No 20, Bryan Magee, Men of Ideas, paired with a TV series of interviews with philosophers, many now up on YouTube. Said to be the first philosophy best-seller in the UK since, of all things, Stuart Hampshire’s paperback on Spinoza. Contributed to rising popularity of Philosophy as degree subjec
Wait, there was a bestselling book of Spinoza? I don’t know why but that seems bemusing. Not a philosopher I would have thought could catch popular imagination. (Then again, on the basis of my reading at Uni, I never imagined Kant’s ethics to be the basis of a great TV series. I know nathin’)
No 21. The book that launched a million furious dinner table rows. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. What did Eichmann know or want? How complicit were the leaders of the Jewish Communities? Arendt’s take cost her lifelong friends and sacks of hate mail. 📚💙
