Bryan Magee
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Bryan Magee (born April 12, 1930) is a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.
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Early life
Born of working class parents in Hoxton, Magee was close to his father, but had a difficult relationship with his abusive and overbearing mother. An evacuee during World War II, he was educated at Christ's Hospital school on a London County Council scholarship. He did National Service in the Army and served in the Army Intelligence Corps seeking possible spies among the refugees crossing the border between Yugoslavia and Austria. After demob he obtained a scholarship to Keble College, Oxford where he read History and Philosophy. Friends there included Robin Day, William Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Thorpe and Michael Heseltine. While at Oxford Magee became interested in socialist politics and was elected president of the Oxford Union.
Renegade Politician
After a period at Yale University, he returned to Britain in 1958 with hopes of becoming a Labour Member of Parliament. In this he was unsuccessful, and instead took up a job presenting the ITV current affairs television programme This Week. He made documentary programmes about subjects of social concern such as prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion and homosexuality (illegal in Britain at the time).
He was eventually elected MP for Leyton in 1974, but found himself out of tune with the Labour Party's leftward tendencies under Michael Foot and was one of several Labour Members who joined the newly founded Social Democratic Party in 1981. He lost his seat in 1983 and returned to writing and broadcasting (which, indeed, he had continued during his parliamentary career).
Broadcaster and Writer
Magee's most important influence on society though, remains his efforts to make philosophy accessible to the layman. Transcripts of his television series "Men of Ideas" are available in published form in the book Talking Philosophy. This book provides a readable and wide-ranging introduction to modern Anglo-American philosophy.
Another series and book, The Great Philosophers, covers the history of Western philosophy, as does Magee's The Story of Thought (also published as The Story of Philosophy). Magee has also published Confessions of a Philosopher (1997), which essentially offers an introduction to philosophy in the form of an autobiography. This latter book was involved in a libel lawsuit as a result of Magee repeating the rumor that Ralph Schoenman, a controversial associate of Bertrand Russell during the great philosopher's final decade, had been planted by the CIA in an effort to discredit Russell. Schoenman successfully sued Magee for libel, with the result that the British edition of the book was pulped.
In Confessions of a Philosopher, Magee charts his own philosophical development in an autobiographical context. He also emphasizes the importance of Schopenhauer's philosophy as a serious attempt to solve philosophical problems. In addition to this, he launches a scathing critique of analytic philosophy over three chapters, contesting its fundamental principles and lamenting its influence.
His book, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, (first published in 1983), remains one of the most substantial and wide-ranging treatments of Schopenhauer to be found, it is particularly appreciated for its several essay-appendices in which Magee assesses in depth his influence on Wittgenstein, Wagner and other creative writers. He also addresses Schopenhauer's thoughts on homosexuality and the influence of Buddhism on his philosophy. He regards the work as his "academic magnum opus".
Magee has a particular interest in the life, thought and music of Richard Wagner and has written two notable books on the composer and his world 'Aspects of Wagner' (1988), and 'Wagner and Philosophy' (2001). He is also an admirer of the philosophy of Karl Popper on whom he has written an introduction (Modern Masters series, 1997).
His autobiography, Clouds of Glory: A Hoxton Childhood, won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography in 2004.