an atheist and find the two calming around existence & death. I wonder how so by his imagination of Einstein was rooted on his work or the ideology that god doesn’t roll dice.
> <i>He’s an agnostic troubled continuously by the unknowability, indeed the incomprehensibility, of total reality; of what lies beyond the world of appearances and can never be breached.</i><p>The article gave me the impression that Bryan Magee is troubled by boredom mostly.<p>These 'meaning of life' questions can trick people into believing that it's not knowing the answers to some questions, that is the cause of their unrest.<p>It's never that, it's always so much more simple :) I don't know that philosophy students realize they're playing mind games with themselves, for self-amusement. They have a tendency to take ideas seriously, life seriously, and then oh my, you have 1001 problems to deal with!
As someone with a background in both philosophy and psychology, I can't help thinking that both Magee's sense of terror and his ambition to make an immortal contribution to philosophy both come at least in part from his mother's failure to love him as a child.
His questions are easy. He just never learned from someone who knows the answers. If I were in his shoes I would have asked a master about them.<p>> Why is the universe so incredibly complicated?<p>It's not. What exactly is the range of the term universe? It's broad so he ought to point out what he wants to know exactly and where it is. Things of the world are simple when you know, but they are complicated to find out .<p>> does it [(time)] have a beginning?<p>Yes, it begins with activities. Not a very deep question; it needs improvement to see a meaningful answer. If you have the wrong question in your mind then even a master's answers will not match.<p>> the riddle of why we sleep<p>This is more of a biology question but if you want to know from a theory standpoint why it happens, the answer is that what exists does so by repeating what has been in itself and it only changes based on what happens to it. Living beings repeat the bonds of birth and death repeatedly. Death is a time of rest for human beings because their life is a time of work.<p>> What the hell is it all about?<p>Imprecise question. Clear why he obtained no concrete answer.<p>> What are we doing here?<p>Trying to improve your truths through the precious opportunity of life<p>> What’s going on?<p>You will know that after you can open your eye to the fundamental principle of the world. But he didn't have enough virtue to reach that level yet.