Philosopher: A Kind of Life
by Ted Honderich
(Routledge, £20)
On the face of it, this is the autobiography of a philosopher, which might sound terribly boring, and indeed at least one other philosopher known to your reviewer has written a terribly boring autobiography. But not Honderich. Among other things, he edited The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, the only reference work on the subject that communicates the sheer oddball fun of hard thinking. Before now, I had not quite read through all 1,010 pages of that august work, mainly having been detained by novels and fat works of incoherent, Tory history, so am pleased to be alerted here to the existence of the one entry in its editor's own hand, viz: Unlikely Philosophical Propositions, which manages to be witty as well as perfectly lucid and short, not a common combination. And, apart from the shortness, those virtues are apparent too in the superb Philosopher: A Kind of Life . Here is a pulsing drama of sex, wine, litigation and office politics, and the story of how a very tall, bespectacled Canadian came to hold London's highest chair of philosophy. Honderich doesn't pretend that his life has had a smooth narrative; he deftly anticipates the reader's worst judgments of his behaviour and gently confesses that they may be right. And through it all he tackles large questions about determinism, punishment, causation and the like with the kind of vigorous, clear language that forces the reader to think hard and like it - if not always to agree with him. Take his savaging of Rawls's theory of justice: Honderich supposes that Rawls's contractors, who are in the process of thinking up an ideal society, might face a choice between giving absolutely equal amounts of socioeconomic goods to all, or "unequal amounts but with every class getting more". Given that any actual society will have a finite amount of resources to distribute initially (for the alternative, an infinite amount of resources, makes the whole problem disappear), the latter option, it seems to me, is impossible, and so this pseudo-choice cannot be used to demonstrate incoherence in Rawls. Still, it seems likely that, had I encountered Honderich's glintingly engaging prose at a more impressionable age, I might have chosen his subject at university instead of sloshing around with poets and dramatists. And so, dear reader, this column might never have existed. And, to borrow Honderich's own favourite form of negative rhetorical question, might not the world still have muddled through somehow?
I Wish I Was Me: The Autobiography
by Pete Waterman
(Virgin, £16.99)
Buy it at BOL
It's just as well that the grammatically challenged Mr Waterman wishes he were himself, for no one else seems likely to. A telling anecdote from this cacophonous apologia from the man responsible in recent years for Steps and Westlife comes when he relates the early death from cancer of Mel, she of Mel and Kim fame. Through his tears he cannot resist alluding to rumours that the duo "had lost that initial sparkle" anyway, because they had had the temerity to leave Stock, Aitken and Waterman for new management. Bless.
