Descartes in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes (Audio))

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining biography, but philosophy too sketchy
Review: Anyone who attempts to make philosophy accessible to non-academics certainly has the tip of my hat, but DESCARTES IN 90 MINUTES sacrifices too much substance in the interest of readability. This book would be OK for a high school student preparing a short paper or presentation on French philosopher/mathematician Rene Descarte, but for those of us who are motivated by anything more than casual curiosity about philosophers will be left unsatisfied.

I did learn quite a few facts from this very clearly-written book, such as Descarte's odd sleeping habits, his apparent facility in composing musical verse, and his compulsive wanderlust. The problem is that biographies of Great Thinkers just don't have a lot of impact without including some exposition of their Great Thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is about as deep as it gets here.

Rating:
Summary: Strathern Review
Review: Starthern's goal is to provide a quick, flawless guide to the major thinkers of the world: I'm unclear as to whether he succeeded or not. I suppose he succeeds simply because he has published these works, people buy them, and they are quite popular. I am not a stickler for erudition, I would have like to have learned from this series, but there just isn't enough information on the philosopher's work. If you're in a philosophy class and want to get a quick preview of what you're going to learn, chances are you will find more or less the same information in the introduction of your text. If you just want to learn on your own, it's your decision as to what you're looking for. For example, this is what I learned about Descartes from this book:

1) He was an eccentric who liked to sleep in 2) His theories on mathmatics were contraversial 3) He believes that we exist simply because we think 4) He died for a silly reason.

That's it folks. #2 & 3 may seem exciting, but there is no explanation as to why or how these manifests themself.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Little Biography + A Bit of Cartesian Philosophy
Review: The books in Paul Strathern's "[Philosopher] in 90 Minutes" series are quite similar structurally, so for all those who have read my reviews of them and notice the similarities, please forgive me. In this installment on Descartes, Strathern focuses, as he usually does, a great deal on biographical information. Is this a fault of the series?

Many readers seem to think so. I do not, for I don't see major exegesis as the primary purpose of the series. If one looks on the back cover one discovers that Strathern offers "a concise, expert account of Descartes' life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand the existence in the world." This is essentially all Strathern promises and, in my view, he delivers adequately.

Strathern focuses more on the "big-picture" issues, such as who came before Descartes, what the main philosophical trends were during Descartes' lifetime, what environmental factors influenced Descartes (geographical, familial, religious, etc.), Descartes' impact on philosophy, and why, in the end, Descartes matters at all.

Very few pages are dedicated to the actual words Descartes' wrote, but there is much worth reading in this little book. I've personally had two undergraduate classes in the past which focused partially on Descartes, so his actual philosophy wasn't what I was after when I decided to read this quick book. I was very happy to learn all kinds of things about Descartes life and works that I didn't already know.

If you're looking for heavy-hitting Cartesian philosophy, you shouldn't be looking for such between the covers of a book that is intended to take 90 minutes to read. For a light-hearted enjoyable overview, however, look no further.