Grayling, A. C. "Sense and Sensibility." BARNES AND NOBLE REVIEW February 23, 2009.

Zaretsky, Robert, and John T. Scott. The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. It is a welcome turn -- one should more accurately say: return -- for our culture that philosophy is once again a possession of what David Hume called the "conversable" and not just the scholarly part of mankind. An increasing abundance of popular works both of and about philosophy (genuine philosophy, not just the upliftingly platitudinous sort published in pastel covers and odd shapes) is one part of the reason; this reprises the way philosophy was once read by all educated folk, for whom it was written in clear language. This was before the twentieth century revival of a jargon-rich scholasticism which shut out the general public and made a studious philosophical apprenticeship necessary before one could engage in it. Another part of the reason for the return is the appearance of an increasing number of satisfying biographies of philosophers, and even more satisfying books that take us into philosophical lives and thought by hooking themselves to notable moments in philosophy's history. The account by Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott of the bitter falling-out between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the man who had befriended and helped him, David Hume, falls into this category. As the latest in the happily growing line of such, its arrival at the bookstores is a welcome event. At first one might think that biographies of philosophers must be dull stuff, for what did they do of note but sit and think, and sometimes write? George Bernard Shaw would appear to sum up matters on their behalf: "I have had no heroic adventures," he said. "Things have not happened to me; on the contrary it is I who have happened to them; and all my happenings have taken the form of books. Read them, and you have my whole story; the rest is only breakfast, lunch and dinner." But to think this would be to miss much. Socrates perverted the youth of Athens and had to drink hemlock. Abelard suffered castration for his illicit romance with Heloise. Descartes was present both at the Battle of the White Mountain and the subsequent massacres of Bohemian Protestants and might have been a spy for the Jesuits. Locke had to flee into political exile. Bertrand Russell went to prison for opposition to the First World War, while his pupil and later nemesis Wittgenstein served in the Austrian army and wrote his Tractatus on the Eastern Front. Nietzsche and Althusser went mad; the latter strangled his wife, while the former's sister strangled his reputation. Sartre was a Communist, Heidegger a Nazi. Camus played football and died in a car crash. Not a few of them were preternaturally amorous. On the whole, many philosophers seem to have been more rather than less energetic, even though some (Berkeley, Kant) led meditative lives of exemplary quietness. . . . Read the whole review here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=21102303&cds2Pid=22560.