A.J. Ayer: A Life - Softcover

Rogers, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802138691 ISBN 13: 9780802138699

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002

Synopsis

A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) was a man of startling complexity: an exceptionally rigorous and penetrating philosopher, he was also a dedicated hedonist and seducer. He traveled in the most glamorous social circles, yet his friends found him oddly remote. Internationally acclaimed author Ben Rogers brings the brilliant, strangely vulnerable author of the classic Language, Truth, and Logic to vivid life, along with the Oxford intellectual world where he met Isaiah Berlin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and many other great thinkers and writers of the era. Colorful, intimate, and often poignant, this is a powerful biography of a provocative and unforgettable man whose ideas changed the landscape of Western thought. "Beautifully written, sympathetic, and sensitive ... [a] balanced and rounded picture of a very complicated man." -- Simon Blackburn, The New Republic "A readable and well-researched account of the life and career of a remarkable figure." -- Lynwood Abram, Houston Chronicle "A.J. Ayer lived a fascinating life and in Rogers he has found an ideal biographer....." -- Frank McLynn, The New Statesman "Rogers succeeds in capturing the spirit of a philosophical maverick who many loved to hate." -- Kirkus Reviews "Exceptionally good ... A.J. Ayer weaves the philosophical, public, and private strands of Ayer's life together most skillfully." -- The Economist

About this title

Review:

If AJ Ayer, Britain's leading exponent of logical positivism in the 20th century, believed that the good life was none of philosophy's business, then this biography shows he thought it was certainly his business. As a young man in the 1930s discussing the nature of philosophy, Ayer told Isaiah Berlin that it was just about conceptual analysis and the rest, "all of life", was outside its remit. His Language, Truth and Logic was published at this time and Ayer duly spent the rest of his life trying to seal the fate of metaphysics, while living "all of life" to the full--you quickly lose count of his love affairs. He was a man who loved football, clubs, dancing and good food. The combination of his stern analytical philosophy and his aestheticism, and that aestheticism's contradictions (its mix of 1920s dandyism and 1930s rebelliousness), make Ayer's life intriguing.

Ben Rogers' biography is full of anecdotes--when asked by a student about Albert Camus he replied "we were making love to twin sisters in Paris after the war"; and 40 years on he encountered Mike Tyson apparently assaulting Naomi Campbell and demanded that he and Tyson talk like rational men and settle the situation. You can read such stories not as an unfolding narrative culminating in the definitive Ayer, but like David Hume and Walter Pater, Ayer's philosophic and hedonistic heroes, treat them as a mere "bundle of perceptions" of a man, discrete experiences in the life of Ayer. Of course if you do, you are less likely to condemn him for the vices that seemed to necessarily accompany his joie de vivre--his selfishness and arrogance--and rather think of him simply as a man living for the day. Yet he hankered after a place in history alongside the great philosophers, and here there is a body of work to assess and an overall judgement to be made. Rogers' biography largely puts such assessment to one side, but then that analysis is for philosophy, and biography is about life, it might be said. The beauty of this particular biography, the irony of it being Ayer's, is that you are forced to question that dichotomy--philosophy and life--on every page, as Ayer seeks to solve another philosophic problem, and then heads to the club or restaurant, to a liaison with another girlfriend, for seven decades of logic and pleasure. --Jeff Petts

Review:

"A feat of biography that deserves to take its place alongside the two other great biographies of philosophers of recent times: Michael Ignatieff's "Isaiah Berlin" and Ray Monk's "Wittgenstein"." - "Mail on Sunday""Rogers--provides excellent and sympathetic summaries of all Ayer's main books and articles. Admirable." - "Sunday Times"

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0802138691
• ISBN 13: 9780802138699
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416